PsychLife Today

Can Meditation Change Your Genes?

2013-10-31T19:27:00.001-07:00

Bad news. It's impossible to actually change your genes. You're stuck with the set you inherited. Changing which genes are turned on or off at a given time, however, is a very different story. There is considerable evidence that environmental and psychological factors can alter the expression of genes. So how can you use this to your advantage? Research suggests that taking just twenty minutes out of your day to engage in a meditative activity can beneficially alter the way your genes are expressed, i.e. the way information from your genes is interpreted.

The key to changing genetic expression appears to rest in activating the "relaxation response", a physiological and psychological response opposite to the stress response (commonly known as fight-or-flight). Such relaxation-inducing meditative activity often involves the repetition of a word, sound, or phrase (such as a repetitive prayer) or movement (such as Tai Chi or yoga) while ignoring intrusive everyday thoughts. Previous studies showed that eliciting the relaxation response could diminish the negative exacerbatory effects of stress on conditions such as anxiety, insomnia, hypertension, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and aging, although the specific genetic effects had been undocumented.

To determine the specific effects of meditation on gene expression, twenty-six healthy adults with no prior experience in relaxation meditation were trained by researchers for eight weeks. The weekly training focused on eliciting the relaxation response through a meditative sequence of diaphragmatic breathing, body scan, mantra repetition, and mindfulness meditation, all while passively ignoring intrusive thoughts. The volunteers were also instructed to listen each day to a twenty-minute CD at home, guiding them through the same sequence. Participants were administered a blood test before, immediately after, and 15 minutes after their weekly guided meditation session, and again before and after listening to a 15-minute "health education CD" (a condition that functioned as a control). Twenty-six other healthy adults who were already long-term practitioners of relaxation meditation (for anywhere from 4-20 years) were recruited for comparison purposes and did not receive training.

The results were profound: all participants had changes in gene expression following meditation. Genes associated with energy metabolism, mitochondrial function, insulin secretion, and telomere maintenance were enhanced, suggesting overall benefits for cell aging and reduced rate of cell death. Genes linked to the inflammatory response showed diminished expression. By reducing oxidative stress and promoting mitochondrial resiliency, routine meditation was decreasing the participants' risk of disease.

The immediate effects on gene expression were more pronounced and consistent for long-term practitioners. Some genes modified only in long-term practitioners, while some modified in both short- and long-term practitioners, with the effect more pronounced in the latter.

It's clear that meditation is not just a calming exercise of the mind-- it engages physiological responses that counteract the negative genetic effects of stress, potentially leading to a longer, healthier life. If that's not motivation enough to carve out twenty minutes from your day, what is?

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Popular press article: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/study-how-yoga-alters-genes/275488/
Journal article: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0062817

Photo by JD Hancock via flickr

Are Trusting People Better at Detecting Lies?

2013-04-01T22:29:00.002-07:00

When it comes to catching a liar, a trusting person may not be at such a disadvantage after all. Research published in the journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests that those who believe others are generally trustworthy are better at detecting lies than their less trusting counterparts.

A set of job interview videos was specially created for the experiment. In some videos, the interviewees were paid to tell the truth and in others interviewees were paid to lie to enhance their qualifications for the job. All interviewees were led to believe the interviewer was an expert in lie detection and that they would receive more money for convincing the expert they were telling the truth.

A second group of study participants were scored on how much they trusted other people by indicating how much they agreed with statements such as "Most people are basically honest" and "Generally, I trust others". When these participants watched the interview videos, those that had high degrees of trust were better able to detect the lying interviewees. Those with low degrees of trust were more likely to miss cues of deception and "hire" the liars.

It isn't clear why trusting people tend to be better at detecting lies, but the study's authors suggested that perhaps people with better lie detection skills (either natural or acquired) were more comfortable trusting strangers because of their heightened sense, or conversely that people who tended to trust others gained lie detection skills to avoid exploitation.

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Journal article at: http://spp.sagepub.com/content/1/3/274

Photo by MrGrau_2010 via flickr

Enhance Creative Problem Solving With This Trick

2013-03-22T16:49:00.000-07:00

You've been working on your latest Big Problem and need a creative solution. Nothing is coming to mind. What do you do?

