like a lake

Learning Prejudice: Influence of Parents and Peers

2010-03-31T21:09:00.006-05:00

One of the earlier sections in our prejudice and stereotypes course concerned how prejudices and stereotypes begin in children. This was a good set of readings, and I was particularly intrigued by Allport’s ideas on the different stages from which children learn prejudices (i.e., attaching emotions to labels, over-generalization of emotion to all people within a category, differentiation within the category, and then tailoring attitudes to fit self-image, status seeking, and values). His theories about these stages provided the framework for and were supported by research on the cognitive stages associated with category development years later. I think that this attests to how monumental Allport’s book on prejudice was, and why it’s still used as a main text today.

While going through the readings, I became more and more interested in the role of parents in the formation of childhood prejudices (perhaps because I want to become a parent myself one day). Allport (1954) argued for three social mechanisms of acquiring prejudice: learning, conformity, and contact. And he believed that parents were most influential within the realm of “learning." Not only does he argue that children adopt the prejudiced attitudes and ideas from their family environment, he also states that “rejective, neglectful, and inconsistent styles” of parental training lead to children developing prejudice.

Yet, that's a pretty remarkable statement to me. After reading Harris’ The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, Revised and Updated (2009) a couple years ago, I was under the impression that parents had little lasting effect on the later personality and attitudes of children when they are grown. As I think Harris would argue, compared to parents, a child’s peer group is more influential on the later personality and attitudes that a child develops as he or she grows. Of course, to a point, parents do have the ability to control a child’s peer group . . . at least at a younger age. As Katz (2003) highlights, parents channel their children into their race beginning at 12 – 18 months. Many parents are likely not providing, nor approving of, access to peers from other ethnic backgrounds. Importantly, Katz explains that parents’ attitudes are indeed a significant predictor of racial bias. High bias children, more often than not, have parents with negative racial views and who don’t talk about other races. I think that this shows some support for Allport’s view. Of course, she also shows that the child’s best friend is a significant predictor of racial bias too. High bias children have more same-race friends.

I think the argument about whether parents or peers have the stronger influence relies too heavily on the explicit racial biases of each, and not on the power of implicit racial biases. Children appear to be very attuned to the non-verbal cues around them. As Castelli et al. (2008) show in their study, preschool children will express negative attitudes towards a Black model when a White model expresses some non-verbal (i.e., implicit) uneasiness over the Black model. This effect occurs regardless of whether the White model expresses any verbal friendliness with the Black model. More importantly, children appear to overgeneralize the negative views. They carry these views over to other Black models who have no relevance to the first situation. It's amazing how powerful implicit racial biases can be. Though, the White model in the experiments were not the children's parents, it is likely that children are picking up on the implicit biases of their parents from an early age.

References and further reading:

Allport, G. W. (1954/1979). The Nature of Prejudice. Perseus Books.

Dovidio, J. F., Glick, P., & Rudman, L. A. (Eds.) (2005). On the Nature of Prejudice: 50 Years After Allport. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Bigler, R. S., & Liben, L. S. (2006). A developmental intergroup theory of social stereotypes and prejudice. Advances in Child Development and Behavior.

Cameron, J. A., Alvarez, J. A., Ruble, D., & Fuligni, A. (2001). Children's lay theories about ingroups and outgroups: Reconceptualizing research on prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 118 - 128.

Castelli, L., De Dea, C., & Nesdale, D. (2008). Learning social attitudes: Children's sensitivity to the nonverbal behaviors of adult models during interracial interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1504 - 1513.

Harris, J. R. (1999). The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do. New York: The Free Press.

Katz, P. (2003). Racists or tolerant multiculturalists? How do they begin? American Psychologist, 58, 897 - 909.

Belongingness and Outgroup Derogation

2010-02-28T22:50:00.012-05:00

Our first week of readings for our prejudice and stereotypes seminar gave a historical background and overview of research in prejudice and stereotypes. We read some of Gordon Allport’s classic work on prejudice, as well as pieces from more contemporary authors. Essentially, the readings dealt with the definition of prejudice, the cognitive aspect of stereotypes, and the group dynamics of in-groups and out-groups. Lots of good ideas were presented, but there were a few that really grabbed my attention.

First, Princeton psychologist, Susan Fiske, presented a “core social motives” approach to understanding prejudice, which I found particularly interesting. According to Fiske, as well as other theorists (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995), we need other people to survive. As connecting with others is so important for our survival, we are embedded with various cognitive mechanisms and/or motivations that promote sociality. As we’re motivated to fit in with others, some of these motivations are likely to relate to group prejudices. The two social motives that I’m interested in most (as they relate to my own research) are the need to belong and the need for self-enhancement/self-esteem.

Belongingness is one of the most fundamental of human needs. It would therefore make sense that people will do whatever they can to connect with their group, encompassing what Allport (Chapter 2) refers to as “love-prejudice,” while avoiding being the target of ostracism or social rejection. This, of course, may come at the expense of out-group members (i.e. expressing in-group bias and out-group stereotypes). At the same time, people need to feel good about themselves and the groups to which they belong. Essentially, people are going to compare their group to others in ways that make them appear more favorable. For instance, when people experience temporary threats to their self-esteem, they make more stereotypical/prejudicial judgments of outgroup members.

This makes sense to me, especially in terms of Sociometer Theory (ST: Leary et al., 1995). According to ST, self-esteem and belongingness are intimately linked, in that self-esteem acts as a monitor of our inclusion status. When we are threatened with social exclusion, we experience a decrement in self-esteem which signals to us that we should adjust our behavior to avoid exclusion. In light of ST, the finding that people who experience threats to their self-esteem become more prejudiced makes very much sense to me. It’s possible that the decrement in self-esteem alerts the individual of an ostensible belongingness threat. And one way to seek out connections is to show more conformity to one’s in-group (i.e., expressing the in-group’s prejudiced opinions), as other members of one’s in-group are more likely to resemble candidates for future social acceptance than outgroup members.

Another interesting idea came from psychologists, Charles Stangor and Mark Schaller, who extend the idea of individual self-esteem to collective self-esteem. In their chapter, they bring up some evidence that when high status groups experience temporary evaluative threats, they also become more prejudiced. Perhaps Sociometer Theory has implications for collective self-esteem as well? Again, the findings would appear to coincide with ST. Yet, one question that I have is: under what conditions will an out-group member become a reasonable candidate for social connection? Essentially, when will people ignore their prejudices in order to seek connection with out-group members? Do people seek such a connection in moments of desperation, such as after being ostracized from their own in-groups?

Oh well, just some thoughts. More on prejudice and stereotypes next time!

References and further reading:

Allport, G. W. (1954/1979). The Nature of Prejudice. Perseus Books.

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529.

Dovidio, J. F., Glick, P., & Rudman, L. A. (Eds.) (2005). On the Nature of Prejudice: 50 Years After Allport. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Leary, M. R., Tambor, E. S., Terdal, S. K., & Downs, D. L. (1995). Self-esteem as an interpersonal monitor: The sociometer hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 518-530.

Stangor, C., & Schaller, M. (2000). Stereotypes as individual and collective representations. Stereotypes and Prejudice: Essential Readings (pp. 64 - 82). New York, NY US: Psychology Press.

a new post?

2010-02-22T22:22:00.002-05:00

So, this is my first post of 2010. I know, I know. I'm not quite keeping up with my posting goals.

This has been a very busy semester for me, and my writing goals have been sucked up lately. Specifically, it was better for me to use my resources (i.e., free time) towards writing journal articles than towards writing blog posts. But things are slowing down a bit now, so I plan to get back to my goal of at least 2 - 4 blog posts a month.

So anyways, things are good here. I am running a lot of cool studies, teaching statistic labs, and taking two classes (i.e., one on aggression and one on prejudice and stereotypes). I've also been working on writing up a lot of papers for submission to journals . . . hopefully the hard work will pay off.

So, I'm trying to stay productive. Soon, I'll post about some of the readings that we've had in my classes so far. There are also a lot of links and videos that I have wanted to post on here, and just haven't had the time. One of which is below. This video is a talk by the neurobiologist, Robert Sapolsky, on the topic of the uniqueness of humans . . . or rather the non-uniqueness of humans. He explains that humans are not very different from animals in terms of aggression, empathy, pro-social behavior, and even theory of mind and culture. Well, enjoy the talk, and I hope everyone is doing well out there!

Steven Pinker on Bloggingheads.tv

2009-11-25T00:34:00.002-05:00

So, I just saw an interesting interview on Bloggingheads.tv. It's a recent one where Steven Pinker is being interviewed by science journalist, Robert Wright.

It's a longer interview (about an hour long), but it covers various milestones throughout his career. Of course, with it being Pinker, much of the conversation revolved around the human capacity for language. There's an interesting segment where he discusses his disagreements with the linguist, Noam Chomsky. And then there's some discussion of evolutionary psychology, the logic of science and our perception of reality, and even a little bit of quantum mechanics (well, not a serious discussion of quantum theory, but it's used as an example of how reality is really counterintuitive). The interview ends with a discussion of the new project he's working on. It's a book on violence, and how violence is actually decreasing world-wide, despite our intuitions. He's been working on this book for a while it seems. You may even remember a post of mine covering this topic from over two years ago!

Well, anyways, I'm posting the interview below, check it out:

Gladwell on Colbert . . .

2009-11-24T01:25:00.004-05:00

Malcolm Gladwell was recently on the ColbertReport, discussing his new book: What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures. It is a book of essays that he wrote for the New Yorker. He's one of my favorite writers, so I'll definitely have to pick up the new book sometime.

The interview is pretty good, though it seems that perhaps Gladwell was a little nervous (he seemed a little tripped up when Colbert asked if he was a Christian). But I think Colbert took it easy on him. Check out the video below:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Malcolm Gladwell

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

U.S. Speedskating

Symphony of Science

2009-11-24T00:46:00.004-05:00

Wow! Have you heard of the Symphony of Science?

This might be old news to some of you, but it's new to me (I found out through pharyngula, of course).

The Symphony of Science is a musical project "designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form." The project is the brainchild of electronic musician, John Boswell. He takes audio/video samples from various lectures and/or educational programs and mixes them against his original compositions. His songs feature clips from Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, and even Bill Nye the Science Guy. One track, "A Glorious Dawn," was recently released on vinyl through Third Man Records (indie record label founded by Jack White of the White Stripes) for the 75th anniversary of Carl Sagan's birth. This is actually my favorite track, and am posting the video below (all videos, lyrics, and mp3 downloads can be found at the home site . . . check it out!):

Free Copy of The Origin . . . . from Ray Comfort?

2009-11-18T19:21:00.002-05:00

So, for those of you not "in the know," Ray Comfort (yes, the creationist with the banana routine) has printed 100,000 copies of his own edition of The Origin of Species, with a "special" introduction of course. Well, today Comfort and his followers gave out their propaganda at various universities and colleges across the country. And guess what? Yep. I got my own copy too!

Yep, there were people passing them out today at the University of Kentucky. One of my grad school buddies was able to secure a copy for me, haha (Thanks Dave!). The "special" introduction is hilarious!

Oh, by the by, if they came to your campus today, and you received a copy, then send a picture to The Primate Diaries. According to Pharyngula, Eric Michael Johnson (blogger at The Primate Diaries) is putting together a collage "of smirking evilutionists with Comfort's folly."

A TEDtalk with Oliver Sacks!

2009-10-07T20:29:00.003-05:00

Oliver Sacks, the famous British neurologist, recently gave a talk at TED concerning the topic of hallucinations.

Dr. Sacks is probably best known for his popular books in which he describes case studies of his patients with intriguing neurological disorders. One of my favorites is: The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales. And then you probably know: Awakenings, which was made into a movie starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams. I believe his most recent book is: Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition, in which Dr. Sacks examines the effects of music on the brain.

Well, this TED talk is about hallucinations. Well, not just hallucinations, but a particular type of disorder that causes hallucinations called, Charles Bonnett Syndrome. This is a disorder in which people who are blind experience visual hallucinations, and people who are death experience auditory hallucinations. It's very interesting. Apparently the syndrome is common, occurring in about 10% of the blind population, though it is probably under-reported.

These people are not crazy. They are perfectly sane, healthy individuals. The syndrome seems to occur in people who are blind from macular degeneration. What seems to be happening is that, as the structures that gather sensory information gradually break down, the visual/auditory parts of the brain go in hyper-drive. They are over-working, and the brain is trying to make sense of the jumbled mess of activation. Well, Dr. Sacks describes it a lot better, and includes some funny stories (including one about a woman who hallucinates Kermit the Frog). I'm posting the talk below, so check it out:

Dawkins on Colbert!

2009-10-01T20:49:00.006-05:00

Now for something a little more cheerful.

Richard Dawkins was on the Colbert Report last night promoting his new book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. It's a new book that synthesizes the evidence for evolution in a manner that is simple and easy to understand. I'm looking forward to reading it.

Check out the clip:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Richard Dawkins

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Michael Moore

Margo Wilson (1942 - 2009)

2009-09-30T22:46:00.004-05:00

I recently learned over the weekend, through the Human Behavior and Evolution Society email listserv, that Professor Margo Wilson died due to complications with lymphoma. This is very sad news.

Margo Wilson was a professor at McMaster University in Canada. And she was a pioneer in the field of evolutionary psychology, along with her longtime collaborator, Martin Daly. She was a past president of HBES and founding editor of the society's flagship journal, Evolution and Human Behavior. And she was also a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Dr. Wilson might be best known for her classic work on homicide, in collaboration with Daly. Their influential book on the topic analyzes historical and anthropological data from around the world through an evolutionary framework. They argued that the most common type of homicide (that between two conflicting young men who know each other) is a by-product of behavior that is selectively advantageous for controlling the reproductive behavior of women.

She has also done some interesting work on the "Cinderella effect." The Cinderella effect describes phenomena wherein step-parents mistreat their step-children at much higher rates than their mistreatment of their own genetic offspring. This effect is robust across cultures and stays strong, even controlling for socioeconomic factors. For instance, they found that children in the UK were 100 times more likely to be beaten by stepfathers than by genetic fathers.

She has done great work in the field, and has helped build a strong foundation on which evolutionary psychology could grow, and her death is a significant loss to the field.

Darwin Lectures at UK!

2009-09-21T00:09:00.007-05:00

Okay, I can't believe my wife beat me to it . . . well, on second thought, maybe I can.

Anyways, the University of Kentucky will be paying tribute to Darwin this October with a lecture series that's about a week long! Woo!

The Gaines Center of the Humanities is sponsoring this year's Bale Boone Symposium entitled: Science, Humanities, & Culture in the Wake of Darwin. There will be a host of great speakers, including Ken Miller, who I've heard talk before at a Darwin Day festival back in 2005 when I was still at VCU. I think that he does an excellent job of discussing the fact of evolution, and I will be glad to get to hear him again. Another talk that I think will be quite interesting is from Jonathan Gottschall (a professor of English at Washington and Jefferson College) entitled: Darwin in Wonderland: Evolution and the Science of Story. Looks like it'll be great fun!

All talks are within the student center at 6pm, are free, and open to the public! Here's a copy of the flyer for more details. My wife and I will be there, you should go too!

On a similar note, V. Betty Smocovitis, Biologist from the University of Florida, will be presenting a lecture titled Rhapsody on a Darwinian Theme: Darwin in Song and Musical Production this week! It will be on Thursday, Sep. 24 in the Lexmark Rm in the Adm. Bldg at 3:30 pm. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend this lecture, as I have to teach . . . :(

But you may want to go nonetheless!

Lastly, the IdeaFestival is happening this week in Louisville, KY. It starts on Tuesday and runs through Saturday. It's an event that happens in Louisville (I think every year, but I'm not sure) where great thinkers and innovators come to speak. I like to compare it a bit to the TED talks. Well, anyways, you can check out the agenda on their site. It looks like there will be some pretty good talks there too, so I encourage you to go, if you plan to be in Kentucky this week. Tickets are a little pricey, as it's much like a conference, but you can purchase tickets for individual events if you just wanted to see one or two of the talks. Check it out!

The End of Summer

2009-08-19T01:50:00.006-05:00

Wow, the summer is practically OVER!! School starts next week! Oh noes!

Ah well, I hope that everyone out there reading this has had an enjoyable summer.

I know, I know . . . I haven't posted much over the past couple months (I skipped the whole month of July even!). Well, I've either been too busy to think about my blog, or I've been out of town and rarely around a reliable internet connection.

Probably the coolest, or at least most interesting, thing that I've done this summer was participate in the 4th annual Summer Institute in Social Psychology (SISP) hosted by Northwestern University and sponsored by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the National Science Foundation. SISP is a selective program of intensive courses and workshops geared towards students who are early in their graduate careers in personality and social psychology. The courses that I participated in were the Biological Basis of Social Behavior and Personality course and the Meta-Analysis course. Needless to say, the experience was great! I really learned a lot, and the summer institute has helped me generate and/or solidify numerous ideas that I can now incorporate into my own research (though two weeks is not enough time to really become an expert with these methods, so I will definitely need more experience if I wish to pursue them further). It's even got me started thinking about possible post-docs that I may want to pursue in the future (but that's still a long ways away, haha).

But anyways, I've met a lot of new friends and possible collaborators, many interested in the same questions that I myself am interested in. The program even included a trip to downtown Chicago! (a city to which I have never been!) It was great! For any social/personality grad students out there reading this, I really do recommend participating in one of these SISP programs. You'll gain knowledge of some of the most up-to-date theory and methods in the field and you'll get to know a lot of new people, do networking, and form collaborations (many of these people will be future superstars in the field!).

Other than SISP, I've taught a summer lab on social psychology research methods, worked on my research, watched A LOT of movies, made a couple trips back "home" to Virginia and to North and South Carolina, and participated in a book club that my grad student buddies and I recently begun. The book club is going well, and I think that it's really a good idea. It's really hard to read stuff for "fun" when you are in graduate school, and this type of club kind of forces you to do it (otherwise discussion will not go well). So far we've read Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science and Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture which were both pretty good. Naked Economics was really my first reading on economics and I thought that it was generally a good read as an introduction for the layperson. (Please see Medicine for Melancholy for a more detailed review, if interested.) Female Chauvinist Pigs was a more alarming book about the social problem of "raunch culture." Books I'm reading now include: Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life and Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err is Human. Perhaps I will eventually write up a review of one or two of these books . . . we'll see.

