Using Social Psychology to Stay Healthy

source

Imagine the following scenario. You learn that a family member has been diagnosed with an illness. This illness has a genetic basis and as such, you could be at risk for it as well. There is, however, a screening for the genetic marker, and you can find out whether you are likely to develop this illness. Do you complete the screening or do avoid it?

Though few of us will face this specific scenario, many of us will face something similar. Heart disease runs in many families, as do certain forms of cancer, thyroid problems, etc. If your sibling or a grandparent suffered from one of these, would you get screened as well? What about common illnesses? Again, heart disease is among the top killers worldwide. Have you ever had your heart checked out?

Health screening is an important part of disease prevention and control. Agencies, such as The American Cancer Society or The American Heart Association provide clear guidelines for who should get screened, and when. Doctors are well aware of these guidelines and encourage patients to get screened. Early detection can often prevent or slow the course of a disease. Nevertheless, many people ignore screening recommendations. WHY?

Happy Birthday, Psych Your Mind!

source

On this day last year, Psych Your Mind (PYM) was born.

The first post was a brief summary of our expectations for the future of this blog, and I must admit that we have exceeded those expectations. How you ask? Well, let me put the blog into perspective for you:

Why you might not like when others like you.

Source

Take a moment to think carefully about the answers to these questions:

Do you prefer when others dislike you?
Do you feel bad when you get positive feedback?
Do successes make you anxious?
Do you choose romantic partners that think poorly of you?

For many of you, these questions seem absurd, the answer a resounding no to all of them. Others, however, may be less sure. Why? Although common wisdom tells us that as humans we want, strive, and desperately need positive feedback from the social world, an intriguing psychological theory, backed by convincing experimental research, says that this is not always the case.

Self-verification theory, the brainchild of Bill Swann at the University of Texas, Austin, posits that despite the desire for social approval and praise people also have a deep-seated need to be seen in ways consistent with their self-views (see Swann, 1997 for review). This works well for individuals with positive self-views such as those with high self-esteem. These individuals like themselves, think that they are lovable, competent, and worthy and want others to see them favorably as well. Not surprising, right?

The theory gets more interesting, however, when considering individuals with negative self-views, such as those with low self-esteem or depressive symptoms. These individuals don't like themselves very much, and may consider themselves unlovable, incompetent or unworthy. Although you may be thinking that a person with such a negative self-image should be the most motivated to seek out positive feedback, self-verification theory argues to the contrary. It says that these individuals prefer that others see them just as unfavorably as they see themselves. What the heck?!

The power of red

source

Like most teenagers in suburbia I took a driver’s education class shortly after I earned my learner’s permit. Though I picked up critical driving tips, and got plenty of practice in the driver’s seat, one of the most interesting facts I learned concerned car insurance and the color red. According to my teacher, drivers with red cars had to pay higher insurance rates. Apparently this was due to the fact that people in red cars were more likely to speed. I’ve since learned that the relationship between red and speeding is actually a pervasive urban legend. Nevertheless, it piqued my interest in the association between color and behavior. Though red might not be associated with speeding, it has been found to relate to a variety of psychological processes and outcomes in both humans and non-human primates including dominance, competitive sports outcomes, achievement, and sexual attraction.

Want to become a wizard? Just read Harry Potter

source

I will never forget when the final installment of the Harry Potter series came out. Myself and a few of my closest friends from college, all big HP fans, were spending the weekend at my Mom’s house. Although I hadn’t seen these friends in 6 months, although there were a ton of activities to do in that region of upstate NY, although we were twenty five years old - we could not wait to see how J.K. Rowling was going to wrap up the series. The second we picked up the Deathly Hallows, we literally did not stop.  We lounged around all day, moving from the sun chairs outside, to the porch, to our beds, and back. We ate, we drank, we read. We barely talked. Parmita and I, the most determined, read straight through the night – 759 pages in total. It was a marathon, and let me tell you, it was well worth it.