"Take a break" may be the traditional wisdom but research suggests that what you do during your break may be the most important factor in getting those creative juices flowing. The best way to spend the time away from your problem? Engage in a repetitive, boring activity that allows the mind to wander.

This is the conclusion reached by a team of researchers who measured the creativity of participants before and after a break, via exercises often referred to as "unusual uses" tasks. Participants were given two minutes to list as many uses as possible for an everyday item such as a brick or a clothes hanger. Most participants then took a twelve minute break. Some rested, some engaged in a mentally demanding memory task, and some engaged in a task known to elicit mind wandering. Another group took no break at all. All participants did the unusual uses task again, repeating the same items as before in addition to two new ones.

Results showed that the group that engaged in an undemanding activity (and had the most wandering minds) performed 41% better at the repeated unusual uses task than on their first try, while the other groups showed no significant improvement before and after their break. Interestingly, the undemanding activity did not seem to give any advantage on the new creativity exercises, suggesting that the mind wandering served as an incubation period for the problem just worked on rather than serving to increase overall creative ability.

So take a break -- but do some laundry, clean the house or go for a drive, and let that mind wander!

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Journal article: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/08/31/0956797612446024.abstract

Image by h.koppdelaney via flickr

Raising Your Child on the Right Kind of Praise

2013-02-19T18:45:00.000-08:00

There's a right way to go about praising a toddler. At least that's what a recent research collaboration between Stanford and University of Chicago suggests.

There are two different significant forms of praise that could be given to, say, a toddler who has just successfully counted to ten: person praise ("You're so smart!") or process praise ("Good counting!"). While person praise applauds the child's fixed qualities, process praise regards the effort or action itself as valuable.

In this study, children were observed at home between the ages of one and three years, and the type and quantity of praise they received from parents were recorded. Five years later, the same children were evaluated again. This time, they were asked questions that assessed whether they preferred easy or difficult tasks, how they overcame setbacks, and whether they believed effort could improve their intelligence or personality.

Children who received more process praise as youngsters exhibited a more positive attitude toward challenges and a greater belief in the malleability of their ability levels. Multiple other factors such as the overall amount of praise received, overall verbal interaction with parents, parents' socioeconomic status, and ratio of person praise to overall praise were also examined, but showed no significant future relationship to the attitudes in question.

The authors conclude that while person praise may seem like a good way to boost a young child's self-esteem, the data suggests that more process praise can confer a long-term advantage in attitudes toward problem-solving and self-improvement.

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Article in press as of 2-18-2013

http://home.uchicago.edu/~lizgunderson/Publications/Gunderson%20et%20al%20(in%20press)%20-%20Child%20Development.pdf

Humans Smell Fear -- and Spread It

2012-11-08T22:16:00.001-08:00

We humans are pretty good at communicating fear. We show it on our face, we show it in our body language, we shout and warn each other. But new research provides evidence that we can also smell fear.

It has long been thought that our poor sense of smell compromises our ability to use the sense as much of the animal kingdom does. Most mammals use scent as a method of communication (identification, signaling of territory, mating readiness, etc.) But while humans may use scent similarly to a limited extent, it was previously unknown whether humans could communicate emotion via sense of smell.

Researchers set out to determine the effects of chemical signaling on emotion by first gathering the sweat of male participants while they watched a fear-inducing or disgust-inducing video clip. The sweat was then unknowingly sniffed by female participants who were led to believe they were taking a visual test. (Males generate stronger chemical sweat signals, and women are better receivers of these signals.)

Not only did the female participants react to the sweat, but they reacted differently to each kind. While smelling the fear sweat, they exhibited behaviors associated with fear: widening of the eyes, accelerated eye movement, and bigger sniffs. While smelling the disgust sweat, participants exhibited rejection behaviors such as nose wrinkling and smaller sniffs.

The results suggest that not only can humans detect fear and disgust through chemical signaling, but that the receiver unconsciously exhibits the donor's emotion in response -- a process known as "emotional contagion".

This research has potential value for understanding of the spread of emotions, such as fear, in dense crowds.