One last note. My wife recently started a blog called, Deconstructing the Flower, which focuses on modern feminist issues, and it might be of interest to some of you. I'm also linking it on my sidebar, under "Friends." So if feminism and/or women's issues is a concern or interest of yours, please visit her blog and enjoy!

Steven Pinker, George Church, Anne Wojcicki, & Linda Avey on Charlie Rose

2009-06-24T15:32:00.005-05:00

Hello all! I hope that everyone is having a great summer so far!

I was browsing the Edge website and came across a link to a Charlie Rose clip featuring Steven Pinker, George Church, Anne Wojcicki, and Linda Avey (I guess that you could have gotten that from my title, right?). It's about the Personal Genome Project, which I've mentioned in previous posts.

Anyways, it's a pretty good discussion about the importance of the project and about how having open access to people's genomes will open up many opportunities for researchers in developing new ways of analyzing the influence of genes on behavior.

Well, I'm posting the clip below. Check it out, and enjoy:

Hard-Wired Morality

2009-05-27T23:20:00.006-05:00

This looks interesting.

University of Colorado, Boulder ecologist, Marc Beckoff, and philosopher, Jessica Pierce, have written a new book (Wild Justice) that examines morality as an adaptive strategy for helping aggressive and/or competitive species to live together in groups. Morality, in the form of empathy, cooperation and reciprocity, provides what Beckoff calls, the "social glue," for group living.

The authors cite evidence from around the world and across a variety of species, from mice to elephants, that support the claim that animals have an innate sense of fairness and empathy. For instance, experiments with rats have shown that they will refuse to obtain food if their actions will protect other rats from being harmed. As well, in play, dominate wolves will self-handicap and allow lower ranked wolves to bite them. Additionally, neurological evidence is presented that shows how some species have structures in their brains that are similar to those "empathy" areas in human brains.

This is a very interesting topic, and I just might have to put this book on my summer reading list. I agree that what we call morality today probably started out as an adaptive strategy for group living, because social networks were so important for survival across species. And as such, evidence for this "social glue" should be abundant in nature.

Such evidence for a hard-wired morality could have strong implications for us humans. For one, morality is often seen as a philosophical and/or religious concept. It sometimes seems like scientists have no business talking about moral issues. But this book could show that one doesn't need religion to explain while we feel empathy for others, have urges to be honest, and want to protect others from harm. Such feelings could be . . . dare I say it . . . instinctual. Yet I'm not sure whether I would agree that animals can tell the difference between right and wrong, not in the abstract sense that we mean those concepts. I really liked what Emory primatologist, Frans de Waal, said on the topic:

"I don't believe animals are moral in the sense we humans are – with well developed and reasoned sense of right and wrong – rather that human morality incorporates a set of psychological tendencies and capacities such as empathy, reciprocity, a desire for co-operation and harmony that are older than our species. Human morality was not formed from scratch, but grew out of our primate psychology. Primate psychology has ancient roots, and I agree that other animals show many of the same tendencies and have an intense sociality."

Really cool, exciting stuff. Guess I'll have to pick the book up sometime.

Bridging the gap between the Humanities and the Sciences

2009-05-25T14:55:00.005-05:00

So it's been a couple weeks since my last post. You know how it goes, classes ending, submitting grades, finishing papers, etc. And let's not forget the importance of taking a much needed rest from work!

Well, not too much is going on now . . . besides teaching the lab sections for summer courses and working on summer research projects. Anyways, the other day I was browsing the Edge website and came across this page celebrating the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow's lecture on the "Two Cultures," that is the culture of the literary intellectual and the culture of the scientist. At the time, the two cultures were seen as divided camps of thinking. Those in the humanities were viewed as the true intellectuals (i.e., those in philosophy, literature/poetry, art, the social sciences, etc.). And the expectation was that scientists had very little to say about culture, the human experience, or human nature.

50 years later, Seed Magazine asked members of the "Third Culture" (i.e., those bridging the gap between the humanities and the sciences) whether the two cultures are still divided today. Visit the link and check out the videos. They're pretty good, and quite short (6-10 mins.). Overall, the answer seems to be that the two cultures are not as divided as once was and is more like a continuum from one pole to the other. Advancements made in the science of the mind have especially contributed to bridging this gap. It has helped changed how we think about those abstract concepts (e.g., human nature, religion, even beauty). As well, it is young scholars who are becoming more and more interested in collaboration among different fields of inquiry.

Below are the videos from Harvard psychologists, Steven Pinker and Marc Hauser. Enjoy!:

Why We Believe in Gods - Evolutionary Psychology and Religion

2009-04-27T01:08:00.007-05:00

There was a lecture recently posted on richarddawkins.net (though I found out about it through pharyngula) that might be of interest for some of you.

It's a talk by Dr. Andy Thomson, (a psychiatrist from back home in Virginia!) concerning religion from the perspective of evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience. It's quite a nice (and I think convincing) lecture. Essentially, his thesis is that religion is a cultural artifact or byproduct (like music) that has hijacked specific traits/modules in our brains that once provided a selective advantage for living in a social world (SCI anyone?). Of course, I cannot do his argument justice. You will have to watch it (if you haven't already) and decide for yourself. Though, remember, it's a normal academic talk . . . so it's about an hour long . . . but there's a brief Q&A near the end. The video is posted below, check it out and see what you think:

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By the by, if you are not all video-ed out and you have some interest in that work by Simon Baron-Cohen, which Thomson mentioned, then check this video from the Edge website out! Besides being the brother of Sacha Baron-Cohen, Simon is a brilliant psychologist from the University of Cambridge. His work mostly concerns research on autism and theory of mind. The talk posted on the Edge site is about his experiments on how people can read the emotional expressions of others just by looking at their eyes. Specifically, he's examining sex differences on whether women can read emotional expressions from people's eyes quicker than men.

Well, that's about it. There's your two for one! Enjoy!

self-presentation

2009-04-24T12:55:00.003-05:00

This week’s readings on the self seemed to concern a more classic topic than previous weeks, and that is the idea of self-presentation. In general, we like to manage the impressions that we give to others. We like to appear favorable. As well, we’ll even manipulate the impressions of others to make them appear unfavorable. For instance, Gilbert and Silvera found that people will try to hinder others by “overhelping” them. If a target person that we do not favor is performing on a task that is rather simple, or easily performed, we’ll likely help this person achieve his/her goal in order to undermine his/her competence. So, in effect, the target person will seem incompetent because he/she received help on an easy task.

Not to sound repetitive, but self-presentation makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, especially if Kurzban’s idea of the self (the SCI) is an accurate representation of reality. If the self is a collection of modules that help us function in a social world, by manipulating others, then self-presentation fits in as one tool we use to manipulate others. As I stated before, we manipulate the representations of ourselves to appear favorable to others, and we manipulate the representations of others to make them appear less favorable. An important motive that seems to be behind self-presentation is belongingness and acceptance, but it is by no means the only motive. As the SCI would predict, the activation of multiple modules will differentially affect self-presentation. In support of this notion, Griskevicius et al. found that activating self-protection versus mating goals will differentially affect whether we conform to a group or not. When people are primed with self-protection goals, they generally conform to group attitudes/norms. This is because fitting in with groups often proved to be beneficial for protection. At the same time, priming men with mate goals will make them less likely to conform to group attitudes, as being perceived as independent and differentiated from the group could potentially lead to greater reproductive success. Women on the other hand were more likely to conform, as agreeableness is often cited as a sought after quality from men. I do wonder which goal would have precedence over the other though. If self-protection and mate goals were each activated simultaneously, how would that affect conformity? Would people be more likely to conform because self-protection goals are stronger?

We also learned that self-presentation seems to depend on self-regulatory energy. It takes energy to control our self representations, as well, when our energy has been depleted, we are less likely to control them. Interestingly, representations that are familiar (overly practiced) do not deplete regulatory energy. For instance, obeying gender rules is usually familiar to us, so it doesn’t take energy to obey them. This is very reminiscent of the formation of implementation intentions, and lends support to the notion that perhaps forming implementations intentions will not endanger one to becoming thoroughly depleted. Thinking back on the Griskevicius work, it must take energy to not conform to group behavior. Will the activation of mate goals be hindered by regulatory depletion? Or will the mate goals be so familiar that their effects on self-regulation be minimal? Just some questions to think about I guess.

Citations for further reading:

Cialdini, R.B., & De Nicholas, M.E. (1989). Self-presentation by association. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 57, 626-631.

Gilbert, D.T.,, & Silvera, D.H. (1996). Overhelping. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 70, 678-690.

Griskevicius, V., Goldstein, N.J., Mortensen, C.R., Cialdini, R.B., & Kenrick, D.T. (2006). Going along versus going alone: When fundamental motives facilitate strategic (non)conformity. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 91, 63-76.

Tice, D.M. (1992). Self-concept change and self-presentation: The looking-glass self is also a magnifying glass. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 63, 435-451.

Vohs, K.D., Baumeister, R.F., & Ciarocco, N.J. (2005). Self-regulation and self-presentation: Regulatory resource depletion impairs impression management and effortful self-presentation depletes regulatory resources. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 88, 632-657.

Social Neuroscience and the Self

2009-04-18T14:41:00.009-05:00

The studies from this week’s readings examined the self from a social neuroscience perspective. There were some pretty interesting findings in general, but I think the most important implication of all the studies is that the “self” can be linked back to physical/biological structures. For instance, Gailliot (along with my advisor and their colleagues) observed that acts of self-regulation actually deplete blood glucose levels. And Kelley et al. even found that self-referential (comparing traits to ourselves) thought is related to the deactivation of unique areas of the brain (the medial prefrontal cortex). It’s possible that this area is related to the processing of unique self-knowledge. These findings help remove the self from just being some abstract, theoretical concept, and instead shows how the self is linked to our evolutionary development.

We can also view threats against the self through brain imaging. Eisenberger et al. have shown that social exclusion is linked with activation of the same brain areas that are activated for physical pain. This has significant implications for how important belongingness was for us during our evolutionary development. Our social pain system has co-opted the physical pain system. When we feel exclusion, we really feel pained. It makes sense. Not only is having one pain system suited to deal similarly with physical and social pain more efficient/resourceful, but feeling pained after exclusion is a good way to motivate one to avoid social exclusion. It’s likely that those early humans who were not motivated to avoid exclusion were at a significant survival disadvantage. I think that this also goes in hand with Kurzban’s perspective of the self, in that the self-system evolved in order for us to succeed socially. I wonder then if those self-referential areas (the MPFC) in the brain developed at the same time as when the social pain system started to co-opt the physical pain system.

Another cool finding came from Neiss et al., who were able to link the relationship between self-esteem, executive function and negative affect to genetic influences. Generally, they found that people with low self-esteem had greater negative affect. As well, people with low executive function (self-regulation) had greater negative affect. And they also found that the relationship between self-esteem and affect mediated the self-regulation/affect link. Lastly, genetic factors accounted for a significant portion of variance (38 - 44%) in self-esteem, executive function and negative affect, though the largest contributing factor was due to the non-shared environment. Overall, they concluded that the executive self did not display a genetic or environmental link with negative affect above that shared with self-esteem. This makes sense to me from the sociometer/SCI perspective as well. If we developed our sense of self as a means for succeeding socially, and our self-esteem acts as a guage for our social worth, then negative feelings that come out of an inability to self-regulate should only arise when the regulation issue is connected to social worth (which will be gauged by the self-esteem). So when our self-regulation is low, and we have increased negative affect, it should be because our self-esteem is low too. Very cool.

There is one comment that I have wondered about though. They stated that genetic influences explain 30 – 50 % of the variance in self-esteem usually. I wonder what implications this has for the sociometer hypothesis. If self-esteem is just a guage for our social worth, then I would hypothesize that most of the variance in self-esteem (if not all) would be explained by non-shared environmental factors (i.e., whether we’ve been threatened with exclusion).

Citations for further reading:

Eisenberger, N.I., Liberman, M.D., & Williams, K.D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302, 290 - 292.

Gailliot, M.T., Baumeister, R.F., DeWall, C.N., Maner, J.K., Plant, E.A., Tice, D.M., Brewer, L.E., & Schmeichel, B.J. (2007). Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: Willpower is more than a metaphor. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 325-336.

Kelley, W.M., Macrae, C.N., Wyland, C.L., Caglar, S., Inati, S., and Heatherton, T.F. (2003). Finding the self? An event-related fMRI study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Neiss, M.B., Stevenson, J., Sedikides, C., Kumashiro, M., Finkel, E., & Rusbult, C.E. (2005). Executive self, self-esteem, and negative affectivity: Relations at the phenotypic and genotypic level. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 4, 593– 606.

the implicit self

2009-04-04T21:55:00.010-05:00

This past week’s readings on the self concerned the implicit or automatic self. The implicit/automatic self are those self-evaluations and goals that are most practiced and evaluated. Those representations are activated so often that they eventually become ingrained into the unconscious and become automated. This idea of the implicit self is related to the concept of the adaptive unconscious. We do not have the cognitive resources to deal with all the stimuli that we are presented with in our environment. Instead the unconscious takes on much of the workload.

It seems that much of our behavior is guided by goals that are outside of our conscious awareness. Once non-conscious goals are activated by the outside world, we are motivated to pursue those goals. Take the above picture for example. Cats are predatory animals and often like to attack birds among other things. This goal is activated so often that it's unconscious (and in the cat's case, probably instinctual). Nonetheless, when the cat's goal of attacking birds is activated, it strikes, even though the chicken (or rooster or whatever) is so much bigger. This is just an example that I'm using, but that's pretty much how non-conscious goals work for humans. Activation of non-conscious goals even help us persist in the face of obstacles. Such evidence seems to support the prior argument for forming implementation intentions.
For implementation intentions, one would form and practice a self-regulation goal until it is automated. Then once that goal is activated, he/she would be guided to pursue that goal (self-regulate). This idea is even more interesting, after reading up on non-conscious goal pursuit. If non-conscious goals are formed when one does not have the cognitive resources to pursue the goal consciously, and they make you persist in the face of obstacles, then perhaps implementation intentions really do have a minimal effect on regulatory resources. Though, I still think that it would take some energy to complete the goal and am not convinced that non-conscious goal pursuit would not deplete self-regulatory resources at all.

On another note, our implicit associations seem to have a strong effect on our behavior. For instance, for the most part, we like ourselves, so much so that we hold positive implicit self-associations. These associations make us favor things that resemble the self. People are more likely to live in cities that resemble their names. We’re more likely to favor people who have the same birthday as us. We’re even more likely to prefer teas, crackers, chocolates, etc. that share letters with our names. Additionally, when our self-worth is threatened, we compensate by having higher implicit self-esteem.

The implicit self is separate from the explicit self. In fact, Rudman et al. explained that “the picture that emerges is not of a unitary self, but of one composed of multiple subsystems that can operate in tandem or apart.” This is very interesting to me. It is remarkably similar to the Social Cognitive Interface theory of the self, which states that the self is a collection of cognitive modules that help us navigate the social world, but their actions are outside of our conscious awareness. I think the evidence from the research on implicit egotism and self-esteem are congruent with predictions from the SCI perspective. It would make sense that we would unconsciously seek out, and prefer things that are similar to us. People who are similar to us are probably more likely to accept us. Also, often times when we are threatened, we unconsciously compensate by gaining in implicit self-esteem. This compensation leads to an increased intergroup bias. Essentially, we’ll be more likely to favor groups that we are a part of. This, again, makes sense from the SCI perspective. In the evolutionary past, if we were threatened, it would be better to seek out the groups that we belonged to for protection. Of course, this increased intergroup bias has negative social side-effects for groups we are not a part of. This is more of a problem in modern times because different groups live in such close proximity to each other now. I think this issue would be good to explore further.

Citations for further reading:

Bargh, J. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., Lee-Chai, A., Barndollar, K., Trotschel, R. (2001). The automated will: Nonconscious activation and pursuit of behavioral goals. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 81, 1014 – 1027.

Fitzsimons, G. M., & Bargh, J. A. (2003). Thinking of you: Nonconscious pursuit of interpersonal goals associated with relationship partners. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 84, 148 – 164.

Koole, S. L., Dijksterhuis, A., & Knippenberg, A. (2001). What’s in a name: Implicit self-esteem and the automatic self. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 80, 669 – 685.

Pelham, B. W., Carvallo, M., & Jones, J. T. (2005). Implicit egotism. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 106 – 110.

Rudman, L., Dohn, M. C., & Fairchild, K. (2007). Implicit self-esteem compensation: Automatic threat defense. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 798 – 813.

Correlation or Causation?

2009-03-29T20:49:00.004-05:00

So I just recently came across this webcomic called: xkcd. It's pretty cool. The comics are pretty good, plus they often include topics concerning science and math. I especially love the one above. It concerns correlation and causation, and what the difference is between the two. Unfortunately, very often people confuse correlation for causation. For instance, the eating of ice cream might have an association (be correlated) with hot weather. Perhaps the hotter it is outside, the more ice cream I eat. So, yes, we would say the eating of ice cream is correlated with hot weather. But it would be a mistake to conclude that ice cream causes hot weather, right?

Confusing correlation with causation is a problem that occurs all the time, especially in the media (for instance, I found one headline stating that "TV Raises Blood Pressure in Obese Kids," when only a strong association between hours of tv and hypertension was found). If you are interested, here's a website that keeps a long list of news articles that confuse correlation with causation, plus some resources related to the issue.

As well, if you are in psychology, the following two links may be of great interest, that is, if you're looking to increase your expertise in the application of statistics to the field:

Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics - This is Division 5 of the American Psychological Association.

Summer Statistics Workshop - Dr. Alan Reifman has put together a list of resources for various summer statistics trainings meant for researchers in the soical sciences. These trainings are held at a variety of institutions. This looks like a very good resource.

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On an unrelated note, I have a new blogging buddy. Another one of my fellow graduate students, Dave, has started a blog about Somalia, called Somalfocus. If you have an interest in what's going on in Somalia, or perhaps in internaltional relations in general, then you should check it out.