Though the power of a good book is undeniable even to the lightest of readers, researchers have discovered some unexpected benefits from an engaging narrative. For example, people tend to feel less lonely after reading a familiar narrative, and even seek out comforting books after experiences of social rejection (Derrick, Gabriel, & Hugenberg, 2009). Narratives have been found to help develop social skills – they teach us rules that govern social interactions and help us to cultivate empathy (e.g. Mar & Oatley, 2008). In an interesting study published recently in Psychological Science, Shira Gabriel and Ariana Young even found that we actually feel like, or become, the characters of the book, and that this assumption of the characters’ identities makes us feel happier and more satisfied with our own lives. Here's the study...

Friday Fun: Take a (real) personality questionnaire!!

source

This post originally appeared back when PYM was just getting started. We thought our newer readers would be interested in this as well. Enjoy!

Many psychologists are interested in understanding personality – characteristics that can describe and explain how individuals think, feel, and behave across situations. Early work in the field of personality psychology sought to uncover the core dimensions on which people differ. To answer this question researchers looked to language as they believed that all of the important dimensions of personality must be described within a culture’s lexicon.

Researchers, like Gordon Allport, spent painstaking years going through the dictionary to identify traits words (those that describe personality) in the English language. Many of the words they identified were synonyms, however. For example, we can describe someone as gregarious or extraverted. Effectively these mean the same thing.

To deal with this overlap issue, researchers had participants rate themselves on all of the different trait words identified. Then they submitted participants’ responses to a fancy statistical procedure called factor analysis. This method identifies groups of words that hang together. For example, someone who scored high on extraversion would likely score high on gregariousness as well. Using this technique, researchers learned that there are five basic dimensions that underlie personality: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Supporters of this Big-Five Theory of Personality have since created personality questionnaires to measure where people fall on each of these dimensions. Now for the fun part. Want to know more about your own personality? Click here to take a Big-Five Personality questionnaire.

Happy Friday!

Women better at judging men’s sexual orientation near to ovulation

source

Living in the San Francisco Bay Area provides many benefits: good food, great activities, incredible landscape. For me, however, the Bay Area is SOO special, because it caters to a fabulously diverse array of residents. For example, each year San Franciscans can take to the streets to herald in spring during the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown, celebrate the beauty of leather during Folsom Street Fair, or stomp their feet and slap their thighs to the music at the completely free – Hardly, Strictly, Bluegrass. The variety of interests, cultures, traditions, and values in the Bay Area is a beautiful thing.

One interesting result of this diversity is that single, female San Franciscans are not often surprised when a man they’ve been eyeing all night, leaves the bar, with his boyfriend, not his girlfriend. San Francisco is, after all, home to The Castro - one of America’s first and arguably the best known, gay neighborhoods. Perhaps over the years women in San Franscisco have become especially adept at judging who is straight from who is gay (or who falls somewhere along the continuum). Interestingly, however, recent research has shown that women’s accuracy in judging male sexual orientation does fluctuate. Not by city (though someone should do that study) but instead by fertility (ability to conceive) across the menstrual cycle. Here’s the study…

Increase working memory, decrease alcohol consumption in problem drinkers

source

There are many theories about why individuals engage in heavy alcohol consumption. One general theory psychologists refer to is called the Dual Process Model. It holds that people have two different systems for processing information. The impulsive system automatically (quickly) evaluates stimuli in the environment in terms of emotion, and motivation, and (again quickly) pushes the individual to move toward or away from the stimuli. Alternatively, the reflective system focuses on long-term goals and personal standards but it is slower acting and requires more effort or energy. These two systems constantly battle for supremacy. In the case of drinking, if the impulsive system wins out an individual will likely consume cocktail after cocktail because the drink tastes good, or makes the person feel good. If the reflective system wins out, the individual will likely consume less, or not at all, knowing that in the long-run they will be healthier and happier if they avoid such excess.

The ability of the reflective system to win out, or override automatic impulses and maintain goal-directed action, is accomplished by, what psychologists call, executive functioning. Executive functioning includes a host of different cognitive functions such as planning, attention control, working memory (the ability to maintain and manipulate information), and response inhibition (the ability to override impulsive responses). Unfortunately, research has shown that these executive functions are often impaired in chronic drinkers. First, individuals who start out with poorer executive functioning are more prone to become chronic drinkers if they associate alcohol with feeling good. Even more, excessive drinking has been shown to further impair executive functions. This means that the more one drinks the harder it will be for them to stop drinking.