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De Groot, JHB, Smeets, MAM, Kaldewaij, A, Duijndam, MJA, Semin, JR. Chemosignals Communicate Human Emotions. Psychological Science, 2012.
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/09/27/0956797612445317.abstract

Photo by David Goehring (CarbonNYC) via flickr

How Good Are You With Names? Take this Test!

2012-10-30T21:22:00.004-07:00

Do you pride yourself at never forgetting a face? Or do you consider yourself terrible with names?

Find out how you compare to people around the world by participating in an online experiment conducted by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis! The test takes 10 minutes and will provide you with your "Face-Name Memory IQ" score upon completion.

It's fascinating to some, enjoyable to many, and good for all as you'll be contributing to the growing body of memory research. The researchers have posted the experiment online in hopes of gathering a more diverse population sample than the oft-critiqued college undergraduate crowd.

Take the test here: http://experiments.wustl.edu./

Some tips for remembering names and faces (adapted from The One Social Skill that Can Change Your Life):

Ignore external cues such as hair, head pose, or background, and focus on the face itself, particularly the eyes.
Anchor the name to the face, not the other way around.
Connect the name to something else that comes easily to mind when you see the face. This could be alliterative (Lauren/lips), phonetic (Mike/trike), or some other association significant to you. Weirder is better!
Pay attention! This could be focusing your thoughts on the situation at hand when meeting someone new instead of worrying about whether your new dress is appropriate or wondering if you should get seconds at the cheese table.

Photo by Light Play via flickr

Why Partisanship is Dangerous

2012-10-24T00:07:00.000-07:00

Election Day is just around the corner and politics are permeating our daily lives. From Facebook and Twitter to television and internet forums, we are inundated with debate and rhetoric from friends, strangers, and political leaders. It's a time we take to review and reinforce our beliefs and attitudes toward government and public policy. But it's also a time worth taking a look at a topic psychologists love to study: how groups influence our attitudes and opinions.

There are many studies on the role peers and authority figures play in our decision making processes, most notably the Ashe and Milgram experiments. The Ashe experiment famously demonstrated how a group's social influence could lead an individual to provide a clearly incorrect answer to a simple problem. So can strongly identifying with a political group lead an individual to form attitudes they otherwise would not?

A set of studies out of Yale University sought to answer this question. Selecting a group of self-identified strong liberals and conservatives, each participant was presented with a welfare policy that was either strict or generous. They were told that either an overwhelming majority of Democrat or Republican party leaders supported one policy or the other, and were provided with relevant rhetoric plausibly from one of the party leaders. The researchers found that if participants were told their party supported the policy, most also claimed to support it. Liberals claimed they supported the harsh welfare policy and conservatives claimed they supported the generous one, regardless of how much they believed they knew about the topic. Participants denied being influenced by their party's supposed position on the policy and instead attributed their decision to their own beliefs of government and understanding of the policy in question. Participants did notice that their party's supposed position was inconsistent with its past positions, but conformed regardless.

"If information about the position of their party was absent," writes the researcher, "[participants] based their attitude on the objective content of the policy and [...] ideological beliefs. If information about the position of their party was available, however, participants assumed that position as their own regardless of the content of the policy."

We are all under an "illusion of objectivity" that can blind us to a group's influence. Consider the role that an audience has during a televised debate. Audience reactions have been shown to significantly change a viewer's opinion of a candidate's performance. What can you do to immunize yourself to these unwanted influences? Hopefully by reading what you just read!

Journal article: Cohen, GL. Party Over Policy: The Dominating Impact of Group Influence on
Political Beliefs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2003. Vol. 85(5), 808 – 822.

Photo by DonkeyHotey via flickr

Swearing By It: The Cheapest Form of Pain Relief Is a Bad Word

2012-09-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

What's the first word that escapes your mouth when you stub your toe? If it's inappropriate for polite company, congratulations--you just self-medicated!

A set of studies published in Neuroreport and the ominous-sounding Journal of Pain found that repeating a swear word increased pain tolerance. Study participants were able to keep a hand submerged in painfully icy water significantly longer while repeating a swear word than while repeating a non-swear word. Not only were participants able to endure the pain longer, they also reported less perceived pain when using colorful language than when repeating the more boring word.