Lastly, I'm running a little late with my next "Self" post. It will probably be up in the next day or two.

Self-Regulation

2009-03-18T13:31:00.003-05:00

Last week’s readings on the self covered the topic of self-regulation and motivation. Self-regulation is essentially the ability to deliberately control our own behavior. Self-regulation has an adaptive quality to it. For instance, it would seem beneficial for one to be able to control one’s impulses, and plan for the future. And indeed, as Mischel et al. (1989) has found, children who are better at self-regulation often have better outcomes later in life, such as in academics.

Even though self-regulation is very beneficial, it seems to come from a limited resource. It’s like a muscle, and as you use it, it tires. As Baumeister et al. (1998) has shown, self-regulatory acts deplete the “ego,” thereby making one less able to self-regulate in the future. Self-regulation seems to require energy (i.e., glucose) and/or a resting period. It’s a good thing to keep in mind, I think.

Interestingly, conscious thought isn’t exactly needed for the initiation of self-regulation. Through “implementation intentions”, one can automate self-regulation for various goal pursuits. For instance, if one desired to be less prejudiced against the elderly, then one could train him/herself to “tell” him/herself not to consider a person’s age every time an elderly person is encountered. One thought that came to mind, after reading about this, is whether automating self-regulation uses less ego resources than directed self-regulation. In particular, when thinking of the concept of the adaptive unconscious from the prior articles, it seems that the automatic unconscious is useful and adaptive for its ability to take in a lot of information without using up our resources. So automated self-regulation might just take up less energy than consciously directed self-control. Yet it still seems as though directed thought is needed in sustaining the self-regulatory behavior. Only the initiation of self-regulation seems to be automated, and after training oneself to automate this behavior. If implementation intentions use ego resources as much as that of deliberate self-regulation, then I would think that such cueing could be detrimental to the self-regulatory ability. For instance, if one created implementation intentions for multiple behaviors, and one encounters many cues throughout the day that activate these intentions, then one could become quickly and thoroughly depleted. At what level would these implementation intentions become detrimental? Or does the mere training that automates this behavior build up self-regulation? So, perhaps the automation does deplete self-regulatory resources, but the practice of automating self-control built up a larger inventory of self-regulatory resources to take from? Thoughts to explore further perhaps.

Citations for further reading:

Baumeister, R.F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D.M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1252-1265.

Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2008). Feedback processes in the simultaneous regulation of action and affect. In J. Y. Shah & W. L. Gardner (Eds.), Handbook of motivation science (pp. 208-224). New York: Guilford.

Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54, 493-503.

Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52, 1280-1300.

Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. L. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244, 933-938.

Culture and the Self

2009-03-07T19:18:00.006-05:00

This week’s readings on the self were pretty interesting. They were about the “cultural self.” Essentially, the readings discussed the different self-construals that can be found cross-culturally. As one might imagine, people within more individualistic societies are more likely to have independent self-construals, characterized by a focus on autonomy, uniqueness and internal attributes and emotions. Those from more collectivistic nations are more likely to have interdependent construals of the self. The interdependent self-construal is characterized by belongingness, self-in-relation to other representations, and a connection of the self to specific social contexts. Of course, this does not mean that people can’t vary within a society according to how independent/interdependent they are.

Markus and Kitayama’s review paper on the independent versus the interdependent self-construal was particularly thought provoking for me. I had a strong desire to connect their ideas to those from our past readings. If you really think about the interdependent self-construal, it fits in well with the Social Cognitive Interface (SCI) framework of Rob Kurzban, and especially with Leary’s sociometer theory. (I know, I know . . . . I seem to refer to these two theories a lot. What can I say?) Firstly, having an interdependent self-construal means that you define yourself in relation to your group members and the social context. You are constantly aware of and focus on the needs and desires of others within your in-group. And your basis for self-esteem is “the ability to adjust, and restrain the self, and maintain harmony with the social context.” This sounds remarkably similar to sociometer theory, in which it is theorized that self-esteem is a gauge for social acceptance. And according to the SCI, the self is a set of cognitive mechanisms that help us function socially, because belongingness was/still is very important for our survival. The interdependent self-construal seems to be the ultimate example of this, if the SCI perspective is valid. On the other hand, according to SCI theory, along with other past readings, the self makes up a story for you that may not be valid but will ultimately help you in the social world. I’m not sure if that’s happening here. To me, it seems that the SCI is not hiding itself (or it’s intentions) in those who have the interdependent self-construal. They are defining themselves in relation to their group members, and they know it. The SCI is telling a story. Whereas, for more individualist societies, belongingness is very important but it seems to be more of an underlying or unconscious value. This is where the SCI would work for us. I questioned: Do those with interdependent self-construals have more accurate self-knowledge?

And then I read Balcetis et al., whose research seems to support the notion that, yes people who are more interdependent also have more accurate self-knowledge. Yet, I do have questions about their dependent variables. It seems that the more collectivist a person was, the more likely he/she would accurately predict his/her future behavior. But each of those behaviors were pro-social in nature, and people who are more collectivistic may be more accurate in estimating pro-social behavior because it is very important to their self-concepts, thereby being more salient. I’d like to know if collectivists have more accurate self-knowledge in domains that are not related to sociality.

Nonetheless, in the grand scheme of things, it seems most of the world (outside of Western Europe and America) are more collectivistic. As well, these people have more accurate self-knowledge. This leads me to the following question: Is the individualistic/independent self-construal a relatively recent phenomenon (whether evolutionarily or culturally)? And what is the benefit of having an independent self-construal if it contributes to our inaccuracy in self-knowledge? We talked in class about how we probably have modules or at least the general capacities for both independent and interdependent self-construal. And these modules are probably activated differentially depending on the social context. There are circumstances where an independent self-construal would be best and vice versa. I think viewing such cross-cultural differences from the SCI perspective would be interesting to explore further.

Citations for further reading:

Balcetis, E., Dunning, D., & Miller, R. L. (2008). Do collectivists know themselves better than individualists? Cross-cultural studies of the holier than thou phenomenon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1252-1267.

Markus, H., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224-253.

Heine, S. J., Lehman, D. R., Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1999). Is there a universal need for positive self-regard? Psychological Review, 106, 766-794.

Sedikides, C., Gaertner, L., & Toguchi, Y. (2003). Pancultural self-enhancement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 60-79.

Heine, S.J. (2005). Where is the evidence for pancultural self-enhancement? A reply to Sedikides, Gaertner, and Toguchi (2003). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 531-538.

the function of self-esteem

2009-03-01T21:12:00.003-05:00

As you might notice, this past week’s readings were on the topic of “self-esteem.” Specifically the readings were focused on the function of self-esteem, the benefits of having high self-esteem, and whether we should focus policy on improving the self-esteem of children. A short review of the findings from the articles we read shows that self-esteem is often given a bit more credit than it may deserve. For example, high global self-esteem is not linked to improvements in performance (whether academic or not), although it is linked with persistence in the face of failure. As well, high self-esteem in the form of narcissism is linked with anti-social behavior. Those who have high self-esteem, but are also high in narcissism act more aggressive after an insult than those who are not high in both. Yet, this is not exactly an open and shut case. There are researchers on both sides of the issue that argue whether boosting people's self-esteem is good or not. Please see the Baumeister and Swann citations below for a good review on the debate.

At the moment I’m much more interested in the function of self-esteem than the effects of having high self-esteem, which brings me to the Greenberg article. Greenberg et al. (1992) proposed the “terror management” idea that self-esteem serves as an anxiety-buffer against things that threaten us, and specifically death. In three experiments, the authors showed that people with high self-esteem were less anxious than neutral others when threatened, and this effect was not due to positive or negative affect.

In their experiments, participants were essentially given false feedback on a personality or intelligence test. One group was given feedback meant to elicit feelings of high self-esteem, whereas another group was either given neutral or no feedback. Participants were then asked to watch either a graphic film clip (threat-group), or a neutral clip (no-threat) in one experiment, or, in the other two experiments, they were told that they would receive painful shocks (threat) or receive non-painful sensations from lightwaves (no-threat). The experimenters then measured how anxious the participants were, either by self-report or by physiological measures, such as sweating. They found that people who had high self-esteem were less anxious than low self-esteem individuals in the threat group. And the protection offered by self-esteem was not due to increased positive affect or decreased negative affect.

It’s pretty cool, but I’m still not totally convinced of the terror management interpretation of self-esteem. For instance, as mentioned earlier, the authors primed their participants in the threat condition by making them watch a graphic movie clip (depicting real deaths) or by telling them to expect painful shocks. The painful shock condition was employed as a way of testing the generality of the anxiety-buffer effect. But pain does not seem that far removed from feelings of mortality. Pain and death are often associated with each other, and both are strongly attached to our primal need for survival and safety. I’d like to know, instead, whether self-esteem can buffer against anxiety from weaker threats (e.g., a poor evaluation, a break-up). Additionally, this interpretation of self-esteem needs to be tested against other theories of self-esteem, such as Leary’s sociometer theory. As mentioned in an earlier post, sociometer theory posits that self-esteem acts as a gauge of social acceptance/rejection. When we are threatened with social rejection, our self-esteem should lower. This could then tell us that we need to adjust our behavior, so that we are accepted back into the group. Sociometer theory seems to work better within the evolutionary perspective of the Social Cognitive Interface (SCI).

If you remember, the SCI is a set of cognitive mechanisms that evolved with the purpose of helping us function socially. In essence, evolution has given us a sense of self so that we are better equipped for a social world. One in which staying connected with others is crucial for survival. Now, I am not saying that terror management theory (TMT) is resistant to evolutionary explanations for self-esteem. On the contrary, I think TMT works well within that approach. If self-esteem buffers against anxiety, then I think that would prove to be a very beneficial/adaptive function. But I do think that the sociometer interpretation works better within the SCI approach, than does terror management. Of course, this is assuming that self-esteem, and the self in general, only has one adaptive function and/or is not a by-product of some other cognitive mechanism. All in all, I think that terror management and sociometer theory can be reconciled with each other with-in an evolutionary framework. After all, isn’t death the ultimate form of social exclusion?

Citations:

Crocker, J., & Park, L. E. (2004). The costly pursuit of self-esteem. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 392-414.

Baumeister, R. F., Campbell, J. D., Krueger, J. I., & Vohs, K. D. (2003). Does high self-esteem cause better performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4, 1-44.

Bushman, B. J., Baumeister, R. F., Thomaes, S., Ryu, E., Begeer, S., & West, S. G. (in press). Looking again, and harder, for a link between low self-esteem and aggression. Journal of Personality.

Swann, W. B., Chang-Schneider, C., & McClarty, K. L. (2007). Do our self-views matter? Self-concept and self-esteem in everyday life. American Psychologist, 62, 84-94.

Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., Rosenblatt, A., et al. (1992). Why do people need self-esteem? Converging evidence that self-esteem serves an anxiety-buffering function. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 913-922.

more blogging friends . . .

2009-03-01T17:09:00.004-05:00

Well, I have some more blogging buddies out there.

I figured that I could link them here and add them to my blogroll, so that everyone who reads like a lake will have a chance to visit these new and exciting venues of the blogosphere.

First we have the blog, Ready, Set . . ., by some old buddies of mine, Joel and Nathan. It's mostly about their daily going-ons, comic inspiration, and progress on a cartoon/comic they are developing.

Next we have Intellectual Capital, by friend and fellow UK grad student Ryan. This blog concerns topics in social psychology and political/social commentary.

Lastly, we have Ridiculous Claims, by another grad student buddy, Tim. This one is for all you football nuts out there. And I mean American Football . . . not soccer . . . er, um, rest of the world football, haha.

Well that's it for today, so go check them out and enjoy!

Daniel Gilbert on TED

2009-02-22T22:10:00.004-05:00

Harvard Social psychologist, Daniel Gilbert, recently had a talk posted on TED, though it looks like the talk was originally given in 2005.

It's good though. Gilbert is widely known for his research on happiness. What makes us happy? Can we predict future happiness? How do traumatic events effect our long-term happiness? And such.

Though related to his happiness research, this talk centered on general decision making (and specifically, erroneous economic decisions that we make). Basically, the gist of the talk is that people are notoriously bad in money matters because of two cognitive biases. The first causes us to make erroneous judgments in estimating the odds of a potential gain. The second causes us to make erroneous estimates in the positive value of the potential gain.

His reasoning for why we have these cognitive biases goes back to us being evolved creatures. Firstly, we evolved in environments that rarely changed. We lived in small groups, had short lives and had to make relatively few choices. Instead our ancestors focused on the here and now. In his words: "the highest priority was to eat and mate today."

Well, anyways, check out the video. It's good, and there's a Q&A section at the end.

Check it out:

Self-enhancement

2009-02-21T17:10:00.002-05:00

This week’s readings were on the topic of “using the self.” Particularly, how do we evaluate ourselves, in what contexts, and the readings even examined self-fulfilling prophecies. When we make self-evaluations, do we search for accurate information? Or do we focus on what makes us feel better about ourselves?

Much of what I read pitted the self-enhancement perspective against the self-verification perspective. Self-enhancement is when a person focuses on positive central traits over negative ones. Self-verification, on the other hand, refers to preferring accurate information about the self, whether positive or negative. Essentially, it seems that people self-enhance more than they self-verify. For instance, we prefer accurate information about positive traits of ours over negative ones. We are also more likely to disconfirm negative traits that are central to our identity as opposed to those that are more peripheral. As well, we think our faces are more attractive than they actually are. And we would be quicker to pick out our face when morphed with an attractive face than when viewing our original face, or our face morphed with an unattractive face.

These self-enhancements that we make seem to be more related to implicit, unconscious processes (e.g., gut feelings) than more explicit, direct processes. As well, these self-enhancements are related to social comparison and self-perception processes. When people view us as more positive for a certain trait, we view ourselves as positive on the trait. And when we view others that are positive on a trait, we again self-enhance. Connecting themes, this idea goes back to the previous literature that we have read throughout the past couple weeks. Specifically, our self-concept is a story that our unconscious makes up about ourselves, and it may not be a true story. It’s hard to access accurate information about ourselves. Not much of our self can come from introspection and deliberation. Instead, it’s a story and we use that story to feel better about ourselves and to get along better with group members.

Here are some citations for further reading:

Epley, N., & Whitchurch, E. (2008). Mirror, mirror on the wall: Enhancement in self-recognition. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1159-1170.

Kwan, V. S. Y., John, O. P., Kenny, D. A., Bond, M. H., & Robins, R. W. (2004). Reconceptualizing individual differences in self-enhancement bias: An interpersonal approach. Psychological Review, 111, 94-111.

Sedikides, C. (1993). Assessment, enhancement, and verification determinants of the self-evaluation process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 317-338.

Swann, W. B., Jr. (1987). Identity negotiation: Where two roads meet. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1038-1051.

Madon, S., Guyll, M., Buller, A. A., Scherr, Williard, J., & Spoth, R. (2008). The mediation of mothers' self-fulfilling effects on their children's alcohol use: Self-verification, informational conformity, and modeling processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 369-384.

Steven Pinker and the Personal Genome Project

2009-02-16T12:26:00.005-05:00

As many of you might already know, Steven Pinker (famous Havard psychologist) had his genome sequenced and posted on the internet for the Personal Genome Project.

Pinker wrote an essay about it for the New York Times, but I originally found out about it through edge. It's a pretty good essay. He covers genetic determinism, evolutionary theories for personality differences, and twin research. Genes do play out a large part in our behavior:

"Behavioral genetics has repeatedly found that the 'shared environment' — everything that siblings growing up in the same home have in common, including their parents, their neighborhood, their home, their peer group and their school — has less of an influence on the way they turn out than their genes. In many studies, the shared environment has no measurable influence on the adult at all. Siblings reared together end up no more similar than siblings reared apart, and adoptive siblings reared in the same family end up not similar at all. A large chunk of the variation among people in intelligence and personality is not predictable from any obvious feature of the world of their childhood."

But that doesn't mean that genes decide everything. You can make predictions based off genes that are flat out wrong (for instance, Pinker appears to have a gene that gives him an 80% chance of baldness). Much of it is probability, not only do you have to account for genes and the enivironment (i.e., nature vs. nuture), but you also have to account for how your genes interact with each other. Pretty cool stuff though.

Pinker went on the Colbert Report to talk about his genome sequencing experience as well. It's pretty funny, as can be expected. Check it out:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Steven Pinker

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Funny Political News

Christian Bale Parody
Joke of the Day

Self-Concept

2009-02-15T15:23:00.004-05:00

This week’s “self” readings dealt with the idea of “self-concept.” Particularly, these readings covered the issues of how we discover/obtain our self-concept, and whether it is malleable to change. Before starting the readings, I was already suspicious of self-concept. This suspicion arose from the 2nd week readings on self-knowledge. As we learned last time, we aren’t very good at knowing ourselves (e.g., what motivates us, what predictions can we make about our future behavior, etc.). To me, before the readings, the idea of self-concept seemed to come from our self-knowledge. If we aren’t good at knowing ourselves, then how would we be good at discovering a stable self-concept? To tell the truth, I’m still not confident in the idea of self-concept after reading this week’s articles.

That’s not to say that self-concept is a bad thing though. Firstly, the mechanism behind self-concept seems to be a powerful encoding device. Our ability to recall information is greatly enhanced if that information is related to us (i.e., encoded through the self-concept). For instance, if I were presented with a list of words, I would likely remember those words that I felt described myself (e.g., Caucasian, music, happy, knowledge, etc.) than others (e.g., blonde, chair, suit, etc.). As mentioned last week, there is a lot of information out there in the “real world,” and much of it is processed by an adaptive unconscious. Perhaps this encoding ability of the self developed as a way for us to remember and act on important information.