Though this sounds pretty dire, there have been a host of recent studies showing that executive functions like working memory and response inhibition can be trained. That means with practice people can become better at tipping the scale in favor of their long-term goals (the reflective system), rather than their automatic temptations (the impulsive system). Researcher Katrijn Houben and colleagues at Maastricht University and the University of Amsterdam, tested whether training executive functions, specifically working memory, could boost the supremacy of the reflective system, and thus help heavy drinkers to consume less alcohol.

Narcissists know they're narcissists

source

While positive self-views are generally considered healthy, adaptive, and attractive, OVERLY positive self-views often have social costs. For example, when I asked my friend’s boyfriend if his classes this semester were challenging, he responded as follows: “I’ve done better than EVERY OTHER student in EVERY SINGLE grad class that I’ve taken. I certainly don’t except my classes this semester to be a problem.” If you’re like me, this statement made you shudder. The sense of superiority and the overt “bragginess” screams creep. Again, if you’re like me, you aren’t surprised that I was less interested in a friendship with him the second he uttered the statement, and that when this statement was followed by similar statements later on, my friend quickly ended the relationship. Although I’m certainly not qualified to diagnose my friend’s boyfriend with any disorder, or to label him as a particular type of person, this attitude of superiority is consistent with narcissism, colloquially defined as an inflated sense of self-importance, egotism, vanity, and selfishness.

As this example demonstrates, there is often a large disconnect between narcissists’ self-perceptions (e.g. how positively he sees himself) and others’ perceptions of him (how positively his friends, coworkers, classmates, and acquaintances sees him). Interestingly, narcissists often create positive first impressions - they are initially rated as charming, likable, extraverted, and physically attractive (e.g. Back, Egloff, & Schmukle, 2010). However, overtime these impressions sour, with others progressively seeing them as disagreeable, emotionally unstable, and poorly adjusted (like my example above). Despite the deterioration of their reputation, narcissists often continue to see themselves in overly positive ways. This begs the question – are narcissists self aware? More precisely: do narcissists know that others don’t see them in such a positive light? Are they aware of their own negative characteristics? DO THEY KNOW THEY’RE NARCISSISTS?

Adversity: A path to vulnerability or resiliency? Depends on how much.

source

Throughout my life I’ve been lucky to be friends with a diverse array of people, who have had quite varied past experiences. There are those few friends with "charmed" lives. Healthy family, happy home, found "the one" with little difficulty. There are others who have experienced major past adversity. The loss of a parent, a debilitating rejection, chronic poverty. This variability has often made me wonder about the relationship between past experiences and whether one responds to current life adversity with with vulnerability or resiliency. If faced with a new crisis, who will display the resilient response – 1) my friend who has never experienced any adversity or 2) my friend who has experienced too much adversity. There are convincing arguments to be made for either case. My friend who never experienced adversity might have a strong social support network and a positive outlook on life, but might lack necessary skills and toughness needed to get through a traumatic event. My friend who experienced too much adversity might be stressed and depleted from their past experiences, but might have developed that toughness and those skills that my “charmed” friend lacks. So what’s the answer?

In 2010 Mark Seery, a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, along with colleagues Alison Holman and Roxane Cohen Silver tackled this question. Specifically they assessed whether past adversity is associated with 1) worse mental health and well-being outcomes overtime, and 2) how one responds to a recent adverse event.

You’re a psychologist, right? What do you mean you don’t see clients?!

source

Perhaps you, our most interested and involved reader, have taken a look at the “About the Bloggers/Researchers” section of Psych Your Mind (PYM). Here you learned that we’re either doctoral candidates (Amie, Juli, and I) or post doctoral scholars (Michael) in psychology. Like many of my friends and family, you might be confused about what that actually means. For example, when I tell people that I’m a psychologist, they naturally assume that I’m a therapist and see clients. Then, when I try to clarify, and explain that I’m actually a social-personality psychologist, not a clinical psychologist, I’m regularly greeted with a puzzled expression, and the question – “What the heck is that?”

Given that it’s Friday Fun, and you might be looking for a break from our (very) interesting, yet dense, research reviews, I thought I’d take a moment to step back and tell our readers a little more about us at Psych Your Mind.

