Psych Your Mind

Can Mitt Romney connect with the working-class voter?

2012-03-05T15:32:00.002-08:00

Mitt Romney (source)

During a US Presidential campaign it is common practice for a candidate to engage in some form of impression management. For instance, in 2008 many media outlets thought John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as a Vice Presidential candidate was a move to boost McCain's image as a "Maverick" candidate. For similar reasons, Bill Clinton played saxophone live on the Arsenio Hall Show during the 1992 campaign. In these examples, candidates tend to create public personas that convey their similarity to average Americans (who tended to be younger, less wealthy/educated, and hipper than the candidates themselves).

This practice is still true in the 2012 US Presidential election: Candidates attempt to manage their public persona, to appear similar to the younger, working/middle class Americans that make up a majority of the voters in the election. Importantly, given that the country is just starting to recover from an economic recession, it is critical for candidates to appear that they understand and empathize with the average working-class American. The Republican Presidential hopefuls have varied widely in their ability to convey their understanding for working-class Americans. Perhaps the most successful candidate has been Ron Paul: One of the pillars of Paul's campaign has been putting an end to government practices that favor the elite. The least successful in my view has been Mitt Romney.

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Friday Fun: Birth Order and Romantic Compatibility

2012-03-02T02:17:00.008-08:00

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Research suggests that the order in which you were born, relative to your siblings, plays a role in shaping your personality -- older siblings tend to be more traditional and dominant, middle-borns more sociable and attention-seeking, and younger siblings more rebellious and unconventional. These differences are theorized to stem from sibling competition and the need to occupy different "niches" in order to shine and gain parental favor (e.g., the overachiever, the entertainer, the party animal, the artist, etc). Less is known about how these differences impact romantic relationships -- there is plenty of pop psychology on this topic, but not much empirical research. However, in the spirit of Friday Fun, here are some suggestive findings on this topic (and my perhaps overzealous interpretations of them) to help you figure out whether you and your partner are a match made in birth-order heaven:
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Freudian defense mechanisms: The good, the bad, and the ugly

2012-02-29T00:18:00.000-08:00

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Freud had some weird ideas, but he also had some brilliant ones. Along with Freudian slips, one of my favorites is his classification of ego defense mechanisms, which was further elaborated by his daughter Anna and by other psychoanalysts. Defense mechanisms refer to unconscious strategies that protect us from threats to our self-esteem and other sources of anxiety. Not all defenses are created equal, however - some are more likely to take us down the road to psychosis, whereas others can help us live happy, productive lives. Psychiatrist George Vaillant more recently classified the defense mechanisms into a hierarchy ranging from pathological to immature to neurotic to mature. Here are some highlights from each level:
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Is trust Jeremy Lin's secret weapon?

2012-02-27T09:15:00.002-08:00

Vintage Linsanity, circa 2006 (source)

“It’s just us, being us, playing for us.” –Jeremy Lin

I’ve got a confession to make: I’ve caught the Linsanity along with everyone else. It’s only been two weeks, but in that time former Harvard point guard Jeremy Lin has transformed a failed Knicks season into the most compelling storyline in the NBA. And make no mistake, Jeremy Lin is at the very center of this transformation.

But what is it about Lin that has transformed the Knicks’ season? An astute statistician might say it is his on-court production: Lin has been scoring, hustling, dealing out assists, navigating the pick-and-roll, and hitting open shots better than any Knick point guard since, well, since I can remember. That is definitely part of the equation. But a single player does not make an effective basketball team. When I watch the Knicks these days, I see something else about Jeremy Lin that makes me believe that his influence goes beyond simple numbers: His teammates trust him.

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Placing Trust in God and Nation

2012-02-22T08:00:00.002-08:00

Guest blogger Olga Antonenko is back with another great post! This time she's talking about the link between God and government.

Does the universe have meaning and structure? Is there some kind of force or power that controls events and preserves order in our lives?

These may seem like questions for philosophers or theologians, but some social psychologists have chimed in with their own evidence-based opinions. Their answer is a resounding … “Well, people certainly think so!”

Most people live with the assumption that there is an order and reason underlying the things that happen in the universe. In fact, it could be said that one of the larger cognitive motivators in life is the preservation of that belief. Without this sense of order, we would be left with a terrifying and chaotic existence in which a terrible fate could befall us at any time.

Some may argue that this chaotic view of life is closer to reality than any sense of meaning or order. We do, indeed, live a life in which something terrible can happen at any moment for no reason. Innocent people die every day and horrendous criminals get away with terrible acts. Senseless natural disasters befall thousands of people every year. So, is this sense of stability and rationality a false hope held by the feeble minded among us? Probably not.