Additionally, parts of the “self” are good at protecting us from the stresses of daily life. When we encounter stressful events, our self-concepts change, and this change has less to do with mood and more to do with the objective experience of the stress. We seem to describe ourselves with more negative attributes under stress than not. Yet components of the self help us cope with these events. Under stress, we rate our negative attributes as less important, we compartmentalize more so that we can focus on the positive, and we view ourselves as more complex. If we view ourselves as more complex, then we might have more positive attributes to focus on and activation of negative attributes won’t be needed.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the self-concept to me is what Goldstein and Cialdini call the “spy-glass self.” According to self-perception theory, we infer our self-attributes by observing the actions we carry out. Well, they go a step further. They posit, and found evidence, that when we identify with another person, we are likely to incorporate his/her attributes into our self-concept after observing this person’s behavior. So after participants are told that they have similar brain wave patterns as another person, and this other person is observed being helpful, then those participants will also be more helpful. I think this is particularly interesting for two reasons. Firstly, it goes back to the idea that self-knowledge is really just a story that we make up for ourselves, of the person that we think we are. But secondly, it reminds me of the Social Cognitive Interface view of self from Kurzban and Aktipis. According to this view, the self is a set of mechanisms that helps us negotiate the social world (e.g., helps us attain cooperation, acceptance, mates, etc.). It would then make sense that we would gain aspects of our self-knowledge by observing other people. It’s a widely known effect that we like things that are similar to us. If I incorporated attributes of another person into my self-concept, then perhaps I’ll increase my chances of acceptance, because I am now more similar to this person. I don’t know, it’s pretty cool though.

Citations:

Goldstein, N. J., & Cialdini, R. B. (2007). The spyglass self: A model of vicarious self-perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 402-417.

Hur, Y-M., McGue, M., & Iacono, W. G. (1998). The structure of self-concept in female pre-adolescent twins: A behavioral genetic approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1069-1077.

Rogers, T. B., Kuipers, N. A., & Kirker, W. S. (1977). Self-reference and the encoding of personal information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 677-688.

Showers, C. J., Abramson, L. Y., & Hogan, M. E. (1998). The dynamic self: How the content and structure of the self-concept change with mood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 478-493.

Turner, R. H. (1976). The real self: From institution to impulse. American Journal of Sociology, 81, 989-1016.

Happy Darwin Day!

2009-02-12T22:12:00.004-05:00

Happy Darwin Day to everyone! The big 200th! Happy birthday Charlie!

Self-Knowledge . . . ?

2009-02-01T13:01:00.003-05:00

This past week’s readings on the self dealt with the topic of “self-knowledge.” Do we have self-knowledge? Are we aware of what motivates or influences us? More specifically, the papers were investigations into how well we can recognize, predict, and explain our own behaviors. And, apparently, the general conclusion is that we are not very good at it at all.

Firstly, we often overestimate our performances in most domains. In general, we think we are better than average, while everyone else is at or lower than average. As well, we overestimate how much group successes are due to our individual effort, whereas we underestimate how much we contribute to group failures. We even overestimate predictions of our own future behaviors, compared to our predictions of the future behavior of random people. For instance, we might think that we are more likely to vote in future elections than a random person that we haven’t met before. Such errors in estimation are often due to cognitive biases that make us rely on self-assessments, while ignoring population base rates. As per the voting example, perhaps we know that we’ve voted before, and through that self-assessment we think that we’ll be more likely to vote again compared to a random person. Yet we ignore the fact that there’s always a significant proportion of the population that doesn’t vote in a given election. So, in other words, we’re very ego-centric! We aren’t very good about thinking of ourselves in statistical terms. Yet, we seem to be more accurate in making judgments of others. Why is this? Is it because we are unconsciously self-enhancing? Are we trying to heighten our self-esteem?

Anthony Greenwald calls these biases, the “totalitarian ego.” The totalitarian ego is comprised of three major cognitive biases that serve to preserve order in “intrapsychic” organization. Beneffectance is the tendency to take credit for success while denying responsibility for failure. Cognitive conservatism is the tendency to preserve existing knowledge structures (e.g., memories, schemata, etc.). And egocentricity is the over-perception of the self as influencer of events beyond realistic control, as well as the over-perception of the self as the targets of other’s actions (e.g., paranoia). With these biases, we can rewrite memories to fit the existing cognitive structure. The totalitarian ego makes us unable to accurately report on stimuli that influences our behavior. We even fail to realize a change in our past attitudes to those of our present attitudes when a change does occur. Take the very simplistic example: Suppose that you used to hate chocolate. And then, I started making you eat chocolate, but only after you took a pill that activated some “pleasure center” of the brain. And perhaps I told you that this pill was just a placebo that would have no perceivable effect on your body. Well, you would probably start liking chocolate. Now if I asked you, “why do you like chocolate?,” you’d probably answer that it tasted good. You wouldn’t realize that you were influenced by the pill. So, then I blatantly tell you what the pill did as you ate chocolate. You would likely still fail to acknowledge that the pill had any effect on your chocolate preference. Even more interestingly, you may not even realize that you used to hate eating chocolate in the first place. Weird.

Part of this may be due to those cognitive biases of the totalitarian ego, and then there’s the concept called the “adaptive unconscious.” As Wilson and Dunn explain, much of the processing that goes on in our minds is unconscious and we are simply unable to access this information into conscious processing. So much goes on around us. There is an infinite amount of information out there, and it would be completely exhausting to take it all in and analyze it. So we perceive the stimuli around us through our adaptive unconscious, to help us get around and make quick split decisions. Yet, just because we perceive it, doesn’t mean we can remember it. Only things that enter conscious awareness can enter into our short-term, and eventually long-term, memory.

So that’s essentially the gist of our readings. We have self-knowledge, but only to the point that we might realize the behaviors we are currently doing. But when we’re asked why we are doing them, how good are we at doing them, if we did them before, and will we do them again, we seem to answer with a story that we make up for ourselves, unconsciously, to fit this idea of who we think we are. Fun stuff.

Here are citations of the articles we read, in case you’re interested:

Epley, N., & Dunning, D. (2006). The mixed blessings of self-knowledge in behavioral prediction: Enhanced discrimination but exacerbated bias. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 641-655.

Greenwald, A. G. (1980). The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history. American Psychologist, 35, 603-618.

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1121-1134.

Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231-259.

Wilson, T.D., & Dunn, E. (2004). Self-knowledge: Its limits, value, and potential for improvement. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 493-518.

New Psychology Blogs! (well, new to me anyways)

2009-01-31T13:25:00.004-05:00

For those interested in psychological science, and perhaps some pop psychology too, you might be interested in knowing that Psychology Today (a popular psychology magazine) is now hosting a myriad of psychology blogs!

I just found out about this recently, from my advisor. There are really a lot of different psych blogs listed in their index, each devoted to a specific topic. It's pretty cool and you should be able to find various blogs that appeal to your interests, whether it be behaviroal economics, autism, self-help, or even sleep. Plus, the blogs are opened to commenting, so you can always put your own 5 cents in.

What's also cool is that there are some really famous (well, in my eyes!) psychologists who find their blogging home there.

So far my favorites are:

The Attractionologists - by social psychologists Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick

Cultural Animal - by social psychologist Roy Baumiester

Lonliness - by social psychologist/neuroscientist John Cacioppo

The Scientific Fundamentalist - by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa

Twofold - by twin researcher/evolutinary psychologist Nancy Segal

and lastly,

Connections - by social psychologist (and my current mentor) C. Nathan DeWall

But really, there's a plethora more of psych blogs to go through over at Psychology Today, so there's a lot of really good ones that I haven't read yet. So, if you're interested, go check them out!

The Social Self

2009-01-25T22:04:00.004-05:00

For our “Self” proseminar this semester, we have to write a “thought paper” each week based off of the assigned readings. Since it’s just a short little paper, it should make for a good source of blogging material. On that note, let’s get started!

For our first week, the readings were more general and focused on defining the self. What is the self? Is it one higher-level construct? Or is it a small set of mechanisms with one function? These were questions that the readings were trying to answer.

Well, after finishing the material I was struck most by discovering just how social the self really is. At first glance, the concept of self seems almost contrary to sociality. The self appears to be opposite of others. But as William James pointed out in his Principles of Psychology, a man’s “me” is partly shaped by the recognition he gets from others, as well as those representations they create. He explains that a person has as many “social selves” as people he or she knows. Predicting the “need to belong” (a topic that I’m very interested in), James presumes that humans have an “innate propensity” to get noticed. He even states that no punishment could be worse for a person, than to live in a society where one goes completely unnoticed. It’s astounding how current research supports ideas like this one, which was predicted back in the late 1800’s. The “need to belong” has been supported by years of research, and interest in the phenomenon continues to fuel new studies (see Baumeister & Leary, 1995). A crucial component of the self seems to come from the different conceptions of ourselves that we take from others, whether these representations are accurate or not.

In a related vain, Leary and Tangney explained that the self has the ability to mediate motives in order to relieve certain underlying pressures. I immediately thought of the sociometer hypothesis. In sociometer theory, self-esteem is really a gauge of our own social standing (i.e., how likely we are to be accepted or rejected). If our interactions with others play a significant role in our own self-concept, then the function of the self-esteem motive as protecting social standing is very plausible. It is even likely that the self initially emerged in humans for this very purpose. As Kurzban and Aktipis explained in their article, the self is much less a high-level construct and, instead, is much more of a set of cognitive mechanisms that evolved with the purpose of helping us function socially. The benefits of social groups are countless for the human species. We don’t have sharp claws or teeth, neither do we have thick coats of fur, etc. Additionally, we take longer to mature than many other species and are completely defenseless as small children. Anything that would have helped us cooperate with each other for food, shelter, defense, etc., would have tremendous selection value. The social cognitive interface, as Kurzban and Aktipis call the self, was designed to help us persuade others in our social world. With the help of the SCI, we are better able to compete for social benefits, such as mates and cooperation from others. It’s even plausible that we would not have developed a sense of self without our complex social lifestyle.

Well, it’s something to think about anyways. Below is the list of assigned readings, in case you are interested. As well, I also have some supplemental citations of interest.

Readings:

Baumeister, R. F. (1987). How the self became a problem: A psychological review of historical research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 163-176.

James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology (Chapter on "The Self"). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Kurzban, R., & Aktipis, C. A. (2007). Modularity and the social mind: Are psychologists too self-ish? Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 131-149.

Leary, M.R. & Tangney, J.P. (2003). The self as an organizing construct in the behavioral and social sciences. In M.R. Leary and J.P. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity, (pp. 3-14). New York: Guilford.

Sedikides, C., & Skowronski, J. J. (1997). The symbolic self in evolutionary context. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 80-102.

Supplemental Material:

Baumeister, R. F. & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529.

Leary, M. R. (2002). The self as a source of relational difficulties. Self and Identity, 1, 137-142.

New Homepage!

2009-01-25T16:48:00.003-05:00

Photo by Sam Brown

For anyone interested, I have a new web page up on University of Kentucky's student web server. I'm mostly using this for professional/academic purposes, but anyone can access it. It's a place where people can find out information about my research interests and such. I also have my Curriculum Vitae available on that page. But if you want to check it out, there's a link to it on the left sidebar under the "My Schools & Departments" tab. Let me know what you think!

more on Zajonc . . .

2008-12-10T13:16:00.003-05:00

Just in case you don't already know, the New York Times did release a nice piece on the life and death of Robert Zajonc. In it you'll see a more extensive coverage of his research, than just the mere exposure effect and social facilitation. It's pretty good, plus there's a lot of interesting facts about Zajonc that I did not know. For instance, here's a little snippet on his life during WWII:

"Robert Boleslaw Zajonc, an only child, was born in Lodz, Poland, on Nov. 23, 1923. In 1939, after the Nazis invaded Poland and headed toward Lodz, he and his parents fled to Warsaw. There, the building in which they were staying was bombed, and Robert’s parents were killed. Robert woke up in a hospital, seriously injured.

He attended an underground university in Warsaw before being dispatched to a labor camp in Germany. He escaped and, recaptured, was sent to a political prison in France. Escaping again, he joined the French Resistance and studied at the University of Paris. Reaching England in 1944, he worked as a translator for American forces in the European campaign."

Wow. If you have time, you should really read the full article. It's good. Zajonc was a remarkable man.

Robert Zajonc (1923 - 2008)

2008-12-05T18:07:00.008-05:00

This is unfortunate news for social psychologists. I just found out that Robert Zajonc, an early contributor to social psychology and simply a superstar of the field, died Wednesday (Dec. 3rd).

Amazingly, I still haven't found an obituary for him. Actually, I was searching for a paper of his and went to the Social Psychology Network profile previously linked, and that's how I found out. Not something that I was expecting.

Robert Zajonc was (and still is) an important figure in the field of social psychology. He held positions at the University of Michigan as the director to both, the Institute for Social Research and the Research Center for Group Dynamics. He later joined Stanford University, eventually becoming Professor Emeritus of Psychology.

He is known for his research in a myriad of areas, but what I perhaps know best is his work on the mere exposure effect (the tendency to like something more after being repeatedly exposed to it). In 1968, Zajonc conducted 3 studies showing that the more people were exposed to stimuli, such as Turkish words, Chinese characters and yearbook photographs, the more they liked them. This effect even occurs in animals, like chickens (Zajonc et al., 1973).

Another area that Zajonc was an early contributor to was social facilitation theory. At the time (1960's), research was showing that people performed better on certain tasks if they were in the presence of others. Yet, at the same time, research also showed that people performed worse on tasks if in the presence of others (known as social loafing). Zajonc offered an explanation for these seemingly contradictory findings, proposing a "dominant response" theory of social facilitation. He explained that being in the presence of others causes physiological arousal. For instance, imagine giving a lecture in front of 100 people. You'll probably breathe faster, have a faster heart beat, sweat, etc. Zajonc believed that this arousal causes people to react in situations with their most dominant response. In other words, when we are in the presence of others, we'll feel heightened arousal, and this arousal will provoke behaviors that we most commonly elicit or display in the given situation. Take the following example, say you usually choose to drink coke over sweet tea, even though sometimes you do in fact enjoy a glass of tea. Then choosing coke is your dominant response. So when others are present, you will be even more likely to choose coke over sweet tea.

Zajonc's theory helps explain why the presence of others can help or hinder your performance on certain tasks. With tasks that seem simple or familiar, your dominant response is to perform well. On the other hand, with unfamiliar or difficult tasks your dominant response is to perform more poorly. So when you are around people while carrying out familiar tasks, you'll perform even better. And when you are performing on more complex tasks, you'll make more mistakes when others are watching you. The dominant response effect is so robust that it even occurs in cockroaches! Zajonc and his colleagues (1969) found that cockroaches completed simple mazes quicker when they performed with four other cockroaches present than when alone. Yet they were slower on difficult mazes when other cockroaches were present, rather than alone. Pretty cool eh?

Well, to sum up, this is just a sampling of the great ideas that Robert Zajonc contributed to the field. Social psychology definitely suffered a loss this week.

If you are interested, below are some citations that cover the mere exposure effect and social facilitation . . . enjoy!

Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Monograph Supplement, 9, 1 - 27.

Zajonc, R. B., Reimer, D. J., & Hausser, D. (1973). Imprinting and the development of object preference in chicks by mere exposure. Journal of Comparative Physiological Psychology, 83, 434 - 440.

Zajonc, R.B., Heingartner, A., & Herman, E.M. (1969). Social enhancement and impairment of performance in the cockroach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13, 83-92.

New Journal in Evolutionary Neuroscience

2008-12-04T00:47:00.005-05:00

Hello there ladies and gents. It appears that there is a new online journal out there. It's called, Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience. It's a sub-genre of the more general Frontiers of Neuroscience.

There's yet to be an article published in the new journal, but it looks like some really cool stuff will be represented. Here's the mission statement of FEN:

"Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience is a first-tier electronic journal devoted to understanding the evolution of neural processes, neuroanatomical structure, neural structure - function relationships, and cognition and behavior. Brains regulate behavior and as such have been designed by evolution to solve specific adaptive problems faced by organisms during evolutionary history. Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience is dedicated to publishing papers that lead the field in discovering mechanisms that have undergone selection pressures resulting in evolution (divergent or convergent) of structure or function that leads to a greater understanding of 1) the neural processes of animals and humans; 2) neuropsychiatric disease states and the paths in which normal neural processes have gone off course; 3) the genetics underlying variations across species in neurocomputational hardware and behavior; and 4) evolutionary underpinnings that gave rise to advanced social and cognitive capacities. Evolutionary neuroscience is the discipline poised to answer fundamental questions about the nature of the nervous system such as the degree to which behavioral, cognitive, and neural modularity exists (e.g., domain specificity versus domain general processing); heritability and variations (species, regional, cultural, ethnic, and individual) in intellectual, social, and personality characteristics; make predictions about ancestral neural states (paleoneurology); and inform behavior and clinical modification programs from an evolutionary perspective. The journal welcomes submissions that tackle questions from a broad spectrum of disciplines and use myriad methodologies including, but not limited to: comparative genetics and genomics; investigations of allelic variations of behavior, cognition, and neural structure and function; comparative investigations of animal and human behavior that address the underlying cognitive and neural architecture; and functional neuroimaging studies that have been guided by an evolutionary framework."

I'm excited to see how this journal will turn out.

shame on me . . .

2008-11-24T00:51:00.006-05:00

Wow, so I have not kept up with my blog lately. I really can't believe that it's November already though. It's just going by too fast!

Well, my wife and I are adjusting to life here in Kentucky very nicely. We really like it here, so that's always good. Yet I feel about 10 times more busy here than I was at William & Mary. I suppose that is to be expected for a doctoral program.

On another note, I added some new links to my blog. You should check them out. One leads to the new blog of my office mate, called "medicine for melancholy." Another is the awesome flickr stream of my friend Chris. And then I even put my uncle's new accounting website on here (not necessarily psychology related, but what the hey, you might find something useful on there).

Anyways, I shall not let this slothful blogging behavior occur again. Though I know my time for extra-curricular activities has diminished. I will make sure that I keep a minimum of 2 posts a month, but my goal will be 2 posts a week . . . err, um, starting after Thanksgiving, haha. Well, enjoy those links and have a great Thanksgiving!

"i am statistically significant! p < .0001"

2008-07-31T17:50:00.003-05:00

How cool!

Are you proud of your geekiness? Do you revel in your knowledge of statistics? Or maybe you are just a researcher with that extra sass . . . well maybe these t-shirts are for you! The company is called Sassy Statistics, and the shirts are hilarious. I think I will have to buy a couple. I especially like the "don't be mean," and the "i am statistically significant" shirts.

go check it out, even if just out of curiousity, haha.

