Ampelmann: A traffic sign turned cult figure

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During the past month, I have been living in Germany and conducting research at the University of Hamburg. It has been an amazing opportunity! I visited Berlin last weekend and came across a pretty unique phenomenon: a city-wide obsession with a traffic sign! It seemed like everywhere I went, I saw stores dedicated to selling merchandise featuring the “Ampelmann” (translated as “traffic light man” in German) and restaurants selling food in the shape of the Ampelmann. Berliners love him, and even celebrities like Dennis Quaid have been spotted rocking Ampelmann t-shirts. How do you get a traffic signal to become a cult figure? You ask a psychologist to design it, of course! Though the Ampelmann wasn’t intended to be such a beloved and popular symbol of Berlin, its story is a fun look at how psychology is behind even the simplest and most mundane aspects of life.

Sunscreen slows wrinkles: Will this evidence increase the use of sunscreen?

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This week, new research was released suggesting that sunscreen not only reduces the risk for skin cancer, but that it also slows skin aging. In this study, people who were told to use sunscreen daily had fewer lines and less coarse skin after four years than those who used it as they normally would. I’ve seen this study all over the news (here, here, and here)! Though doctors say they have long been telling patients that sunscreen protects against skin aging, they are now excited to have solid evidence to support their claims and are hopeful this will encourage people to use sunscreen more often.

Why don't people evacuate before storms?

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As a Manhattan resident, this past week my life has been dominated by one event: Hurricane Sandy. Fortunately, unlike tornadoes or earthquakes, hurricanes allow time for people to prepare. In the hours leading up to this hurricane, government officials issued mandatory evacuations for residents of coastal areas that were likely to be hit hardest. Residents were urged to seek shelter with friends and relatives or utilize one of numerous shelters opened (some with transportation included). Despite government officials pleading with citizens to evacuate dangerous areas, many decided to stay.

For some during Hurricane Sandy, the decision to stay had tragic and costly consequences. At least 14 of the people who died in Staten Island were found in evacuation zones. In areas such as Long Island’s South Shore, some people panicked as the storm got worse, putting volunteer first responders in harm’s way. And in the hours after the storm, rescue workers ventured into some of the most devastated areas to retrieve residents who had been stranded.

"She Asked For It": The Destructive Impact of Rape Mythology

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A U.S. congressman and senate candidate recently made headlines for his comments about the link between rape and pregnancy. "If it's a legitimate rape," he said in a TV interview, "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down" (you can watch the full interview here). This statement has been criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike, as it suggests not only that women who become pregnant from rape were likely not in fact raped, but also, more broadly, that some forms of rape are not "legitimate." The congressman has since apologized for his remarks, saying that he misspoke, but the belief system reflected in his words may be more pervasive than we realize. Although most of us are taught that rape is wrong, we are also exposed throughout our lives to ideas about rape that are both inaccurate and harmful. These rape myths, as they are called, can directly or indirectly serve to excuse perpetrators and blame victims, and psychologists have found that they may also increase the likelihood that individuals will commit rape.

Honor Killings and the People Who Love Them

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A husband shoots his wife in the back nine times with a rifle as neighbors watch and cheer. The first four shots shake her body as it falls to the ground. He hears the crowds’ encouragement and shoots her corpse again and again. The onlookers return to their lives and he is exalted as an honorable man. 

While these actions are close to unimaginable, reporters speculate that this is the story behind a recently circulated execution video from Kabul, Afghanistan. Here, as in a handful of countries, infidelity by women is punishable by death. In many other parts of the world, suspicions of infidelity lead to culturally condoned violence.

This violence is often perpetuated, endorsed, and watched by the friends and relatives of the victim. Lest we recoil and think this is a rare reaction from people who live far away and pray to a different God, I’d like to remind us that we are all made of the same human material and it wasn’t long ago that public executions were the social event of the week in much of Europe. It is also this same human nature that constructs gender inequality across all cultures and perpetuates domestic violence in the most “civilized” echelons of society.

Call Me Crazy: The Subtle Power of Gaslighting

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Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over, but had me believing it was always something that I'd done, sings Kimbra in Gotye's "Somebody that I used to know." In psychology, this phenomenon is called "gaslighting," a term that has its origins in a 1938 play (and a 1940 film) called Gas Light, where a man leads his wife to believe that she is insane in order to steal from her. When she notices strange events, such as the gas light dimming that occurs when he turns on the lights in the attic to search for her collection of jewels, he tells her it's just her imagination. His goal is to remove her credibility so that her complaints can be attributed to her psychosis, rather than to his misdeeds. Gaslighting is now used to refer to any attempt to make another person doubt their sense of reality.

The Psychology of Hazing

Paddle to the back side - a classic hazing strategy

Would you join a new club if you knew it meant you had to sing an embarrassing song in public, do someone else’s laundry for them, or make prank phone calls? What if joining the club meant that you had to lay still as someone poured boiling water over you, drink alcohol until you threw up, eat dog food, have your physical flaws marked with red pen, or go on an elephant walk? I imagine most of us are strongly shaking our heads “no” as we read this second list of horrors. Yet each year people knowingly join Greek houses, sports teams, the military and other groups in which hazing new members is a long held tradition. As long ago as 1684, students were getting expelled for hazing, and many laws have been put into place to eradicate the practice, yet to this day we continue to see news coverage of horrific hazing rituals gone bad. Why can’t we get rid of hazing?