Flexing the Muscle that is Self-Control

source

College was a busy time for me and by extension a trying period for my roommate Vanessa. Unlike the average 19 year old, Vanessa had assumed such adult-like habits as washing dishes directly after eating a meal, making regular trips to take out the trash, and refusing to live with scum and filth in general (God forbid). These healthy habits were by no means my own. I was just learning how to balance the demands of my two priorities: a heavy workload at NYU and a debaucherous social life. When I came home from a long day at the library I was overwhelmed and exhausted. The last thing I had time or energy for was cleaning up after myself. Instead I wanted to simply unwind and relax in preparation for a night out in New York. I drove poor Vanessa mad!

You might assume from this introduction, that Vanessa and I have long since parted ways; that my dirty habits so turned her off from a friendship with me, that when our first year together was over, she quickly moved on to greener and cleaner pastures. Surprisingly, that’s not the case at all. Vanessa and I continued to live together for the better part of college, and to this day remain extremely close friends. While much of that is due to our particular “chemistry,” some of it should be attributed to the evolution of my cleaning habits. As college wore on Vanessa taught me how to be a good roommate, and with repeated practice I became much more able to follow a day studying with a night cleaning. How was I able to build these roommate duties into a routine that was just as work heavy and party heavy as before? The answer is quite nicely explained by Roy Baumeister’s “strength model of self-control.” For a great summary check out Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007. Let me outline the basic components of this theory…

Reflection without Rumination

sourc

After we go through a painful experience – a conflict with a friend, a break-up, a loss, we face a conundrum. On the one hand, reflection on the experience is essential. It allows us to gain insight, to understand the experience in new and important ways, to get over it. Yet, what once was healthy reflection can often turn into rumination – a toxic preoccupation with the experience that fosters negative emotion. In fact, rumination is believed to contribute to depressive episodes (e.g. Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991). The question thus remains - how can we reflect on negative memories from the past, without ruminating about them?

My (awesome) advisor at UC Berkeley, Ozlem Ayduk, tackled this question with Ethan Kross, her collaborator at the University of Michigan. In their research Ayduk and Kross contrast thinking about painful memories of this nature, from either a first- or a third-person perspective. When we think about the event from a first-person perspective, we put ourselves right back in our own shoes, and relive the event as if it was happening to us all over again. Ayduk and Kross hypothesized that this “self-immersed” perspective increases negative emotion and the likelihood of ruminating. Alternatively, when we think about an event from a third-person perspective, we see everything unfold from afar; as if we are a fly on the wall or a distant observer of what’s happening. Ayduk and Kross hypothesized that this “self-distanced” perspective, allows an individual to gain insight or meaning without reliving the negative emotions they experienced when the event first occurred. Thinking about the meaning of the event rather than rehashing the details of what they experienced or felt at the time allows for reflection without rumination.

Boosting self-esteem - Putting the partner within reach

source

In my last post I described a manipulation that was successful in boosting low self-esteem. Denise Marigold and colleagues directed participants to think less about the details of a partner’s compliment and more about the significance of the partner’s words. This compliment reframing catalyzed both an improvement in relationship satisfaction for individuals with low self-esteem, and an increase in self-esteem itself. Today I’d like to continue this thread with another set of successful interventions targeting changes in self-esteem.

Sandra Murray, a professor at the State University of New York – Buffalo, argues that because individuals with low self-esteem see themselves in such a negative light, they often feel inferior to their relationship partners. Given the discrepancy between their self-views (sucky) and their views of their partner (awesome) they often have a hard time 1) understanding why their partner wants to be with them, and 2) believing that their partner is truly committed to them. Murray calls this a state of “felt insecurity,” and has found that it’s associated with self-protective behaviors that eventually undermine relationship functioning (Murray, Holmes, & Collins, 2006).