Psychology Survey: Personality, Mental States, and Relationship Processes-- Help needed!

2008-07-10T02:20:00.005-05:00

A couple of researchers are conducting an on-line study and need your help! The study is about personality and relationships, and they need more volunteers to get a nationally representative sample. Here is the relevant information:

"We are two psychologists doing an internet survey and we would appreciate if you could help us by filling it out. The survey is about your personality, your thoughts, and your relationships. It will take about 25 minutes to complete. Participation is completely voluntary and you can stop at anytime. As well, your participation is anonymous and you will never be asked to provide your name. Please note that you must be over 18 to participate in this survey.

If you would like to participate, please go to the following link.

Thank you for your help!

Dr. C. Nathan DeWall
Department of Psychology
University of Kentucky

Dr. Brad J. Bushman
Institute for Social Research
University of Michigan"

So if the topic interests you, and you have the time to take it, then visit the site. You'll be doing your part in advancing scientific knowledge about social processes, plus taking surveys is fun! . . . right? Well, anyways, I know that the researchers will appreciate it very much!

No! Not Carlin!

2008-06-23T13:36:00.005-05:00

This isn't directly related to psychological science in any way, but still worth note.

As many people know by now, George Carlin died yesterday. This is perhaps the saddest news I have heard in a right good while. He was undeniably one of my heroes growing up and still is today. I love his comedy and have always been inspired by his brutal assault on irrationality. I regret that I never got to see him live.

Identical Twins Aren't Identical?

2008-05-28T05:30:00.005-05:00

Now here's an interesting topic; one that I have wanted to write a post about and now have the lovely time to do it!

For those who don't already know, a report was published in the February issue of
the American Journal of Human Genetics (AJHG) concerning genetic differences between identical (i.e. monozygotic - arriving from one fertilized egg) twins. Weird. Identical twins are supposed to be identical through and through, right? Isn't that why they're called identical? Well, maybe not. I suppose that is pushing it a little.

Anyway, Carl Bruder, a geneticist from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and colleagues compared the genomes of 19 sets of adult identical twins. What they found was that these people differed subtly from their twin in what's called, copy number variation (CNV) of their genes.

As Wikipedia states, CNV's refer to:

"differences in the number of copies of a particular gene present in the genome of an individual . . . Some people have deletions of some genes on only one chromosome while other people have multiple copies of some genes."

People typically have two copies of each gene within their genome, because they inherit one copy from each parent. Yet at various genome sites copy number variation occurs. One would expect that monzygotic twins would resemble each other in the amount of CNV's that occur in their genomes. Since the "identical" twins from the above study differed in genetic copy number variants, they aren't 100 % identical!

It's all very interesting. And I think such findings may trigger important implications to consider for further psychological research. In fact, I learned about this study through class discussion in a personality research class and am frankly surprised that it hasn't received as much attention as I thought it would through the various media outlets.

What's one of the major issues most everyone will learn about in any psychology course? Well how about the battle between nature and nurture? Everything's a nature/nurture problem. And the common way to decide the influence of nature on a psychological attribute is to conduct a twin study. The logic behind a twin study is that identical twins should be most related to each other, as compared to dizygotic twins, non-twin siblings and strangers. Therefore differences between monozygotic twins on, say, a personality variable (and we do occasionally find these types of differences) aught to be attributed to environmental influences. But if identical twins are not really genetically identical, then how do we know that a personality difference isn't genetic? Now the AJHG report does not completely destroy the picture created by twin study results. Monozygotic twins are still highly similar; again, the differences in CNV's are subtle. Yet the paper does add the implication that an observed personality difference cannot automatically be attributed to the environment.

Oh well, if you want to read more about it, there is a Scientific American article about it, as well you can visit the AJHG site are read the original article. Go check it out! Very cool stuff!

Happy Birthday to me!

2008-05-20T15:58:00.002-05:00

picture by explodingdog

Graduation and other stuff . . .

2008-05-15T00:43:00.006-05:00

Well graduation was this past Sunday for the College of William & Mary. As you can see, I decided to attend, and I brought my wife along. It was nice and short. And though there was some celebration, it ain't over yet! All my class requirements are completed, but there's still that little thing we call a thesis that needs to be defended. I have until July 18th to defend my thesis, which is plenty of time so I don't expect to run into any problems. But until then I suppose I can't officially consider myself an MA. My wife on the other hand has completed everything, including her thesis, and her graduation from VCU is this Saturday. Fun stuff.

So now we basically have about two months before we move to Lexington, KY and start our doctoral programs at the University of Kentucky. This is an exciting time for us. Of course, we don't have much to do right now. I do have thesis work to complete, as well I'm still working on a few other side research projects. Yet I still feel that I have a lot of free time on my hands. Part of this free time I plan to spend writing (both blog and academic writing). As well, I have started a writing schedule (under the advice of my future grad advisor) and I hope to use these two months to get used to scheduled writing. Hopefully then I will break my binge writing habits, haha.

As for the blog, I'm making myself the goal of at least three posts a week, though it'll be great if I can get to posting daliy. I let myself slack too much this past semester, so I need to make up for it. Anyways, more on that later! Congratulations to all my friends and colleagues who are now fellow graduates! Yea!

On another note, here's a collection of links to keep you busy. Each has to do with psychological science in some way or another:

* Firstly, here's a newly launched website called Personality and Social Psychology Comments. As you can guess from the title, it's an online database of comments on published papers in the areas of personality and social psychology. Here's a brief description of PSPC:

"In order to advance as a scientific field, we argue that personality and social psychology should be characterized by cumulative knowledge as well as a constant questioning and discussion about what has been previously established. To incorporate such an ideal, previous data and unpublished research should be far more accessible than it is today.

We believe that there is a great deal of well-conducted research such as replications, extensions of previous studies, and null findings that never reach the stage of publication. Thus, valuable information never gets accessible to the scientific community.
Most of all, however, we believe that scientific enterprise should be open and critical and there should be a space to express criticism and other viewpoints. PSPC is meant to provide a forum for these issues and hopefully function as a resource for researchers conducting reviews and meta-analyses as well."

PSPC seems like it could be a pretty useful tool, but no one has bothered to submit any comments yet. I'm not sure whether it's because the word just hasn't gotten out yet or what. But if it starts to garner some popularity, I imagine it's usefulness will become more apparent . . . especially those comments focusing on null findings.

* The second item concerns a society called, Psychologists for Social Responsibility. This is the first time that I have heard about them, though the group was founded 25 years ago. I found out about them through a social psychology listserv. It's basically a group that uses psychological knowledge to promote peace and social justice. I took a gander at their website. I suppose that if you are into peace or political psychology, this might be an interesting group to look at/consider.

* Finally, my last item concerns a new essay that Steven Pinker has just written in the New Republic. It concerns the concept of dignity, its uselessness in terms of bioethics, and how it's being used to stall the progress of basic scientific and medical research. It's a good essay, brief and to the point. Go check it out!

Roll up to the Magical Memory Tour?

2008-05-14T00:14:00.004-05:00

Now here's something cool that I read about in the April edition of Observer. Psychologists from the Leeds Memory Group, at the University of Leeds, are conducting an online survey that aims to create the "biggest database of 'autobiographical memories' ever attempted."

How are they doing this? Interestingly, they are asking people to blog about their memories of the Beatles! And anyone who has a memory related to the Beatles can participate. You can find their online study here at the Magical Memory Tour.

On their website, you can blog about your own memories of the Beatles, as well as check out the memories of other people. You can even find out which albums or songs evoke the most positive or negative memories. You can even check out the top ten most viewed Beatles associations (so far, number one is John Lennon - In Memoriam).

The researchers hope to explore "how experiences from our lives might be associated with music, personality, and the public perception of the Beatles." Seems like a pretty cool project to me! Check it out!

it's April already?

2008-04-13T00:03:00.007-05:00

Wow, so I suppose it is April already! I can't believe it. This semester has gone by faster than I imagined or was prepared for. And, unfortunately, more than a whole month has past since I updated my blog with even a single new post! What am I to do? Of course I have the usual excuses . . . with work and travel, but I don't want to lie . . . facebook's scrabulous game has taken WAY too much of my time! It's addictive!

Well not much has happened in the past month, but I guess I can give you a recap of how my March went anyway. Let's see, I finished data collection for my thesis, which is nice. But since my study rests on behavioral interactions that were recorded with the use of a hidden camera, I won't be able to analyze any data until my tapes are all coded. This is very aggravating, considering that I am just itching to see my results. Not to worry, I finished training several students who are assisting me with this task. They are now in the process of coding the tapes for me as we speak (about 8 1/2 full 6 hour tapes). So the end is in sight, though I'm reluctant to admit it.

On another note of importance, I gave a talk at the College of William & Mary's 7th Annual Graduate Research Symposium. That was pretty good. It went well, although my talk was the first one in the morning. I wasn't too happy about that, haha, but oh well . . . what can one do? I basically talked about my thesis as a work in progress, since I had no data to present. But everyone seemed to "dig it" (that's scientific jargon for "liked it" ha), and I received really good questions and comments. By the by, for readers who don't already know, my project is concerned with how social exclusion affects future affiliative behaviors. If you're interested, you can read my abstract about it, as well as the abstracts of other projects in the symposium program.

Besides my own thesis research, I've recently started two new projects, which I might have already written about (I don't remember). One concerns work for Eastern Virginia Medical School that I'm helping out on, and the other is a side project that I started with my friend and colleague, John Terrizzi, and William & Mary's very own evolutionary psychologist, Lee Kirkpatrick. The EVMS study is concerned with stopping college-aged students from driving while under the influence of alcohol, while the other study concerns disgust sensitivity and prejudicial attitudes. Both of the projects are going well, but we are still in the early stages of data collection. I hope to write more about these later! Though, for some reason I always feel reluctant to blog about my own research, haha. I need to get over that.

Lastly, I have some really good news to report. My wife and I have both been accepted into the University of Kentucky! We are very excited, because this school was the best fit for each of us, and we actually both got in together! Apparently we beat the odds, because everyone kept telling us how hard it was going to be to get into the same place. Of course, my advisor told me not to worry, until I had something to worry about (i.e. don't worry about getting into different places until you find out you got into different places). So I took his advice and didn't worry . . . well I didn't worry a lot I suppose. I guess the hard work is starting to pay off for us, haha. So, after defending our theses we'll be completing our masters programs here in Virginia and then move up to Lexington, Kentucky. There I'll continue my study of social exclusion in the lab of C. Nathan DeWall, while earning a Ph.D. in experimental psychology (concentrating in social). This is a great opportunity for me, because Nathan is an up-and-coming star social psychologist, and his research interests match mine perfectly. Plus I'll be one of his first Ph.D. students. And then there's my wife, who will be studying 19th & 20th century British literature, feminist literary criticism and women's studies, while earning her Ph.D. in English. I'm not sure who she plans to study with, although I know Ellen Rosenman fits her interests perfectly.

Well, that's pretty much how my March went. Now I'm waiting for classes to end, especially the two classes for which I TA. I'm also eager to finish all the projects that I'm working on and the defense of my thesis. It's going to be May before I know it!

The Implicit Association Test

2008-02-21T22:47:00.008-05:00

The Edge website recently put up a talk with Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald, concerning the Implicit Association Test, aka IAT. In the interview they basically cover why and how the IAT was created, and the importance of the test.

Very quickly, the IAT is a social psychological research tool used to help investigators explore the various unconscious preferences and attitudes that affect our behavior. Specifically, it measures how strongly one automatically associates a concept or entity with an attribute as compared to how one associates another concept or entity with the very same attribute. So, in other words, would you be quicker to associate a flower (concept 1) with pleasantness (attribute) and an insect (concept 2) with unpleasantness (attribute) than the other way around? If so, then you, purportedly, have a stronger preference for flowers than insects.

Because the test works on split-second associations, you have no time to think about them. This means, ostensibly, that these attitudes are unconscious and inaccessible to one’s self-awareness, otherwise known as implicit associations. As well, because these attitudes are unconscious, they affect aspects of our behavior without us even realizing it, which gives way to enormous implications they have on social cognition and behavior. Being able to understand unconscious attitudes will give us great insight into all kinds of social issues concerning stereotypes, prejudices and biases. And because the IAT is able to quickly measure unconscious attitudes, it is a very useful tool for studying these social issues. Let’s face it . . . the IAT is hot right now, haha. It seems like everyone wants to do an IAT study. But the three main IAT researchers are Mahzarin Banaji, Anthony Greenwald (featured in the Edge interview) and Brian Nosek from the University of Virginia.

Yet the IAT is not without its detractors. In fact, there was a decent debate between the IAT camp and Hart Blanton and James Jaccard in 2006, which was published in the American Psychologist. Blanton and Jaccard came up with some very worthy criticisms of the IAT. Firstly, they state that the metric the test is measured on is arbitrary for measuring a psychological dimension, such as prejudice. We don’t really know what an IAT score means. An example they give deals with self-esteem. Imagine that you scored an 8 on a self-esteem scale. And scores can range from 0 to 10. A score of 8 is meaningless in diagnosing one’s level of self-esteem. We would have to know how that score of 8 relates to behaviors associated with self-esteem. In the same way, to gauge our implicit attitudes we have to link our IAT scores to observable behaviors relevant to automatic preferences, and this has not yet been done with IAT scores.

Well, anyways, if you are interested in implicit social cognition or bias, stereotypes and prejudice, then definitely check out the Banaji/Greenwald interview and, as well, I’ll list some citations for further reading you might enjoy. Lastly, the Edge website has a link to an IAT on preferences for the presidential candidates. So perhaps you’ll find that you hold an implicit preference for a candidate that differs from the candidate that you consciously prefer, if you decide to take it that is.

For further reading:

Greenwald, A., McGhee, D. & Schwartz, J. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(6), 1464 – 1480.

Blanton, H. & Jaccard, J. (2006). Arbitrary metrics in psychology. American Psychologist, 61(1),
27 – 41.

As well, the same issue of American Psychologist (vol 61 num 1) contains a Greenwald reply and Blanton counter-reply.

Go check them out and enjoy!

another historical day for psychologists

2008-02-18T00:32:00.004-05:00

So how's it going sports fans?

It seems that I have been neglecting my blog a little bit lately. I know, I know . . . it seems like I get into a good rhythm for a couple days, and then BOOM!, I'll hit a dry spell and won't write anything new for weeks. Oh, the time graduate study takes from me. Well, I do have a decent excuse . . . I've been doing a lot of traveling. Firstly, I spent some time in Albuquerque, NM for the 9th annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. And secondly, I'm interviewing for Ph.D. programs. Fun stuff. Interestingly, before February, I have never flown on a plane before (I guess a live a sheltered life, ha). Yet I flew on 10 different flights in the past week and a half!

Well, besides leaving me tired, my traveling has left me with several posts that I plan to write up soon. The current post, on the other hand, is about an event that occurred on February 17th, 1890. Give up? It's the birth date of R. A. Fisher!

You might be asking yourself, who is R. A. Fisher and why is he important? I'll tell you. Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher was a British statistician and evolutionary geneticist, and one of the founders of the modern evolutionary synthesis. He basically showed quantitatively that "inherited traits were consistent with Mendelian principles." As well, he built the foundation for modern statistical theory and population genetics. To say the least, he was a bright guy.

A lot of Fisher's work concerned the variation of inherited traits among plants, so why is he important to psychologists? Well, like I stated before, he practically fathered modern statistical theory. He created advanced techniques that we still use today and wrote influential books on research design and analysis, including his first book, Statistical Methods for Research Workers (of which I actually found a used early edition and got it for free!). Most importantly, especially for social psychologists, he invented the statistical technique referred to as "analysis of variance," or simply, "ANOVA."

To put it simply, ANOVA is a procedure that deals with the differences between groups (specifically, two or more groups), rather than just describe the relationship between variables. This makes it a considerable advancement from the statistical technique of correlation. In correlational research, you can't really make statements about cause and effect. Whereas, in experimental research using ANOVA's, you are given more insight to do so, which is why it has become the most popular (and often abused) statistical procedure in psychology . . . especially social psychology! ANOVA gives us it's extra insight by examining the ratio of the observed variability BETWEEN groups (what we can account for) and the observed variability WITHIN each group (uniqueness that we can't account for). Or in even simpler terms that my thesis adviser, John Nezlek, would say, an ANOVA is the ratio of "what we know" over "what we don't know."

Here's an example to make it a little easier to understand:

Let's say that I have a drug and I think it makes people more aggressive. So I draw two random samples of people and I give one sample a dose of the drug, while the other sample gets a placebo (sugar pill). Then I measure how aggressively (perhaps how many times each person physically harms another) each person in each sample acts. To say that my drug causes aggression, one would have to say that the variation in aggressive behavior between the two groups (drug group and placebo group) is much larger than the variation within each group (do all placebo participants act similar? do all drug participants act similar?). So if the the drug group does act more aggressively than the placebo group, and each member of the drug groups acts similarly aggressive, then it's likely that my drug causes aggression.

Well, that's my short and simple description of Analysis of Variance. I know that my meager post does not give Fisher's brilliance the full justice that it deserves, but I try. So, even though I'm just a little late (my time says 3:18 am on Feb. 18th) . . . HAPPY BIRTHDAY Ronald Fisher!

Happy Darwin Day!

2008-02-12T23:31:00.003-05:00

Almost too late! Happy Birthday Charles Darwin!

And here's a funny comic I found to go with the special occasion:

a new blog about . . .

2008-01-24T00:02:00.000-05:00

Are you interested in issues of cause and effect? Do you use quasi-experimental methodology or correlational analyses for your own research? If so, I might just have the blog for you!

It's called . . . what else . . . Alan & Bo's Correlation and Causality Blog. It's brand spanking new too, with two posts so far. It looks pretty interesting though. I just found out about it yesterday through a social psychology listserv. Here's a little blurb describing the purpose of the blog:

"On this blog, we seek to raise and discuss various issues pertaining to correlation and causality, much like we did during our frequent conversations at Texas Tech. In fields that study human behavior in “real world” settings, many potentially interesting phenomena are off-limits to the traditional experimental desgin that would permit causal inferences, for practical and ethical reasons.