In the face of senseless tragedies, we feel a sense of anger, injustice, and confusion. These reactions are quick and automatic. They indicate that, at our core, we all feel that the things that happen need to have a reason. The deaths of innocent people don’t pass without notice. It shakes our internal sense of order, which needs to be restored.

While many of us look inside ourselves for a sense of stability, we also look for external sources of order. Today, I want to talk about two sources of stability that many people rely on – God and government.

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The Psychology of Hazing

2012-02-20T11:34:00.004-08:00

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?

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Can your phone cure depression?

2012-02-15T00:27:00.000-08:00

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After years of resistance to the smartphone craze, I reluctantly accepted an iphone as a gift last month. I instantly fell in love.

Aside from the obvious convenience of having constant access to email, what I really love are the apps. I love that I can check bus schedules, look up recipes on the go, and take vintage-y looking pictures (thanks Maya!). But as a psychologist, I'm especially excited by the idea that apps can be used in the service of mental health and well-being.

For example:

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Valentine's Day Special: An Insider's Guide to Speed Dating

2012-02-12T22:06:00.000-08:00

This week's guest blogger is Maya Kuehn, a fellow graduate student at UC Berkeley. We're thrilled to have this talented researcher and writer contribute to the blog. In this post she'll be discussing research on speed dating.

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To my never-ending delight, being a social psychologist can sometimes make me feel like I have an insider’s guide to social life. When I discovered that two dear friends of mine were about to try speed dating for the first time, I couldn’t help offering some (yes, unsolicited) terribly handy research-based advice: “Be selective! They’ll like you more if you don’t show interest in everybody.” My random tip amused my friends, but my outburst didn’t do justice to the scope of research done on speed dating in our field in recent years. For you, dear readers, just in time for Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d provide a quick and dirty guide to the basics of what goes down in speed dating interactions.

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First, a bit of background: speed dating began in the late 90’s in LA, and has rapidly spread since. In a typical session people participate in a round-robin series of interactions, meeting each eligible partner for a 3-8 minute speed date and rating interest in them afterwards. If two people indicate mutual interest (i.e., match), each is provided with his or her match’s contact info. The super short format of these dates lets people make rapid decisions about each other’s eligibility as a mate, and as such provides a rich microcosm of the first impression and romantic attraction dynamics psychologists have speculated about and researched for decades. As you might expect, our field has started studying speed dating interactions to distill the basic elements of initial interpersonal attraction. So what have we found?

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Friday Fun: One Researcher's P-Curve Analysis

2012-02-09T23:36:00.000-08:00

It's Me!

Two weeks ago when PYM was at the annual conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, I went to a symposium about false-positive findings in psychology (see my summary here). In the symposium, the speakers discussed the prevalence of research practices that result in biased statistical testing. In that symposium, one of the researchers, Uri Simonsohn, presented a method for catching people who engage in these practices: the P-curve analysis. What follows is a p-curve analysis of one researcher/blogger: Michael W. Kraus!
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Psychological contagion? The mysterious case of LeRoy, NY

2012-02-08T08:28:00.000-08:00

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.

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Good Stress vs. Bad Stress: How Stress can Impair or Improve Performance

2012-02-06T09:16:00.002-08:00

Some people thrive during stress

Today features another superb guest blog on Psych-Your-Mind! In this post Kate Reilly, outstanding first year graduate student at New York University, discusses how some forms of stress can paradoxically be good for one's performance. Read on!

Imagine times in your life when you felt stress – a job interview, a first date, a piano recital, or a championship soccer game. It’s no wonder you may have felt stress in these situations: They are meaningful, they require effort to achieve success, and they involve evaluation by others. Each of these factors can contribute to feelings of uneasiness and anxiety.

The question is: how do these feelings of stress impact performance?

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Friday Fun: A few simple tricks for healthier eating

2012-02-03T11:12:00.000-08:00

Who could resist?

Confession: Today I ate three cookies. Not because I particularly wanted them, but because they were there. I could be a case study for Brian Wansink’s book “Mindless Eating: Why we eat more than we should.” Wansink was one of the invited speakers at SPSP 2012 and he and his colleagues, such as David Just, apply psychology and behavioral economics to food marketing. They use experiments to answer questions such as, “Why do we eat more than we should?” and “How do we get kids to pick healthier food in the school cafeteria?”