Swearing was also observed to increase participants' heart rate, leading researchers to believe that the act of swearing elicited an emotional response and activated the fight or flight mechanism, thereby increasing tolerance of pain.

However, the pain-relieving power of profanity was compromised by simple habituation: the more often an individual swore on a daily basis, the less of an effect swearing had on mitigating their pain. Through frequent use, the vulgarities likely no longer evoked a sufficiently strong emotional response to confer their painkilling properties.

So the next time you slam your shin into the open dishwasher door, spew those obscenities with science on your side!

Journal article: http://www.jpain.org/article/S1526-5900(11)00762-0/abstract and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19590391

Photo by Tambako the Jaguar via flickr

Beauty is in the Eye of the Young and Healthy

2012-08-19T23:09:00.002-07:00

How big is your eye's limbal ring? You'll likely want to know when you finish reading this!

If you look closely at your eye, you may notice a dark ring circling the iris (the colored part of the eye) at its border with the sclera (the white part of the eye). Young, healthy people are most likely to have thick limbal rings since the ring fades with age and ill health.

As a marker of youth and health, the presence or absence of this ring plays a noticeable role in the evaluation of facial attractiveness. Study participants rated images of male and female faces with dark, robust limbal rings as more attractive than the same face without a limbal ring. Researchers believe humans evolved to use the limbal ring as an indicator of likely reproductive success when choosing a mate.

Of course if you'd like to give your quickly fading limbal ring a boost, special contacts are now available for the purpose!

Journal article: http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP09137146.pdf

Photo by Helga Birna Jonasdottir via flickr

The Non-Verbal Cues That Help You Spot Deceit

2012-07-06T13:42:00.003-07:00

How do you know you can trust a friend? A neighbor? How about a stranger?

As one might hope, the ability to accurately identify trustworthiness has been honing itself over the course of human evolution. In fact, we can predict with surprising accuracy whether a stranger will behave cooperatively or in self-interest based on as little as five minutes of conversation. How? Body language, of course!

There isn't a single gesture indicative of future deception -- rather a set of four non-verbal cues that we subconsciously pick up and that together lead us to judge the performer as untrustworthy. These four gestures are:

Hand touching
Face touching
Crossing arms
Leaning away

If seen together over the course of an interaction, these four cues are a "highly accurate" predictor of future deceptive behavior.

Interestingly, while these gestures were found to affect trustworthiness, they had no bearing on likability. So the sentiment, "I like him, but I just don't trust him!" isn't as unreasonable as it may seem.

Read more about the studies that lead to these findings at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herbert/social-cues-study_b_1456011.html

Photo by familymwr via flickr

Get Your Next Great Idea at Starbucks

2012-06-30T23:10:00.002-07:00

Where would you go to brainstorm, the silent library or a bustling coffee shop?

A study recently published in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that the best place to summon creative ideas may not be in silence but in environments with moderate background noise, such as that of a busy coffee shop. It is posited that this amount of noise may disrupt normal thought processes just enough to increase abstract thinking, leading to better creative output.

In an application relevant to marketers, this moderate level of background noise was found to lead consumers to select products with innovative features over products with more traditional ones.

Popular Media: http://business.time.com/2012/06/21/need-to-brainstorm-head-to-starbucks/
Journal Article: Ravi Mehta, Rui (Juliet) Zhu, and Amar Cheema. Is Noise Always Bad? Exploring the Effects of Ambient Noise on Creative Cognition. Journal of Consumer Research, 2012.

Photo by Clemson via flickr

Think Two Gifts Are Better Than One? Think Again!

2012-05-12T22:25:00.000-07:00

So you've probably done it before. You've bought a $70 digital photo frame for your loved one, and tossed in a $5 bottle of Bath & Body Works Body Wash because, hey, who doesn't want to smell like a Secret Wonderland™?

Well you'll be disappointed to know that recent research indicates you have just undermined the worth of your awesome gift bundle! In what is known as the "Presenter's Paradox", recipients have a tendency to average the perceived value of multiple items. That means your gift would have been generally valued higher by the recipient without the cheap body wash.