Does the birth of a child increase or decrease couples’ marital/relationship satisfaction? Does growing up with an alcohol-abusing parent damage children’s development of social skills? How does experiencing a natural disaster affect residents’ mental and physical health?

For none of these questions could researchers legitimately assign individuals (or couples) at random to either receive or not receive the presumed causal stimulus. Much of our discussion, therefore, will be aimed at formulating ideas for how to make as strong a causal inference as possible, for a given research question.

By raising issues of how researchers might approach a given research question from the standpoint of internal validity, we hope to fulfill a “seeding” process, where our initial commentaries will be generative of further discussion and suggestions. We are thus permitting (and encouraging!) comments on this blog, for this purpose. We hope to learn as much (or more) from you, as you might learn from us."

Seems pretty unique, a blog specifically devoted to the logic of causality. I'm looking forward to their future posts. Well, anyways, go check it out!

it's all in the name!

2008-01-21T18:05:00.000-05:00

So I was reading through the current issue of Dialogue, the official newsletter of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and I found some very interesting trivia facts. That is, the most common names among contemporary social psychologists.

They basically compiled a list of 1,179 different first and last names from individuals who were current members of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. And can you guess what the 2nd most common name was among male social psychologists? If you guessed 'Richard,' then you are correct! Ha! So maybe I was born to become a social psychologist, or maybe my parents were trying to condition me from the very start, haha. Of course, what would it mean if I didn't make it through grad school? I guess I'd have to change my name to 'George' or something.

Okay, so setting the kidding aside, if you are interested in the top name for male social psychologists, it's: John. I guess I wasn't too surprised on that one. The top two names for females in social psychology were: 1. Linda and 2. Ann(e). So there's some random social psychology trivia to spike up your life! Your welcome!

On another note, my blog is officially 1 year old! Yea! I actually missed like a lake's true blogaversary by a couple days. I was thinking that my first post was on the 21st of last January, but it was actually on the 12th. Doh! Oh well, happy late blogaversary to me!

To Understand Evil . . . Through Science

2008-01-09T13:20:00.001-05:00

Just found out about this, so I thought that I'd let the readers know.

For anyone who has the National Geographic Channel, tonight's Explorer will be doing a special on the Science of Evil:

"Explorer journeys inside one of the most fascinating places of all - the human mind - to better understand the Science of Evil. Using cutting-edge functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques, scientists attempt to isolate the mechanics of moral judgment by mapping patterns in neurological processes. Could neuron activity in the brain really give rise to good or evil? Then, gain insight into the minds of some of the worlds cruelest people."

I'm pretty sure that the show will cover some of Phil Zimbardo's work as well, like the Stanford Prison Experiment. It looks pretty interesting though, and it starts at 8pm. I think that it's also playing on Saturday around 7pm. I'd check it out myself, if I had the channel . . . maybe I'll get a friend to tape it for me. Oh, and if you have Adobe's flash player, you can check out a video preview from the show . . . here. Enjoy!

First post of 2008!

2008-01-08T18:23:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know, I know. I am a tad bit late, but Happy New Year anyways . . . ha! I can't believe that it's 2008 already. The time does fly I suppose. Well, anyway, I hope everyone's Christmas and New Year's get-togethers were fun and eventful . . . or peaceful and relaxing.

So, has anyone had time to check out Edge's annual question for the "intellectual elite"?

As I'm sure many readers know, John Brockman issues a question every year to the world's leading thinkers and publishes the responses on the Edge website. And then usually a collection of the best responses get published in paperback format. You may recall seeing the book on last year's question, "What Are You Optimistic About?," at your local bookstore.

Well, this year's question is:

"WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?"

Edge has received responses from 165 contributors, all leading thinkers within the Sciences and Humanities, particularly the evolutionary and cognitive sciences. I haven't had a chance to read through all of them, but there are a few that I have looked over. Steven Pinker has a short essay about whether humans have stopped evolving or not. The cognitive scientist, Stanislas Deheane, has an interesting essay about whether we will soon have a mathematical "theory of consciousness." And there are lots and lots of others! Go ahead and check them out!

And if you are interested in answers to past Edge questions, go check out the World Question Center.

Winter Break!

2007-12-19T23:29:00.000-05:00

Wow, so it's been over a month since I have written my last post. What can I say? I've been busy and time has gone by way too fast, haha. After Thanksgiving, I was pretty much concerned with completing graduate school applications, paper writing, collecting thesis data and studying/taking finals. Needless to say, it's been an interesting couple of weeks.

Well, the bulk of my work is done . . . for the time being. Finals are over with and my own students, from the social methods class that I TA for, finished their presentations last week. Most of my grad applications have been sent off, I just have three more to complete. And I'm done collecting thesis data for the semester, mostly because students are leaving campus. I'll be starting my project back up once everyone returns to campus. So, essentially, I'm free until about January 16th. Yea Winter Break! Nearly a month of relaxation . . . haha . . . yeah, right. The wifey and I don't really have big plans for the break, except seeing family I suppose. We both have thesis work to do. And I have a pile of "recreational" reading that I want to get through by the end of break. We'll see. The first order of business is to add more posts to this blog. I feel so bad about abandoning it for so long. Now that I have a decent amount of time to myself, I expect to be posting regularly. Perhaps, if I can get some preliminary analyses done, I can write about my master's thesis work. Well, until then, that's all for now! I'm going to start Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent.

New social psychology magazine!

2007-11-16T01:06:00.000-05:00

Sweet! I have just recently found out about this fairly new on-line magazine called, The Inquisitive Mind , or more simply, In-Mind. What's so cool about In-Mind? Well, I'll tell you!

In-Mind is a free, quarterly on-line magazine about, what else, social psychology! It's all about making social psychology more accessible to the public. The articles are written by real psychologists, and concern current research trends within the field. As well, readers don't really have to worry much about convoluted, scientific jargon. Instead, the articles are fairly easy to read and, at the same time, quite stimulating. Additionally, readers can debate with an article's author! Here's how they describe themselves:

"Welcome to the website of the Inquisitive Mind. The Inquisitive Mind, or In-Mind, is a young and exciting on-line quarterly magazine for social psychology. The magazine’s purpose is designed to interact with everyone that is interested in everyday human concerns and to inform you on the hot trends in scientific social psychological research. Now, science has its own language and you might not feel like having the time to keep up-to-date. We will attempt to bridge the existing gap by relating important social psychological research to issues that catch your mind . . .

. . . So, what all does In-Mind offer? First, you can read on the aforementioned topics by reading our articles. In order to read the full articles, you will have to register. This is free, and you may do so through the controls on the left. After you have registered, you may continue with the button 'articles' to read full articles (introductions of articles are available without registration). You can then discuss, debate, and argue with the authors and with other members. Moreover, if you find other members with common interests, you may connect with them directly through our In-Mind Community; every member has the opportunity to create a profile. Also, as a member you can automatically create your own blog. Use this blog to wander and wonder in the interesting world of social psychology . . ."

It looks really cool to me. I'm pretty excited about it, and, as you can see, I've added it to my "sites that I like" sidebar.

They even have some pretty appealing links and videos about social psychology. For instance, I found an interesting lecture given by Dr. Mahzarin Banaji on In-Mind. Dr. Banaji is a social psychologist from Harvard University who basically studies how our unconscious biases affect our social perceptions and attitudes. You can check out the video here:

Go see the website! I know you'll enjoy it!

Our mental number line?

2007-10-16T14:06:00.000-05:00

Now here’s a post that I’ve been meaning to write for a while. I finally found some time (or motivation) to get it done I guess :)

Firstly, I should state that my research interests mostly lie within the field of social psychology (specifically affiliation and social rejection). But I also have some general interests in topics across a variety of other psychology sub-fields (as you can probably tell, I have a rather large interest in evolutionary psychology, which to me is more of a way of thinking about psychology than a sub-field). Well, this is a post about a general interest of mine, and that is the concept of number. Specifically, this post is going to be about human and animal abilities to order and represent numbers.

Jessica Cantlon and Elizabeth Brannon (2006) are researchers from Duke (you can find Brannon’s website here) who worked on two experiments investigating: 1) the ability of two rhesus macaques to apply a learned ordinal numerical rule, and 2) compared the performance of these same monkeys with that of humans on ordering pairs of numbers. In the first experiment, the authors trained the rhesus macaques to present in ascending order all possible pairings of stimuli, of which each represented a numerical value between 1 and 9. The stimuli consisted of a background with 1 through 9 square shapes in various colors and sizes, kind of like the blue boxes in the photo below:

Once the ordinal rule was learned, the macaques were then presented with stimuli that represented novel numerical values (10, 15, 20 and 30). Of the experimental sessions, there were three types of pairings. The first type were familiar-familiar pairs where each stimulus represented a value between 1 and 9. The second type were familiar-novel pairs, in which one stimulus represented a value among 10, 15, 20 or 30 and the other stimulus represented a value between 1 and 9. And lastly, the third type of pairing was novel-novel. This is where both stimuli represented a value among 10, 15, 20 and 30. Once presented with the pairings, the macaques were expected to use the ordinal rule and order the values from smallest to largest, which is what the authors found!

The monkeys ordered these values in the same direction that they originally learned to order the values between 1 and 9. The findings are particularly interesting considering that the authors used a numerical value up to 30 and previous studies have only presented monkeys with values of up to 10. So not only does this first experiment show that rhesus macaques can compare and apply ordinal rules to unfamiliar values, but these monkeys can also represent and compare values of at least 30 with the possibility of no upper limit!

The second experiment was conducted to compare the performance of these monkeys with human participants and specifically to test how much the number comparisons are controlled by Weber’s law in each species (Weber’s law essentially states that the ability to discriminate between two values depends on the ratio between the two and not the actual absolute values. For instance, it is easier to discriminate between the values of 1 and 9 than it is to discriminate between the values of 28 and 29).

The same macaques and 11 university students were instructed to pick the smallest value presented out of pairings of the same stimuli. This time each stimulus represented a numerical value between 2 and 30. The human participants were instructed not to count, but to respond as quickly as possible once the stimuli appeared. The investigators observed that the monkeys and the human participants performed similarly in accuracy. Indeed, the difference between monkeys and humans in accuracy was smaller than the difference between the most and least accurate humans! The monkeys did perform significantly faster than the humans though. This could be attributed to the training, but remains unclear. However, the data from both the human and monkey groups did conform to the pattern predicted by Weber’s Law. Accuracy decreased and reaction time increased as the ratio between the small and large values increased. Whenever the values increased and the distance between them decreased, it took both humans and monkeys more time to order them.

Now, I thought that this was an intriguing article when I first read it last year. It seems to support the supposition that humans and animals use a similar system for representing and ordering numbers. We seem to have a mental number line in common. Perhaps we evolved an underlying mechanism for non-verbal number representation from a common primate ancestor? Well, anyways, I thought the article was pretty cool and just wanted to share it, haha.

Citation:

Cantlon, J., & Brannon, E. (2006). Shared system for ordering small and large numbers in monkeys and humans.

Psychological Science, 17(5), 401 – 406.

Self-replicating robots . . . and more

2007-10-11T13:18:00.000-05:00

So I was just browsing around for some cool videos and what not, and guess what I found? If you guessed a short talk given by Hod Lipson, then you'd be correct!

As you might recall, I wrote about Lispon back in June concerning his plenary address at HBES 2007. As I wrote before, he was my favorite speaker over the course of the conference. His topic was evolutionary robotics, which is basically about creating robots that:

"decide for themselves how they want to walk; robots that develop a sense of what they look like; even robots that can, through trial and error, construct other robots just like themselves"

It is really a very interesting area that may even help us understand how the human brain constructs self-models. Is it similar to how these robots develop a sense of themselves?

Well, anyways, Lispon gave a brief version of the same address, with the same video clips, as a TED Talk on October 11, 2007. If you don't feel like visiting the website, I have posted the video below. It's definitely really cool and worth the watch:

Celebrating the Cognitive Revolution

2007-09-27T22:28:00.000-05:00

Yeah, so I was just browsing around Steven Pinker's website, and noticed that he had a link to some interesting video.

Basically, the Mind/Brain/Behavior Interfaculty Initiative at Harvard held a discussion celebrating the beginning of the cognitive revolution, and which inaugurated a new, permanent exhibit in William James Hall on the history behind the revolution. The talk (discussion) is titled: "The Cognitive Revolution at Fifty Plus or Minus One." The discussion includes a panel of none other than: George Miller, Noam Chomsky, Susan Carey and Jerome Bruner. The discussion is also introduced and moderated by Pinker himself. (all are pictured above: Pinker, Carey, Miller, Chomsky and Bruner) Oh . . . and this took place around April! (How did I miss this?)

The talk is very awesome! The panel discussion is broken into 4 videos and I definitely recommend viewing them all! Well, to anyone who's interested in the History of Science/Psychology/Cognitive Science anyways. Of course, it is pretty "Harvard-centric," as I think Pinker himself said, but the panel does mention some other important players, such as Piaget and Edward Tolman. It's really cool just to hear about how a department absorbed in radical behaviorism in the 1950's (B.F. Skinner) could give birth to an influential paradigm that allowed purposeful thought! It's also really cool to hear about all the thinkers who influenced each on the panel.

Check it out!

Today in the History of Psychology

2007-09-14T11:31:00.001-05:00

Today, in 1907, one of the most famous pioneers in social psychology was born. The man that I am speaking of, and who is pictured to the right, is of course Solomon Asch. Like many in his day, Asch was trained as a gestalt psychologist. (An approach that advocates that the "whole is greater than the sum of its parts." For instance, the brain cannot be defined just by its seperate parts, but by how each acts on each other simultaneously).

Asch studied many aspects of social behavior including impression formation, and even wrote one of the first influential social psychology text books, simply called, Social Psychology (1952). But what he is probably most famous for is a set of experiments he conducted in the 1950's on the topic of conformity.

In his experiments, participants viewed a picture of a line and were to compare this line to a separate set of lines to see which best resembled the first (pictured below):
All participants were confederates (basically fake participants/actors) except one. Before being asked which line correctly resembled the first, the confederates were instructed to give an incorrect answer. The confederates and one participant were all seated in a classroom, where the one participant occupied the last seat. And they were instructed to announce their answer aloud, with the real participant answering last. When the confederates were unanimous in their incorrect judgments, most real participants felt discomfort from the answer they thought was right and the answer that they heard the confederates say. Most of the participants caved under the social pressure, leaving only about 29% of his subjects who refused to "join the bogus majority." Of course if the confederates were not unanimous in their incorrect judgments, then most participants would give the correct answer.

This experiment had some interesting implications for the power of conformity in social groups and has laid the groundwork for the famous obedience experiments by Stanley Milgram.

Happy Birthday Solomon Asch!

"The Stuff of Thought"

2007-09-13T09:58:00.000-05:00

Steven Pinker's new book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature, is finally out! Woohoo! It came out on Tuesday and I rushed to the local Barnes and Noble to pick up my copy. I can't wait to start reading it! I'm going to try to get to it this weekend, at least start on it if I can get my other work done. I'm so excited!

Darwinian Medicine

2007-09-09T23:52:00.000-05:00

For those of you interested, evolutionary psychologist/psychiatrist Dr. Randolph Nesse has put together a series of lectures for the Henry Stewart Talks called, Evolution and Medicine: How New Applications Advance Research and Practice.

The combined lectures were designed to be a complete introductory course to the field of evolutionary medicine with over 30 expert contributors. Topics include: Fundamentals of evolution and medicine, evolutionary genetics, infectious diseases, co-evolution and arms races, environmental factors, constraints and trade-offs, sexual selection and reproduction, cancer, mental disorders, and practical applications. Power-point slides come along with each talk as well.

The only bad thing about the lectures is that you cannot view them for free. That's right, you have to purchase them! But many, not all, of the lectures offer a playable extract for free. It's a little 5 minute sample of the talk, I guess so you can decide whether you want to buy the rest or not. Of course the single user license is about $650! Wow! So it's just like enrolling in a online course I suppose, just without the grade. From what I heard from the playable extracts . . . they seem pretty interesting.

Go check them out!

Today in the History of Psychology

2007-09-09T22:38:00.000-05:00

"There is nothing so practical as a good theory."
- Kurt Lewin, 1951

Today in 1890, the "founder of social psychology," Kurt Lewin, was born!

Originally from Prussia, he emigrated to the United States as a result of World War II. He held a position at the University of Iowa, where he developed his interests in social phenomena and even began research, in order to help the war effort, such as examining troop morale. Of course, coming from the German tradition of Gestalt Psychology, he was a true believer in a good theory. One cannot fix a problem from evidence alone. To create a solution to a social problem, one must fully understand the issue. Lewin was really the first to utilize theory-building for the understanding of social "facts," and he rigorously employed experimentation to test his hypotheses.

He moved to MIT around 1944, where he established the Research Center for Group Dynamics. One might say, the field of group dynamics is where his importance lays and where his legacy proliferates. Here he developed and refined his field theory of social behavior, B=ƒ(P,E), (behavior is a function of a person and his/her environment). That basically means, one's behavior is due to the situation the person is in when the behavior occurs, rather than emphasizing past experiences (upbringing). He also looked at concepts such as group performance and leadership styles, and even found that democratic leadership proved to be the most productive type of leadership.

Lewin died in 1947, just three years after the establishment of his research center, yet his legacy lived on through his students. One of these students was Leon Festinger. Festinger studied under Lewin at the University of Iowa where he received his Ph.D in 1942. He later followed Lewin to MIT and headed the Research Center for Group Dynamics after Lewin died.

Happy Birthday Kurt Lewin!

the summer just goes by so fast . . .

2007-08-29T21:28:00.000-05:00

Yes it does! Classes started today in fact, but I feel like it was just the beginning of June last week. Oh well, the summer was fun and I think that I did some pretty cool stuff (besides getting married).