To change this process, Murray and colleagues (2005) conducted two interventions that tried to reduce feelings of inferiority by pointing to 1) strengths in the self, and 2) flaws in the partner. She believed that “putting the partner within reach” would alleviate rejection concerns, increase felt security, and by extension boost self-esteem. Here’s what she did…

Boosting Self-Esteem

source

Last week I presented research that evaluated the efficacy of positive self-statements (a form of affirmations) for changing self-esteem. Contrary to their reputation in pop-culture, Joanne Wood and colleagues found that positive self-statements backfire for participants low in self-esteem. When these participants repeated the statement “I am lovable” throughout a study session, they ended up being in a worse mood, and reporting even lower self-esteem than if they didn’t use the affirmation at all. While neither the role of motivation, nor the long-term impact of repeating positive self-statements were assessed (thanks readers for addressing these points in the comments last week), this study gave at least preliminary evidence that positive self-statements may not be an effective strategy for changing self-esteem. So what is?

Over the next few weeks, I’d like to present you with a variety of intervention studies that have been successful in boosting self-esteem. These studies use a range of approaches (some surprising), yet they all have one thing in common. They’re subtle. They don’t knock participants over the head with outrageous information. Telling someone that they’re lovable when they just don’t feel it, doesn’t seem to work. Here’s what does…

Study 1: Reframing Compliments

Denise Marigold, a professor at Renison University College, conducted an intervention study to change the way individuals with low self-esteem think about compliments from their romantic partners, and by extension boost self-esteem (Marigold, Holmes, & Ross, 2007). According to Marigold, individuals with low self-esteem 1) play down the importance of their partner’s compliments in order to avoid the hurt and pain it will cause them if it turns out that their partner does not really love them after all, and 2) worry that these compliments reflect partner’s expectations, expectations that they might not be able to live up to, thereby increasing the chance of rejection when the truth about them comes out. This inability to accept compliments in a healthy way then serves as a perpetuating factor in their vulnerability in that none of the “good stuff” gets inside. Marigold believed that overcoming the tendency of low self-esteem individuals to distrust compliments from their partner would help them feel better about themselves and thus boost their self-esteem.

Friday Fun? See a clip of the classic Bobo Doll experiment

source

Introductory psychology courses almost always include a lecture or two on Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory. This theory proposes that individuals learn social behavior by observing and imitating others. The theory has been applied most particularly to the learning of aggressive behavior.

In the classic “Bobo Doll” experiment child participants observed an adult interact aggressively with a plastic, blow-up doll. The adult hit the doll, kicked it, and even pummeled it with a mallet. Subsequently, each child was allowed to play with the doll. Children that observed the adult’s aggressive behavior toward the doll, behaved with similar forms of aggression. Children in a control condition, that did not view this aggressive modeling, did not play with the doll in an aggressive manner. This research suggests that children learn aggressive behavior, at least in part, by imitating parents, other adults, or peers behaving in this way.

Take a look at the following clip to see (somewhat disturbing) footage from the Bobo Doll experiment:

What do you think of this study? How else might aggressive behavior be learned?

Positive Affirmations: Friend or Foe?

source

This morning I conducted a search for “positive affirmations” on amazon.com. These are positive statements individuals repeat to themselves in order to impress the message on their subconscious, convince themselves of the statement’s validity, and by extension bring about positive change. The website popped out 615 books relevant to positive affirmations. This tells me that 1) people are clearly writing about positive affirmations, and 2) if such an abundance of books on positive affirmations are getting published, clearly readers are out there buying the books and employing these affirmations in their everyday lives. 

While positive affirmations are used to bring change on many fronts, from money making, to weight loss, to public speaking, today I’m going to focus solely on positive self-statements, which are affirmations made about the self and are designed to boost positive self-feelings or self-esteem. For example, an individual with more negative self-views, or low self-esteem, might practice looking in a mirror and saying: “I am lovable” or “I am a good person worthy of love and affection.”  These positive self-statements, if repeated over time, are presumed to convince the individual that the statements are true and by extension boost the individual’s self-esteem.

Although positive self-statements are encouraged by self-help books across the globe, there has been limited scientific research evaluating their efficacy in actually producing the boosts in self-esteem they are designed to achieve. In 2009, however, Dr. Joanne Wood, a researcher at the University of Waterloo in Canada, tackled this question in a series of two studies (Wood, Perunovic, & Lee, 2009).