The "Presenter's Paradox" also has implications for the sharing of information. Because weaker points may dilute stronger ones, it's important to keep the overall effect on your audience in mind when preparing to present your message.

Sometimes more is not better!

Read more at: http://www.newswise.com/articles/the-paradox-of-gift-giving-more-not-better

Photo by JD Hancock via flickr

Want a Better Social Life? Try Reading Fiction!

2012-05-05T23:58:00.000-07:00

Losing yourself in a good book is often an activity that can leave you ignoring people and events occurring around you for hours on end. However, research indicates that reading fiction may actually improve your ability to create a deeper empathetic connection with others. This effect was observed even in children as young as 4-6 years old, who exhibited a greater ability to determine the mental and emotional states of others after reading fiction. This increase in empathy was also accompanied by an increase in actual helping behavior (under laboratory conditions!) in a study conducted by psychologist Dan Johnson. "In conclusion," he writes, "it appears that 'curling up with a good book' may do more than provide relaxation and entertainment. Reading narrative fiction allows one to learn about our social world and as a result fosters empathetic growth and prosocial behavior."

It's nice to know that the many hours I spend reading while forgoing food, sleep and real-life human conversations are giving me some prosocial payoffs!

A more in-depth essay on these findings can be found at http://articles.boston.com/2012-04-29/ideas/31417849_1_fiction-morality-happy-endings/3

Photo by gualtiero via flickr

Use Your Right Ear for Your Next Important Phone Call

2012-04-13T00:16:00.000-07:00

...but chances are, you already prefer it!

Just this morning, I noticed that when talking on the phone I have a strong preference for my right ear, which is strange given that I'm left-handed! Curious, I hopped onto the internet and discovered that, in fact, most people prefer their right ear for listening to verbal information. In a 2009 European study involving discotheques and cigarettes (naturally), researchers observed this phenomenon in action, explaining it by the lateralization of our brains. Our right ear is wired to the left side of our brain, the side more involved in verbal communication. We actually hear information in speech better with our right ears!

The left ear -- or right side of the brain -- is thought to be better at picking up emotional cues in speech.

The original article unfortunately doesn't link to the studies in question, but I would assume that variables such as hand preference would be controlled for.

via LiveScience: http://www.livescience.com/9679-people-prefer-ear-listening.html

Photo by Yaffa Phillips via flickr

Microexpression Monday: What Does George Zimmerman's Lawyer Think of the Surveillance Tape?

2012-04-05T01:15:00.002-07:00

You may have heard of microexpressions before -- brief, involuntary facial expressions that divulge suppressed emotion and popularized by the 2009 television show Lie to Me. Lasting only one-fifteenth to one-twenty-fifth of a second, microexpressions are fleeting and difficult to catch with the untrained eye. But with some practice, anybody can learn. Searching out microexpressions is a favorite activity of mine, and last week I noticed George Zimmerman's lawyer, Craig Sonner, make an interesting microexpression when asked about the surveillance tape footage in the Trayvon Martin case.

At 1:38 in the video below, you can see Sonner suck his lips slightly inward after saying that he could not tell anything from the surveillance video. This could indicate nervousness with his response -- perhaps he was unsure in the statement he had just made.
You may also notice that he was blinking rapidly, typically a behavior that indicates an individual is under stress.

Of course, as we have no baseline for Sonner's facial expressions, we cannot say with certainty whether the microexpressions seen in this interview are truly indicative of stress and nervousness, or are simply a typical characteristic of his when answering questions in a televised interview. Additionally, it's difficult to say precisely what he may be nervous or stressed about. Is it the pressure of the interview or his belief in the answers he's giving? This uncertainty is a big caveat whenever facial expression or other body language is being analyzed.

Welcome!

2012-04-02T23:42:00.000-07:00

I love psychology, and I want everyone else to love it too! The goal of this blog is to make findings in psychology research relevant, informative, and interesting by applying them directly to everyday life. From the bedroom to the boardroom, through events both current and historical, I will show you how a knowledge of psychology can give insight into what you see and hear around you -- every day!

I am going to do my best to post regularly, but please bear with me as I work to get this blog established!