For instance, I held two jobs over the summer. Firstly, I was a teaching assistant for a class concerning research methods in clinical psychology. Not my particular field of interest, but it was pretty nice regardless. We only had like 6 students. I mostly ran the labs where they conducted two research projects. One project was an online environmental attitudes survey, where some questions were borrowed from another survey collected in the 80's. Essentially, the students were supposed to look at how attitudes on the environment have changed in the past twenty years. For their other project, I had them rate tape recordings of psychiatric patients. The patients participated in a series of role plays as a measure of social skills. The students then rated the tapes based on a set of criteria for conversational content as well as non-verbal content. This was mostly an exercise for the students so that they had experience conducting inter-rater reliability estimates. We wanted them to know how hard it is to obtain good reliability with these types of procedures. You don't really get that kind of knowledge just from reading journal articles.

My other job was as a research consultant at The Glennan Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology at Eastern Virginia Medical School. This was a pretty cool job as well. I worked for Dr. Barbara Freund, who mostly conducts driving simulation research on patients with Alzheimer's. Well, over the summer she obtained two new simulators from Raydon Corp. My project pretty much was centered around conducting quality assurance tests on the simulators to make sure that they were fit for participants in future studies. But she also let me participate in whatever else she had going on that I may have been interested in, which was cool. I really enjoyed it there. I thought that it would be like playing video games all day, but interestingly enough it wasn't. I still have to write a post about "simulator sickness," which I've wanted to write since June . . . just haven't had the time I suppose. It'll be up here soon though. What's really cool is that she's letting me work for her during the academic year, as research on the side . . . because I'll always need the extra experience. Of course this will only happen if my schedule permits it, my thesis is my number one priority!

So that's what the majority of my summer was spent on, although I also spent a lot of time teaching my wife how to play racquetball. She's gotten really good too! We both have also spent a lot of time studying for the GRE's. We're both nearing the end of our Master's programs (hers is in Literature) and we definitely want to go on for our Doctorates. That means we have to go through the lovely process of applying to graduate school again . . . YEA! (can you feel the horror?) Once more, we are trying to get into the same school! It'll work out somehow though. I'm actually not that worried about it.

Well, that was my summer. I now have a semester off solid work to look forward to, but it's cool because I'm really looking forward to the research opportunities that I will be participating in this semester, including my thesis on social ostracism/exclusion. I'm also taking a required course on psychopathology, and will probably audit the evolutionary psychology course offered through our department. Lastly, I will be the teaching assistant for my research advisor, Dr. John Nezlek, which is very cool! He's brilliant, so the more time I spend around him, hopefully the more I'll pick up. The course is "Research Methods of Social Psychology," which is a perfect fitting for me. I'll be controlling the labs for the course, but will be sitting in on the classes as well. And the first meeting will be tomorrow!

That's all for now!

Colbert on Michael Shermer

2007-08-24T22:57:00.000-05:00

Michael Shermer, science writer and editor of Skeptic magazine, was recently featured on The Colbert Report. It was pretty good, like all the others. Shermer did a pretty good job of explaining the need for science and skepticism, in the limited amount of time given. Favorite quote:

"If you want something to work, you use science!"

He also gives examples of how to examine evidence to disprove conspiracy theories (9/11 conspiracy theories in particular) and why you can't just go on anecdotal evidence for anything! If you want to find something out, you have to research the evidence!

the science behind out-of-body experiences

2007-08-24T21:40:00.000-05:00

Here's a New York Times article of interest. Research published today in Science examines how normal, healthy people can have out-of-body experiences.

Usually the various sensory systems of which we observe our environment (vision, touch, balance, etc.) work together to create our sense of being. Yet when one system is thrown off or is given inaccurate information that greatly differs from the other systems the brain may try to make sense of the mis-matched information. In fact, it may force a sense of being in a different body.

In one experiment, Dr. Olaf Blanke, a neuroscientist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, asked participants to wear virtual reality goggles while an image taken of their backs was shown to them as being six feet in front of them. As this image was being projected, he simultaneously stroked their backs and their images' backs with a stick. If the two strokes occurred in sychronism, participants reported being inside the illusory body. When the strokes were not synchronous, there was no illusion. Strangely, when the image being projected was not of the participant, but instead of a mannequin dressed in the same clothes as the participant the illusion still occurred.

In a different but related experiment, Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, had participants sit while wearing goggles connected to two video cameras set up behind them. He then began to stroke each person's chest with a stick, while at the same time moving a second stick just under the camera lenses so that it seemed to stroke the virtual body. When both strokes were simultaneous, the illusion of being outside their bodies was reported by the participants.

This is some really cool stuff I must say. It definitely gives some interesting insight into what goes on during near-death experiences where people report a sense of being outside of their bodies. Usually in these types of experiences individuals go through serious trauma or injury. There's no telling what their brains are trying to make sense of in these situations. Though one point to make is that they usually report a feeling of floating over their bodies, whereas participants in the above experiments did not have such a strong sense of floating. Of course, that is what future research is all about . . . right?

understanding a junk food junkie . . .

2007-08-23T13:47:00.000-05:00

Mmm . . . mmm . . . good!

There's an interesting article from Scientific American that helps explain the current understanding of compulsive eating and its relation to drug abuse.

Basically, both types of behaviors activate the same brain circuitry in similar ways. The circuitry involved are neuronal networks that once evolved for the purpose of rewarding behaviors that were essential for the survival of our species (sex, finding/eating food, etc.) We essentially get rewarded for eating food (pleasure from taste), but at the same time we are conditioned with the various cues that preceded the pleasure (what the food looked like, the smell and where we found it), so that when we encounter those same cues again we expect the same pleasure, which, in turn, should make us more likely to eat the viand again.

"if the behavior necessary to seek a pleasurable experience was triggered exclusively by the object, the conditioned response would be very ineffective indeed; think about the need to find food to survive, for example: say we are primitive creatures in the jungle and you by pure chance taste a banana. The banana tastes good, but if you were just conditioned to remember that it tasted good—and not to the smell, the shape, the color, or the location of the banana—your ability to find it again would be impaired. Once you create this conditioned memory, though, it’s just like Pavlov’s dogs; the response becomes a reflex. This conditioned response underlies both the drive in drug addiction and the drive in compulsive eating."

In neuroimaging studies scientists have found that people display an increased level of dopamine in their striatum (brain area associated with reward and motivational responses) after just seeing and smelling their favorite food. The article also explains that this is the same thing that happens when drug addicts watch videos of people taking their drug of choice! At that high-calorie foods are more reinforcing than low-fat, low-calorie foods, which makes sense because as hunter-gatherers food was not always abundant. Eating high-calorie foods would be advantageous, because that contain more energy. But most of us don't live in hunting and gathering societies anymore:

"Our genes have changed little, but in our environment, we are now surrounded by high-fat, high-sugar foods. And this abundance is undoubtedly a major factor contributing to the rise in obesity Conditioning responses are incredibly powerful with food: when I go past a vending machine and I see chocolates I like very much, I desire the chocolate even though I’m not hungry. But if those chocolates weren’t there, it would be the last thing on my mind."

Such research adds additional insight into treatments for obesity and compulsive eating. One area that I find interesting is the use of biofeedback for treating over-eating:

"Yet another exciting area NIDA is researching is the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (or fMRI) in biofeedback to train people to exercise specific parts of their brains, just like muscles. Sean Mackey of Stanford University, neuroscientist Christopher De Charms of Omneuron [in SanFrancisco] and their colleagues have similarly trained healthy subjects and chronic-pain sufferers to control their brain activity to actually modulate their experience of pain. So NIDA is exploring the possibility that you might use this kind of biofeedback to train people to control a region of the brain called the insula, which has been implicated in food and drug cravings. Smokers who have a lesion in the insula after a stroke, for instance, seem to lose the desire to smoke."

Pretty cool stuff. Well, anyways, check out the rest of the article!

"it's on a par with a night of heavy drinking"

2007-08-20T23:37:00.000-05:00

If you've seen the movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, then you may remember that the main character, Joel Barish (played by Jim Carrey), hires a company to erase the memories of his ex-girlfriend (played by Kate Winslet) after an epsiode of heart-break. This ends up being a mistake for Joel, and he spends the majority of the film struggling to preserve what's left of his memories of Clemetine while unconscious.

Now of course this is all science-fiction. But what if you really could erase specific long-term memories? Say memories of a deceased loved one? Or, in Joel's case, an ex-mate? Would you do it? What about traumatic experiences? Would you be willing to erase memories of a traumatic experience?

Well, we are a long way from the memory erasing capabilities of Eternal Sunshine, but research recently published in Science suggests that long-term memories are not etched in stone as previously thought. Instead, memory might be more like a "machine" that must keep running in order to hold onto experiences. Yadin Dudai, Head of the Weizmann Institute’s Neurobiology Department, found that by inhibiting the synaptic protein, PKMzeta, long-term memories in rats could be erased.

Essentially, Dudai's team trained rats to avoid certain tastes. Once the aversion was learned, they then injected the rats with a substance in the area of the cortex associated with taste memories. This substance is a PKMzeta blocking agent. After only a single application, the rats forgot their taste aversion training.

"The technique worked as successfully a month after the memories were formed, which is analogous to years in humans, and all signs so far indicate that the affected unpleasant memories of the taste had indeed disappeared."

"In other words, long-term memory is not a one-time inscription on the nerve network, but an ongoing process which the brain must continuously fuel and maintain and these findings raise the possibility of developing a 'memory eraser'."

That's pretty cool . . . very interesting, but I can't help being left feeling uneasy. If we actually reach the point of developing a "memory eraser," would it be used for practical, commercial purposes? And what would they be? Is it even ethical to erase anyone's long-term memories for any purpose? Perhaps erasing memories of traumatic experiences that lead to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Of course, I'm sure that such memory erasing capabilities would not be so solicitously advertised as it was in Eternal Sunshine, and there would probably be restrictions on the procedure. Very cool research, but definitely opens up a host of ethical questions.

Cure for fear?

2007-07-20T11:53:00.000-05:00

Now here's an interesting article. According to the press release, scientists from MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have discovered the molecular mechanism behind fear!

They found that inhibiting the enzyme, Cdk5, within the hippocampus of mice, eliminated a fear that they learned within a particular context:

"In the current research, genetically engineered mice received mild foot shocks in a certain environment and were re-exposed to the same environment without the foot shock.
The team found that mice with increased levels of Cdk5 activity had more trouble letting go of the memory of the foot shock and continued to freeze in fear.

The reverse was also true: in mice whose Cdk5 activity was inhibited, the bad memory of the shocks disappeared when the mice learned that they no longer needed to fear the environment where the foot shocks had once occurred."

This research was recently published in Nature Neuroscience. Pretty cool! Such exciting findings could possibly open up the door to new effective treatments for various emotional disorders, extreme phobias and even Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Very cool!

Gilbert on Colbert . . .

2007-07-09T01:18:00.000-05:00

Here's another interview for you, from the Colbert Report. In this interview, Colbert takes on Daniel Gilbert and his book, Stumbling on Happiness. Gilbert is a social psychologist from Harvard that specializes in affective forecasting. Affective forecasting is one's ability to predict his/her future emotional state. People seem to be bad at predicting their emotional states, and Gilbert even explains that people are not particularly good at knowing what makes them happy. I have not read his book yet, but I intend to (it's on my list of books to read over the summer).

But anyways, the interview was good as always . . . and I got some interesting facts out of it. Like . . . people with kids are less happy than people without children. And the more children you have, the more unhappier you will be. Well, of course, that's talking about people on the average. I don't think it really says anything about happiness on the individual level. There's really no way to tell whether having a child is going to make you happy or not. Some people have really good, happy relationships with their children . . . others have bad relationships with them. It just happens to be that, on the average, people with children are unhappier than people without children. Of course, he doesn't really qualify this unhappiness. How unhappy are people with kids on average? What is it comparable to? Is it like getting fired from a job? Or eating just too much chocolate cake, to the point where you feel sick? Are people with pets less happy than people without pets as well? (just a thought)

On another note, there are some things that seem to make people happy. They are: 1. Marriage and 2. Religion. But again, the same thoughts come to mind. Does this say anything about me as an individual, as opposed to people on average? And how happy do these things make people comparatively speaking?

Oh well, I guess I just have to read the book I suppose.

Check out the Colbert clip, and if this stuff sounds interesting, go out and get the book!

HBES 2007

2007-06-27T18:11:00.000-05:00

Yeah, so I know it's a little later than I expected . . . and you're sick of the excuses, haha. Oh well, I might as well report on the 2007 HBES conference now, cause if I wait any longer, it will never get done!

Well, as you probably know by now, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society held this year's conference, May 30th - June 3rd, here at the College of William and Mary, and was hosted by the awesome Lee Kirkpatrick and Brandy Burkett! It was exciting! I mean, to have such superstars as Robert Kurzban, David Buss and John Tooby (just to name a few!) under the same roof and so close to home, it was an opportunity that just could not be missed! Fortunately John, from Evolutionary Psychology, and I were able to volunteer our services in exchange for free admission, haha. It was cool though. We mostly helped man the registration desk at various times and also helped answer questions about campus and what not. We met a lot of cool people, including other graduate students interested in evolutionary psych., and we even met the editors of the Journal of Social, Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology, Sarah Strout and Rosemarie Sokol. That was pretty cool, because they recently finished graduate school as opposed to most of the other people that we met. It was nice to get a fresh perspective on graduate school in EP, being editors for a new journal and how to not be too intimidated by big names in the field. By the by, back in April I wrote a post about their new journal . . . if interested, you can find it here.

When not working or mingling, I was able to catch some really good talks. My favorite was that of Hod Lipson, from Cornell, who spoke about Evolutionary Robotics, a field which utilizes evolutionary theory to allow robots to reconstruct their very own body plan! Very interesting. Sadly, John has already beaten me to the punch, haha. Well, that's what I get for not giving my blog the attention that it needs! His post on Lipson's talk can be found here. And he does a good job:

"Lipson and his colleagues have found that certain fitness functions can allow robots to model and understand their own structure. Although robots do not yet have what we often refer to as consciousness, they do have the ability to recognize changes in their robotic structure through a process of continuous self-modeling. For example, a robot that has five appendages can recognize when one of its appendages is amputated and it can adapt its behavior to be congruent with its new structure."

Check out the full post!

Well, all in all, I thought the conference was a good experience for me, even though I didn't present any research of my own and I didn't even get to be there for the whole time (my wedding). I just say to myself, "There'll be next time." It was just a good environment for me to be in, intellectually . . . good just to see what is going on in the field myself. Photos from the conference can be accessed here if anyone's interested.

Daniel Everett and Recursion

2007-06-25T10:05:00.000-05:00

Edge has an interesting video of linguist Daniel Everett discussing his ideas of recursion in human language and thought.

The current, Chomskyan view of language is that we are basically pre-wired by our genes with the ability to produce infinite grammars using finite structures. In other words, we have no limit to what we can say even though we have a limited vocabulary. This ability is triggered and shaped by our environment and is also a function of our ability to use recursion. Recursion is the ability to insert a phrase into another phrase of the same type. Here's an example that Everett gives:

"If I say 'John's brother's house', I have a noun, 'house', which occurs in a noun phrase, 'brother's house', and that noun phrase occurs in another noun phrase, 'John's brother's house'."

Essentially, one could infinitely add on additional phrases to any sentence. (John's brother's house; John's brother's sister's house; John's brother's sister's husband's house, etc.) Recursion is supposed to be the fundamental property of human language. But what happens if you find a language that doesn't use recursion? Well it would go against the ideas of Chomsky and instead put forward the proposition that humans do not need a universal grammar. And this is what Everett is, in fact, claiming.

He is claiming that a culture from the Amazon, the Piraha, of which he has worked with for 30 years, do not exhibit recursion in their language. If this is so, then that means the Piraha are limited in what they can say, though that doesn't mean their language is not a rich one. This would be considerable evidence against the Chomskyan paradigm. It would mean that recursion isn't an essential element to human language. But he doesn't go so far as saying that recursion is unimportant:

"If you go back to the Pirahã language, and you look at the stories that they tell, you do find recursion. You find that ideas are built inside of other ideas, and one part of the story is subordinate to another part of the story. That's not part of the grammar per se, that's part of the way that they tell their stories. So my idea is that recursion is absolutely essential to the human brain, and it's a part of the fact that humans have larger brains than other species. In fact, one of the papers at the recursion conference was on recursion in other species, and it talked about how when deer look for food in the forest, they often use recursive strategies to map their way across the forest and back, and take little side paths that can be analyzed as recursive paths. So it's not clear, first of all that recursion is unique to humans, and it's certainly not clear that recursion is part of language as opposed to part of the brain's general processing."

His idea seems to be that recursion is a property of the human brain in general, as well language is also a property of our brains. We don't necessarily have to have a "language instinct." And instead, it's possible that language is just a product of our ability to use our greater general intelligence as compared with other species to solve our everyday problems. It's an interesting idea, though a lot of research would have to be done and scrutinized before such controversial claims could be verified. Well, anyways, check out the video. There's also a transcription of the interview here. As well, there are also some really good responses and counter-responses to Everett here, including a response from Steven Pinker, which is pretty cool. Check them out!

it's been a while . . .

2007-06-12T21:23:00.000-05:00

Well . . . hello, hello, hello. I know it's been a little while since I have written a post. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the blog. I have just kind of been away from technology lately. Mostly because I have . . . . gotten MARRIED! That's right! The big day was: June 2, 2007. I don't want to get too personal and all, but it definitely was one of the best days/nights of my life. We just recently got back from our honeymoon, plus I have started my new summer research job at Eastern Virginia Medical School, so I have just haven't had the time or resources for new posts.

Well, anyways, I just wanted to say that I haven't forgot about the blog. And I have a couple of really cool posts planned out and will post over the next couple of days. One will likely be about the recent HBES conference held at William and Mary, and of which I was a volunteer before I left for the wedding. It is also worth the note that my good friend John, over at Evolutionary Psychology, had presented some of his research there. His talk was awesome!

Another post will probably be about "simulation sickness," which is like motion sickness that people feel when they are on a driving simulator. This is something I'm learning about at my new job. And lastly, for awhile now I've been wanting to write a post about our ability to work with numbers. So keep a look out for these, plus any other interesting psych. news that I might post on here. I have a lot of unpacking, cleaning, working and more traveling to do, but I'll have at least two new posts up by Sunday.

Oh well, until then . . . have a good week!