How to get to the gym when you would rather sit on the couch.

source

For months now a good friend has been trying to convince me to run a half marathon with him. Each time the conversation comes up I casually change the subject, check my phone for new messages, or look him in the face and say “heck no.”  Why am I resistant to such a healthful, fun, and challenging event?

I have two reasons. First, I am by no means in shape. I get winded after five minutes at a light jog. The thought that my sorry body could take me 13 miles is unfathomable and probably unrealistic (at least at the moment). Second, and perhaps more importantly, I have no willpower when it comes to exercise. No matter how many times I begin a regular routine of pilates, or yoga, or tennis, within a few weeks I have fallen off the wagon. While I think a half marathon is a little much given my current fitness level, I have promised this friend that I will start going on regular runs with him as he trains for the event. This time, however, I am making the goal to stick with it. But the question is…HOW?

To get started, I can form a goal intention, which is simply labeling my goal, or putting it into words. In this case my goal intention is “I want to run regularly each week.” Every day I can remind myself of my goal intention with the hopes that those reminders will be enough to get me to the track. Will my goal intention help me? Will it overcome that issue I have with willpower and exercise? Unfortunately I don’t think so. Each day I can easily put off my goal and claim I'll do my running the next day, or the day after that.
   
Instead, I am going to use an implementation intention to achieve my goal of regular running. Implementation intentions are a strategy psychologists have developed for goal pursuit (e.g. Gollwitzer, 1993). They have been shown to deliver results! Implementation intentions specify the where, when, and in what way a person should implement their goal. They do this by linking a very specific cue or situation to a very specific response. For example, my implementation intention is “When the clock hits five on Mondays and Thursdays, I will change into my exercise gear and go for my run.”

How does the implementation intention work?

One cookie or Two: Part 3

source

Today I will wrap up this mini-series on delay of gratification. What have you learned from parts 1 and 2? Delay of gratification is the ability to forgo an immediate, but less desirable reward, in order to receive a more desirable reward later. This ability is measured in childhood using the classic paradigm developed by Walter Mischel: Kids try to wait for two treats instead of having one immediately. Finally, you learned that performance during the delay task in childhood relates to important developmental outcomes in later life, such as social competence, well-being, drug use, and SAT scores.

I’d like to conclude with some evidence on what helps or hurts a child’s chances of successfully waiting during the task. Remember, how long kids wait in childhood predicts important future functioning. If we want to help kids develop or cultivate delay of gratification ability in early life we can’t just say “wait for two cookies!” We need to give them tangible strategies to work with.

To identify which strategies help, researchers conducted experiments in which they modified tiny parts of the delay task and measured how these modifications impacted the amount of time children could wait. For a great review of these studies check out Mischel, Shoda, and Rodriguez (1989).

One cookie or two: Part 2

source

Last week I introduced you to work on delay of gratification – the ability to forgo an immediate, but less desirable reward, in order to obtain a more desirable reward later on. I described the way psychologists assess delay of gratification in childhood – with the famous delay (a.k.a. “marshmallow”) task.

If you didn’t read the prior post, or can’t remember the task, take a look back before reading on. A quick reminder…a child waits A LONG TIME, ALONE, with NOTHING TO DO, in order to receive two treats rather than have just one treat immediately. The amount of time the child can wait serves as the measure of delay of gratification ability.

As I already mentioned, this task seems pretty ridiculous (albeit awesome to watch). Yet, I promised to describe “…all the cool and important outcomes behavior during this task predicts.” I will get to those outcomes today. 

First let me provide a little historical context:
There are few psychology majors, and almost no psychology graduate students or professors who haven’t heard of Walter Mischel. In addition to his groundbreaking work on personality, Mischel created the delay of gratification task that I’ve described. Mischel’s original work on delay of gratification focused on understanding the features of the task that helped or hurt a child’s chances of waiting. For example, can children wait longer when the treats are sitting right in front of them or when they are covered? (What did he find? I’ll get to that in my next post)

In addition to this experimental research, Mischel was curious about whether individual differences in performance on the delay task relates to functioning in later life. Is this task capturing something about a child that is important and long-lasting? To answer this question, Mischel followed a group of participants overtime. These committed participants (and their parents) have completed various follow up assessments between the late 1960’s and early 1970’s (when they first completed the task) through to the present.