Here are a few of their scientifically-backed tips for making healthier food choices. Many of these tips have been put in place in lunchrooms as part of their “Smarter Lunchrooms Initiative,” but I think they can also be adapted for use at home, particularly if you are struggling with a child who has very particular food preferences.

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

2012-02-02T02:23:00.001-08:00

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.
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SPSP 2012: Poster Highlights

2012-01-29T23:52:00.000-08:00

Not actually SPSP but the closest I could find

As Amie said in a previous post, SPSP poster sessions are like your "elementary school science fair, but all grown up and on steroids." With over 2,000 posters spanning topics ranging from the psychology of political ideology to the link between rejection and health to the dynamics of cheating behavior, it's easy to become overwhelmed. In recent years, posters in a given subject area (e.g., "Emotion") are grouped together within each session, which helps people peruse more efficiently. Though sometimes it's nice just to wander through the aisles and see what jumps out. Here are ten findings that stood out to me in this weekend's poster sessions:
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SPSP 2012: Social Relationships Round-up

2012-01-28T16:25:00.000-08:00

Here at SPSP 2012 I’ve been enjoying the sunny, warm weather, eating more than I should and sleeping less, and gathering interesting tidbits of information about social relationships from across the talks and posters that I’ve seen. Here are a few of the findings that stood out to me:

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SPSP 2012: How does culture change over time?

2012-01-28T16:00:00.000-08:00

Today's "Cultural Change Over Time" symposium was a perfect example of why I enjoy SPSP so much: The talks involved (1) compelling research questions answered using (2) innovative methods. Anyway, the general question the researchers of this symposium attempted to answer was "How can we tell if culture is changing across time?" The answers might surprise you!

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SPSP 2012: Watchdogs, Witch-hunts, and What to do about False-Positive Findings

2012-01-27T23:47:00.000-08:00

In a recent trend, the field of social-personality psychology has become sensitive to the data reporting and analytic strategies that go into the publication of a research paper. Today at the “False Positive Findings are Frequent Findable and Fixable” symposium at SPSP the three speakers presented some very polarizing observations about this trend in our field.

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SPSP 2012: Oxytocin, Threat, and the “Mama Bear Effect”

2012-01-26T19:50:00.000-08:00

“Oxytocin may be critically involved in both ethnocentrism and parochial altruism.”

-Carsten de Dreu, University of Amsterdam

Long called the “Love Hormone,” the hormone oxytocin has been implicated for more than a decade in such prosocial activities as empathy, trust, and generosity (with both human and animal models). At the social neuroendocrinology pre-conference at this year’s SPSP conference, some influential researchers in the field of social psychology laid out why oxytocin might also have another side that is less fuzzy, and more defensive.

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SPSP Conference: Where social and personality psychologists come to gather

2012-01-23T12:15:00.000-08:00

Sunny San Diego

In just a few days Anna, Juli, Michael and I, as well as thousands of other social and personality psychologists, will descend on San Diego, California for the festivities known as the annual conference for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). For two full days we will be fully steeped in the world of social and personality psychology. What exactly does fully steeped mean? Well, from 8:15am until 7:45pm there will be approximately 11 symposia per hour (each symposium is composed of four 15 minute talks on a particular topic) for a total of 9 hours across the two days, in addition to special speeches scattered throughout the days and seven poster sessions with several hundred posters on display at each session (picture your elementary school science fair, but all grown up and on steroids). If that's not enough, there are meetings with mentors, evening networking sessions, and on the day before the conference begins, there is a full day of "preconferences" on particular topics in the field. For example, I know people attending preconferences on topics as varied as close relationships, emotion, humor, and the self and identity.

This annual conference is a bit of a whirlwind but its a chance to hear about recent research in the field, catch up with old friends, network with new ones, and share your own research findings. Although this conference focuses on social and personality psychology, the talks are still on a wide variety of topics. For example, here are a few random symposia titles selected from the schedule:

"Moral Ironies"
"Every Rose has its Thorns: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Relationships"
"Menstrual Cycle Effects on Women's Mate Preferences? Critical Perspectives"
"'A Christian Nation' Facing the 21st Century: How Religion Shapes Modern America, and its Role in a Changing Society"
"The Consequences of Being Low on the Totem Pole: Deprivation, Status, and Resource Choices"
"Latino Culture and the Shaping of Social and Personality Processes"
"Money as a Motivator: From Brain to Behavior"

Although I haven't counted each and every talk, some simple multiplication leads me to conclude that are probably more than 500 individual talks being given during the conference. This means that many talks are going at once and you can't possibly see all of them (unless of course you were Hermione Granger and had a time-turner). Most people sit down with the conference schedule ahead of time and map out their own personal schedule for the weekend, picking which talks and posters are must-attends in each session. And when all of your favorite talks are at the same time? Well you just hope you wore comfortable shoes so you can run from one end of the conference hotel to the other.