Stephen Colbert interviews Jared Diamond

2007-05-24T10:31:00.001-05:00

Here's another hilarious Colbert interview! This time he takes on Jared Diamond, the famous biologist and author of Guns, Germs and Steel. Even though the book has been out for awhile, it was the topic of most of the conversation.

For those who don't know, his book is about how the cultures of Eurasia were able to conquer the rest of the world, because they were essentially more lucky. Well, in the sense that they happened to inhabit more fertile land with better crops and animals that were easier to domesticate. This gave the peoples of Europe and Asia a considerable advantage over those of Africa and the Americas. This is just a very brief overview though, so if you haven't already done so, you should definitely check out the book!

Overall, Colbert displays his usual wit and humor in his questioning, but I think Diamond survived without a hint of confusion or agitation. Go check it out!

New MSc in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology

2007-05-23T23:27:00.000-05:00

The Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford has developed a new program where candidates can earn a Master's of Science in cognitive and evolutionary anthropology! Awesome!

The degree is earned over the course of 12 months. Students, along with the usual research method and statistic courses, study the course of human evolution from a biological, cognitive and behavioral perspective, while analyzing how the mind creates culture as well. The new program looks incredibly interesting to me.

Here's a very quick snippet summarizing the program:

"Arguably, Homo sapiens are the only animals capable of genuine language, culture, and religion. We are distinguished by our laughter, singing, rituals, and art, as well as our intelligence. What about our evolution and our resulting cognitive equipment make us human? Make culture possible? The Institute for Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology's Masters program explores these issues through the lenses of contemporary research in cognitive and evolutionary anthropology."

This is good news! It's great to see the incorporation of research dealing with human evolution with that of human and animal cognition. It's a mistake to ignore the fact that the human mind is a product of natural selection, just as any other part of the body!

The program starts in October of 2007!

E.O. Wilson and the Encyclopedia of Life . . .

2007-05-14T10:20:00.000-05:00

Edge has a link to an awesome video of E.O. Wislon.

It's footage of Wislon accepting his 2007 TED (Technology, Entertainment & Design) prize, which includes a $100,000 check. Here's some detail about what the TED prize actually is:

"The prize was introduced in 2005, and it is unlike any other award. Here's why. Although the winners receive a prize of $100,000 each, that's the least of what they get. The real prize is that they are granted a WISH. A wish to change the world. There are no formal restrictions on the wish. We ask our winners to think big and to be creative. They are permitted several months of dreaming, brainstorming and planning. Then they come to TED, and during a special session at the conference, they unveil their wish. The goal is that it creates an incredible sense of excitement and common purpose. It inspires the TED community, and all those who hear about the wish, to offer their help in making the wish come true."

Well, Wilson's wish is to create an encyclopedia of life! This is supposed to be a web-based collection of data created by scientists and amateurs on every aspect of the biosphere. What an incredible task! We know so little about nature right now. But I guess that's really the purpose of it . . . to get people interested in learning and discovering more about the biosphere. In his talk, he discusses various threats to life on our planet as well. And there's also a really cool video montage of nature during his talk, including micro-organisms, insects, monkeys and people. So go check it out!

Richard Dawkins interview

2007-05-09T23:35:00.000-05:00

There's an awesome interview of Richard Dawkins over at Cosmic Afterthoughts. It was pretty good, so I recommend checking it out.

For those of you who don't already know, Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist from Oxford University who popularized the view that natural selection acts through the survival of competing genes, and that our physical and behavioral traits are adaptations due to the genes that promote their propagation best. So you can see how he's been an influence to evolutionary psychology I'm sure. I mean, he's basically laid the foundation for it! This argument of his was laid out in the 1976 release of The Selfish Gene.

Lately though, he has been gaining more attention for his active popular science writing, unabashed atheism and promotion of skepticism. This is what the interview concerns itself with mostly. They discuss his newest book, The God Delusion, and his views of why it's important to promote reason over faith. I think it was a generally good interview, definitely not as hostile as some I have seen in the past. Whether you agree with him or not, I still recommend checking it out, as well you should check out his books! My favorites are The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. (Thanks to pharyngula for posting the Cosmic Afterthoughts link!)

On another note, google has recently added a feature to blogger, in which readers can watch youtube and google videos without leaving the blog page. Pretty cool! And if you haven't noticed, I have added such a videobar to my blog. At the moment videos from Steven Pinker and Philip Zimbardo are on rotation, just because I have mentioned them a lot on this blog. I also threw in some banjo videos for good measure! To check them out, you just click on one of the videos and it'll load at the top of the page . . . well under my title that is. So anyways, check them out, let me know what you think . . . does it look messy? Should I keep them? Comments are welcome!

New Evolutionary Psychology Blog!

2007-05-02T00:26:00.000-05:00

My good friend, and fellow grad student in the William & Mary psychology department, has just started a new blog about evolutionary psychology! You can find it over at brain and evolution. I'm pretty excited about it actually. He's a bright guy and has already came up with some interesting posts. He's new to the "blogosphere," so please go check out his site and say hello and all that stuff!

Well, on another note, this is the last week of classes! I'm pretty excited, but I just have loads of work to do . . . yeah, what else is new right? Well, exams are coming up next week, but in between now and then I'll fit in some time for new posts.

I'm not sure what I'll be doing after schools out, besides blogging of course. I know I'll be doing some research and working as a TA for a class during the second summer session and all . . . and I'll probably be working on topics for my Master's thesis. We'll see how that goes I guess. One thing that I am looking forward to is that the 19th annual conference for the Human Behavior and Evolution Society will be held here at The College of William and Mary around the end of this month. I'm siked! Well, that's all for now!

more Zimbardo . . .

2007-04-25T13:50:00.000-05:00

Edge has another video of Philip Zimbardo. It's pretty good. He mostly talks about the Nazi killings and trials from a social psychological perspective and again refers to his "Stanford Prison Experiment."

How do seemingly "normal" people commit evil acts? What about the flip-side? How do normal people commit heroic acts? These are questions that interests Zimbardo.

Check it out!

MRI-enabled brain surgery

2007-04-21T17:32:00.000-05:00

NewScientistTech has a cool post about a new device developed by researchers in Canada to help doctors perform risky surgeries.

"NeuroArm is the first surgical robot to be compatible with MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), its makers claim. This will enable neurosurgeons to perform their riskiest work while patients lie within an MRI machine, giving a clear 3D picture of even the smallest nerves. However, doctors are still on hand to intervene if serious complications arise."

I'm not really sure if this is what it really looks like or not. I just typed "neuroarm" in google images, and this is what I got.

Regardless, it seems like a really cool idea, but man it's expensive . . . $24 million in development. Wow!

Almost human?

2007-04-21T17:14:00.000-05:00

There's a really interesting article in the Science section of the NY Times. It's basically a summary of the work on chimpanzees and their similarities to humans, covering work from Jane Goodall and Frans de Waal among others.

"Chimps display a remarkable range of behavior and talent. They make and use simple tools, hunt in groups and engage in aggressive, violent acts. They are social creatures that appear to be capable of empathy, altruism, self-awareness, cooperation in problem solving and learning through example and experience. Chimps even outperform humans in some memory tasks."

Overall, it's a really cool article, so check it out if you can!

You just get me . . .

2007-04-21T16:07:00.000-05:00

Now this looks interesting. I received this link through an email from the listserv for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. It's a social-networking site developed by social and personality psychologists as a tool for use by researchers interested in how well people can read each other's personalities.

"We know a ton about what people think of others, but hardly anything about whether they are right. In about a tenth of a second, people make up their minds whether others are likable and competent. But are they accurate? Not always. You can tell if someone is extraverted and disciplined quicker than if they are neurotic and competitive (Watson, 1989). Oddly, if you see someone's room or office, it helps you "get" them (Gosling, Ko, Mannarelli & Morris, 2002). And when you finally get close to someone, you are more accurate than when you were strangers, but few couples are ever perfect. How about online? Can you really judge what someone is like from their profile? And how about the other way around? Does your profile really tell people who you are? Research on this is only beginning (see Vazire & Gosling, 2004). Help us fill in this huge gap in our knowledge by trying - really trying - to guess what others are like. And see if you can make the most truthful profile you can. On our site, that's what it's all about."

Basically, it's a little online experiment where participants take a personality test (based upon the 5-factor theory of personality) and then they have to guess how each other scored on the test. All questions are scored using a real psychological formula too. As far as the "social-networking" is concerned, you can choose how accurate a person must be in guessing your personality before they can contact you.

It seems like a cool idea. I guess we'll see how it takes off.

unbelievably awful

2007-04-17T20:59:00.000-05:00

I'm sure that everyone knows already, so there's no need to post any press about it, but I feel that I do need to say something.

Yesterday's massacre at Virginia Tech. seems so unreal. It's like a very bad dream. Being a Virginia resident all my life, this isn't something that I would have ever expected. My heart goes out to VT and all the friends and families of lost loved ones. It was a horrible incident. Virginia Tech is a great school, and it shouldn't go down in the history books as the place where the deadliest school shooting occurred.

Mostly everyone that I know that has gone to VT has graduated, so obviously I can't put myself into the position of those whose loved ones are currently at the school. But, for what it's worth, I'm sorry and I have nothing but the best wishes for all those at Tech.

For those interested, there's a compilation of scienceblogger posts over at Cognitive Daily concerning the murderous rampage.

Today in the history of psychology . . .

2007-04-15T22:20:00.000-05:00

One of my all-time favorite psychologists was born this day in 1922. This is, of course, the great Stanley Schachter. Schachter was a prolific social psychologist, who studied a wide range of topics. He investigated such issues as social influence, obesity, situational influences on emotion, and the psychological correlates of birth order. But what I'm most fond of, is his work on the need for affiliation.

Ever hear the phrase, "misery loves company," or even, "misery loves miserable company?" Well, this comes from Schachter's work on the affiliative tendency.

The need for affiliation seems to be a core motive that influences our day to day interactions, and yet not much was known about it. That is, until 1959 when Schachter published his book called, The Psychology of Affiliation. This work described several of his experimental studies conducted on the topic. Most interestingly, he found that in distressful situations, people tend to seek out others who are under similar circumstances. In other words, an increase of anxiety brings about an increase in the affiliative tendency.

In a creative experiment, he manipulated anxiety in two groups of participants. One group was the high anxiety group, while the other was the low anxiety group. Using deception, he told both groups that the experiment was about the effects of electric shock. Essentially, the high anxiety condition was shown the electrical apparatus and was told that they would receive extremely painful shocks. The low anxiety condition was not shown the electrical apparatus and was told that they would receive shocks, but the shocks would not hurt and instead would be more like a tickle. Then both groups were told that they could either wait in a waiting room by themselves while the experimenters got everything ready, or they could go into another waiting room with other people who were also participating in the experiment. Schachter found that those who were in the high anxiety condition chose to sit with people who were in the same situation as them. They chose this significantly more often than those in the low anxiety condition. These results were important for the field of social psychology, because not much was known, at the time, about the conditions that affected the need for affiliation.

I, myself, have always had an interest in social psychology, but it was coming across Schacter's work on affiliation in general that eventually led to my interest in social rejection and ostracism. It's not really even the "tip of the iceberg," when considering all the other major contributions that he had on the field. This just happens to be my favorite work of his. I mean, I could really write all day about it . . . but I won't. Well, anyways, if you're interested in the topic, pick up the book!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STANLEY SCHACHTER!

new way to view brain folds

2007-04-14T14:44:00.000-05:00

A new tool has been developed by researchers from MIT, the Massachusetts General hospital and Havard Medical School to help investigate how the folds in the cerebral cortex develop and decay over time.

"By applying computer graphics techniques to brain images collected using magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, they have created a set of tools for tracking and measuring these folds over time. Their resulting model of cortical development may serve as a biomarker, or biological indicator, for early diagnosis of neurological disorders such as autism."

A new article describing their computational model of brain development has been published in the April issue of Transactions on Medical Imaging, a journal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

This seems like a pretty cool technology. It'll give scientists a better view of normal brain development. This development can then be compared with the abnormal development caused by various disorders, like schizophrenia. In effect, giving us a better picture of what is going wrong in these patients.

The press release can be found here.

A new journal

2007-04-07T14:51:00.000-05:00

I just noticed that a new psychology journal is out. It is an open-access, peer-reviewed online journal called, The Journal of Social, Evolutionary & Cultural Psychology. And you can find it here.

And here's the brief description that the editors give:

"The Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology is an online initiative designed to bridge sub-disciplines of psychology in order to gain holistic insights into human behavior, emotion, cognition, and motivation. The perspectives of social, evolutionary, and cultural psychology each provide unique advantages for psychological investigation. Social psychology emphasizes individual functioning within the group; cultural psychology emphasizes the role of one's social environment and emergent cultural practice; and evolutionary psychology emphasizes the adaptive function of particular behaviors at the level of the individual. With this journal, we are providing a space for scholars interested in combining variations of these levels in the study of human psychology."

So far, there's only one article up, from the editors Rosemarie Sokol and Sarah Strout. It's a brief editiorial explaining the purpose of the journal in greater detail along a historical and philosophical perspective. The editors intend the journal to be a new home for theoretical and empirical articles that incorporate the three psychological perspectives to varying degrees. It looks promising to me, so if you have an interest in social, evolutionary or cultural psychology, then you should check it out on occasion. More articles are due out in May!

are these considered April showers?

2007-04-07T11:47:00.000-05:00

Yeah, so it's snowing . . . in April! It's kind of weird. It hasn't really snowed in Virginia all winter, and now it's coming down like crazy. Oh well.

School's going pretty good. I've just been grading papers all week (and I'll be grading more this weekend!). Plus I've been collecting data for my first-year research project. I'm freaking excited about that!

Well, besides that, nothing new has really come up in the past week.

Except . . .

Going along with the last post, another Zimbardo interview is up on New York Times. It is mostly about his Standord Prison Experiment and its similarities with the abuses of Abu Ghraib. There's also an accompanying article with the video here. They're pretty good. Check them out if you haven't already done so!

Zimbardo on the Daily Show

2007-03-31T00:16:00.000-05:00

I just found out over on Edge that Philip Zimbardo was interviewed by John Stewart on the Daily Show. Here's the link!

The interview was pretty cool. He mainly talks about his new book, The Lucifer Effect.

If you have ever taken an Introductory Psychology course, then you have probably heard of Dr. Zimbardo. He is basically one of the biggest, if not the biggest, figurehead in social psychology. Zimbardo is mostly known for his Stanford Prison Experiement. You can go to the website for extra details, but basically his study showed how ordinary, good people can be outrageously cruel. His study, along with others in social psychology (such as Milgram's obedience study), showed that people don't necessarily do bad things because they are just plain evil. Instead his study emphasizes the power of the situation. Anyone can be persuaded to hurt others, if one encounters the situational forces that provoke that behavior. At the same time, it seems that anyone can be an angel under circumstances that provoke that behavior.

Anyways, the interview was good, so check it out!

are we more violent now?

2007-03-28T18:50:00.000-05:00

You may be quick to assume that violence is increasing around you. Heck, these are the days of the Iraq War and routine terrorist attacks right? Violence seems to be everywhere in our news, music, movies and games. Violence in the media might even be the problem. You might hold the view that men are naturally born peaceful and are corrupted by modern society (the Noble Savage). This also seems to be a popular view among many politicians and academics. But is this true?

Steven Pinker has written an excellent essay on this topic, which is featured on the Edge website. In it, he argues that violence has actually been decreasing as time has gone by, and, in fact, humans have become "kinder and gentler." He presents evidence from recent anthropological studies to support his argument:

"It is true that raids and battles killed a tiny percentage of the numbers that die in modern warfare. But, in tribal violence, the clashes are more frequent, the percentage of men in the population who fight is greater, and the rates of death per battle are higher. According to anthropologists like Lawrence Keeley, Stephen LeBlanc, Phillip Walker, and Bruce Knauft, these factors combine to yield population-wide rates of death in tribal warfare that dwarf those of modern times. If the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same proportion of the population that die in the wars of a typical tribal society, there would have been two billion deaths, not 100 million."

He also explains why many people think that modern times are more violent, even though the evidence points to the contrary. This actually has a lot to do with Tversky's availability heuristic that I wrote about the other day. Again, the availability heuristic is a cognitive illusion that makes us think an event is likely to occur just because we can easily recall similar events happening before. So, people might think that we are more violent today, just because it's easy to remember the mugging that was reported in the news last night.

Lastly he presents four possible theories for why humans are becoming less violent. To sum them up real quick: 1) we can't take the law into our own hands anymore, we have centralized governments for that, 2) as technology improves our lives, we put more value on living, 3) the importance of cooperation in trading goods and dividing labor leads us to the idea that our neighbors are more valuable alive than dead and finally 4) we evolved a sense of empathy that only applied to family members, but over time our moral circles slowly encompassed whole tribes, nations, both sexes, the various ethnicities and even animals . . . in other words, our moral circles are getting bigger and bigger.

I liked his essay and I think that I got a lot out of it, for instance I didn't know that the favorite pass-tiime of 16th century Paris was cat-burning:

"In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, '[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized.'"

That's pretty sadistic. I'm sure there's some variability around the world as far as human and animal rights are concerned, but I can't imagine anyone wanting to do that today. I mean, no one's ever had to tell me that burning a cat was wrong. I've always kind of just assumed that cats had the right not to be burned alive and all. Well, anyways, if you are interested in the topic of the history of violence in humanity, definitely check out Pinker's essay!

what a week . . .

2007-03-25T13:13:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I have been slacking on the blog lately. What can I say? I guess my only defense is that this past week has just been really crazy for me. Most of my time has been devoted to finishing a big cognitive paper that was due on Thursday. And Friday I had to finish a Statistics mid-term. So I thought those tasks were a little bit more important than the blog. However, I don't have so many deadlines to make this coming week, so everything should go back to normal, somewhat anyways.

My cognitive paper was on the topic of the ability to perceive and work with numbers. It was really cool, and I learned a lot. So if I can find access to electronic articles that are open to the public, then I'll probably write a post or two on that topic. But right now it's awesome outside, so I'm going to enjoy the weather a little bit.

photo by explodingdog