Psychological contagion? The mysterious case of LeRoy, NY

LeRoy, NY

In a small country town, population 7,500, a cheerleader and honor roll student woke up from an afternoon nap to discover she had developed a stutter. Soon, the stutter gave way to uncontrollable twitching. When her mother took her to the doctor, they discovered that she wasn’t the only one with these symptoms - in all, 14 teenage girls, one teenage boy, and one 36 year-old woman had recently developed Tourettes-like symptoms. The local doctors diagnosed the mysterious illness as “conversion disorder,” a disorder in which mental and emotional stress literally plays out in physical symptoms. Sound like the plot of a bad TV movie? Perhaps. But it’s also the latest happenings in LeRoy, New York, where sixteen people suddenly developed twitching, facial tics and vocal outbursts last October, 15 of whom attended the same high school. 

The Bachelor: A modern-day replication of the Stanford Prison Experiment?

Bachelor Ben and his ladies.

In 1971 a group of Stanford researchers led by psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted what became a famous study of the power of  deindividuating situations. Within only six days, twenty-four seemingly normal, psychologically healthy participants were transformed into sadistic prison guards and dejected, emotionally unstable prisoners who came to voluntarily tolerate the abuse that was inflicted on them.

Thirty-one years later, the first episode of "The Bachelor" was aired on ABC. During the show, twenty-five single women compete for the affections of one man (with the reverse in "The Bachelorette") as they travel to scenic destinations, ride in lots of helicopters and boats, and enjoy lavish accommodations. What could the Stanford Prison Experiment possibility have to do with a fun, light-hearted reality show? A lot, it turns out.

What do Halloween and Social Psychology have in common? Deindividuation, of course

Cute trick-or-treaters or mahem-makers?

As the children take to the streets tonight in search of a trick-or-treat, you might be wondering the best way to protect your house from some heavy candy-looting. In 1976, Ed Diener and his colleagues asked a similar question, though they were more interested in the conditions that prompted trick-or-treaters to overindulge and take more than they should. Halloween is a holiday which encourages people to dress up in costumes and roam the streets in large groups - the perfect recipe for deindividuation. Deindividuation occurs when people’s own sense of individuality is diminished and can result in antisocial behaviors. Diener used Halloween as an opportunity to research how anonymity, group size, and feelings of responsibility influence people’s willingness to steal extra candy and money. 

The scene: Imagine that you come up to a house with a table, on one side is a bowl full of individually wrapped bite-sized candy bars, about 2 feet away on the other side is a bowl full of pennies and nickels. Nearby is a decorative backdrop with a peep hole that camouflages an unobtrusive observer. When you arrive at the door, a woman you have never met greets you.

The power of the police uniform: An instinct to obey authority

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I am still processing the horrific events that happened as part of the horrific terrorist attacks in Norway last Friday. Reading over the news reports, I can only try to fathom the terror felt by the youth on the island of Utoya as they ran, pleaded, and swam for their lives. How did this happen? How did the shooter manage to talk his way onto an island that is accessible only by boat? Fairly easily it seems, since he was dressed up like a policeman.

"We greeted him as we got off the ferry," said a student who was leaving Utøya just as Anders Behring Breivik, dressed as a police officer, was boarding the boat for the island. "We thought it was great how quickly the police had come to reassure us of our safety because we had heard of the bombing in Oslo."

The youth on the island gathered easily around the man in a police uniform wearing two guns. After all, people in police uniforms are seen as more competent, reliable, intelligent, helpful, honest, valuable, and possessing better judgment (Mauro, 1984; Singer & Singer, 1985). And Breivik is not alone in his manipulation of the police uniform. There are reports all over the web of fake policemen, many of whom receive instinctive obedience, including this particularly disturbing report of a boss who sexually harassed an employee at the behest of a phone call from “Officer Scott.”  Evidence from psychological research, such as Milgram’s study, shows that we have an instinct to obey authority, especially when we have little time to think through our choices, and it appears that the police uniform is a particularly potent symbol of authority.

But that’s not all! The art (and science) of persuasion

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When I was in elementary school, there was a brief period where I was a member of the Campfire Kids (imagine a knockoff Girls Scouts where boys were allowed to join too). And of course, like the Girl Scouts, every year we had our candy drive. What candy I couldn’t unload on my dad’s coworkers, I’d try to sell door to door. As part of my pitch, I got to let them know that if they bought a box of candy, they’d also be getting a coupon to the local pizza place! Little did I know that I was practicing an age-old persuasion technique called “That’s-Not-All.” 

For today’s post, I am going to let you in on some of the most commonly used persuasion techniques that people employ to get what they want. In fact you may have been using these techniques for years without even realizing it. Hopefully this will help you put a name to the technique, and prevent you from falling prey the next time a salesperson (even that cute little girl trying to sell you candy) tries to use one on you. Or, in a more evil moment, you may find yourself employing one of these techniques to ensure that you get what you want.