A glance at an SPSP Poster Session

So why am I telling you all of this, besides to invoke a bit of sympathy for how tired we will all be by Sunday morning? To let you know that its not going to be a normal week here at Psych Your Mind. We've decided to forgo our usual posts this week in order to do a semi "live-blogging" from the SPSP conference. We are not entirely sure what this will look like, but likely it will end up being each of us posting one or two brief write-ups summarizing the talks we heard that day, highlighting interesting or favorite findings, or merely complaining about the sheer enormity of the entire event (okay, less likely to be that last one, I'll save that for the personal blog). We may also be tweeting one-liners if we hear an interesting tidbit or attend a particularly cutting-edge talk that we just can't wait to tell the world about. So keep checking back with us here at PYM all weekend long (starting Thursday)!

If you'd like to find out more about the conference, you can go to the website here or check out their schedule here.

Any questions about the SPSP Conference? Any particular talks or topics you want us to blog about? Perhaps some words of comfort?

Do Positive Emotions Shape Our Health?

2012-01-18T00:19:00.000-08:00

This post continues our tradition of guest blogs on Psych-Your-Mind! Here, Elizabeth Hopper-- graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara-- discusses the possibility that positive emotions might matter a lot for your health. Read on!

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You may have heard that negative emotions can have an impact on your health: for example, you may have been told that people who are prone to becoming stressed or hostile have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. But what about positive emotions? Are positive emotions simply a nice experience to have, or can they actually serve to protect your health? In today's post, I'll discuss some of the recent findings on positive emotions and health, and discuss how positive emotions might help to lower your risk of heart disease.

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Is Graduate School a Ponzi Scheme?

2012-01-16T10:27:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, this article ran in the Economist. In the article, the author takes the point of view that the pursuit of a PhD degree is a waste of time. Whether or not you agree with this perspective, it is important to consider the points being made. If you are, or have been, a graduate student, you probably learned much of this during your time in graduate school.

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Friday Fun: Five Surprising Findings from 2011

2012-01-13T11:54:00.000-08:00

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Social psychology findings can sometimes seem obvious. At times, however, they contradict common sense, make us question our assumptions, or are just plain bizarre. Here are five of such findings, published in the past year, that particularly caught my attention:
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Psychology says couples who play together stay together

2012-01-09T17:09:00.000-08:00

To be completely correct, psychological research suggests that couples who play together feel closer, experience more positive emotions, and as a result are happier together, but that doesn’t have the same ring does it?

This couple knows how to keep it exciting

If boredom, is the silent relationship killer, novel and arousing activities seem to be the powerful anecdote. Art Aron and colleagues have found that couples who engage in more novel and arousing activities together are happier in their relationships. And these results aren’t just correlational – Aron actually had couples come into the lab and engage in exciting or mundane tasks. Couples in the exciting condition got strapped together with Velcro and had to crawl their way through an obstacle course while holding a pillow between them. The explanation of the mundane activity might put you to sleep. Couples who got to take part in the Velcro obstacle course reported feeling happier in their relationships than couples who took part in the mundane activity or no activity at all. Why does participation in a novel and arousing obstacle course lead to a happier relationship?

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Friday Fun: Michael's Favorite Posts of 2011

2012-01-06T01:00:00.000-08:00

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This year has been a wonderful ride for Psych Your Mind. We've had over 130 entries since the blog started in mid March of last year. In that short time, our fearless team of bloggers has covered nearly every topic from almost every angle! Looking back on our year, I thought I'd spotlight my favorite posts. These weren't necessarily the most-read posts, but they were definitely must-reads!

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How to trick yourself into keeping your New Year's Resolution

2012-01-03T22:05:00.000-08:00

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Year after year we make ambitious New Year's Resolutions, 90% of which ultimately fail, according to a 2007 study. There is no shortage of advice on how to make this year the one where you actually stick with your resolution: we know that we should set realistic goals, take things one step at a time, enlist support, and bounce back from setbacks rather than giving up too easily. And yet, somehow we still manage to fail, time and time again. If you are a chronic resolution-breaker, or if the mere thought of your resolution makes you want to run for the hills, it might be time to try an anti-resolution approach. Here are three of my favorite ideas for making a resolution that's almost impossible not to keep:
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