Research Blogging - Psychology - English

I'm Older and I Have More Insurance

2012-05-25T13:02:48Z

If you've seen the 1991 movie Fried Green Tomatoes then you will remember this wonderful scene:Believe it or not, this scene actually relates to today's post about territorial behavior in parking lots.You are probably familiar with the concept of territorial behavior. In animals it typically involves occupying a defined territory and marking and defending it against interlopers. This territory is desirable because it contains resources (food, mates, etc.). However, there can be risk involved in defending this territory, risk that must be weighed in a sort of cost-benefit analysis. If the risk is low you defend the territory and if it is too high you flee it. Now what about public territories? Those places that do not belong to any one individual but instead an individual occupies a portion of it for a short period of time. In this case the territory is less important to the individual, and they only have minimal rights to occupy it. However, individuals occupying space in a public territory can show some territoriality. If you get a little more psychological with this train of thought then you start using terms such as "symbolic value," "identity," "control," and "competence." Basically, this is a way of explaining why an individual may defend a territory even if there is nothing to be protected or gained. And that is where we pick up the parking lot study.An older paper published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology tested these territorial behaviors in people leaving parking lots. The video example is of Evelyn Couch entering a parking lot and looking for territory. Here, the researchers are interested in whether the occupants of parking spaces defended those spaces even though their task at the location was complete and the space/territory no longer served any purpose for them. As with many psychological papers, this was broken down into three studies.Study 1: Do departing drivers take longer to leave their parking spaces when someone is waiting for the space?Here, the researchers observed 200 drivers in a mall parking lot and timed how long it took them to leave their parking spaces. The spaces were of prime real estate, in terms of mall parking, being the closest 52 spaces (excluding handicapped spaces) to the mall entrance. They started timing from when the departing shopper opened their car door until they had completely left the parking space, also noting if another driver was waiting for the departing driver's space. They also noted if the departing driver turned their head toward the waiting driver. They found that departing drivers took longer to leave their parking spaces if someone else was waiting for it. From this study it is unclear as to why they took longer. Sure, it could have been territoriality, but it also could have been caution to prevent collisions, distraction, or all sorts of other reasons.Study 2: Do departing drivers take longer to leave their spaces because they are territorial or because of some other reason?To test this they looked at four intrusion conditions (intrusion being the waiting car) in comparison to a no-intrusion condition. They also tested the distraction hypothesis by having someone drive by the subjects, independent of whether there was a car waiting for the space or not. They also tested the level of intrusion by having someone honk or not honk their horns. This study also found that drivers took longer to leave their parking spaces when another driver was waiting, regardless of the added distraction of a another car passing by. These departing drivers also took longer when the waiting driver was honking at them versus when they were not honking. Additionally, they found that male drivers took longer to leave than female drivers if the waiting car was of lower status or value than theirs. All findings that suggest territorial behavior.Study 3: Are people aware of how a waiting driver affects how much time they take leaving a parking space?In this study, the researchers gave questionnaires to 100 people who had parked at a shopping mall. This questionnaire contained scales that allowed the drivers to rate how they would feel while leaving a parking lot under three conditions: with no one waiting, with one driver waiting, and with a driver waiting who honks their horn. They also rated their beliefs about how a driver waiting for their space and and honking driver waiting for their space would affect how long it would take them and others to leave. The survey results showed that people recognized their territorial behaviors but would leave faster if a car were waiting for them but not if that car honked at them.I gotta say that if someone was sitting behind my car honking their horn at me to move faster that I would take my sweet time too. I don't even like that slow, creepy-, stalker-follow people do when they see you walking to your car. I'm tempted to weave through the aisles just to get them to stop.Next I'd like to find a study that looks at how well people park between the lines in a parking space and how much space they leave on either side. If I have to crawl in through the passenger side of my car one more time I might start handing out tickets for parking like a jackass.Ruback, R., & Juieng, D. (1997). Territorial Defense in Parking Lots: Retaliation Against Waiting Drivers Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27 (9), 821-834 DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1997.tb00661.x...

Ruback, R., & Juieng, D. (1997) Territorial Defense in Parking Lots: Retaliation Against Waiting Drivers. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27(9), 821-834. DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1997.tb00661.x

Ask Not What You Can Do For Educational Technology, But What Educational Technology Can Do For You

2012-05-25T00:46:54Z

It’s irritating that people talk about educational technology in terms of iPads in the classroom when the real impact will come from pinpoint differentiation, instant student assessment, and a third thing that nobody talks about – improved simulations in speciality learning. For example, medical students who use virtual patients — an “interactive computer simulation of real-life [...]...

Consorti, F., Mancuso, R., Nocioni, M., & Piccolo, A. (2012) Efficacy of virtual patients in medical education: A meta-analysis of randomized studies. Computers , 59(3), 1001-1008. DOI: 10.1016/j.compedu.2012.04.017

ADHD Summer Camp

2012-05-24T06:40:03Z

For harassed doctors and stressed-out parents, it can be tempting to treat a challenging child with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) with pills and leave it at that. After all, early results from the one of the largest trials of its kind in the United States - the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) - showed that behavioural outcomes were better for children given the psychostimulant Ritalin, than for those given psychological treatment. However, follow-up data over several years has shown that the advantages of drug treatment aren't sustained over the longer term. The position of the UK's independent health advisory body, NICE, is that drug treatments for ADHD should only ever be part of a broader treatment package, including psycho-educational sessions for parents (pdf). The hunt continues for the most effective treatment or mix of treatments. It's in this context that a team of German psychologists, led by Wolf-Dieter Gerber at the University of Kiel, has published a new report looking at the benefits of combining drug treatment for ADHD with an intensive Summer Camp. Eighteen children with an ADHD diagnosis (aged 9 to 17 years), all on medication, spent 12 days at one such camp, which included social skills training conducted in a playful manner, attention training and sports. Crucially, the camp also incorporated "response cost token-based behaviour training" - that is, the children earned or lost tokens according to whether they followed or broke the camp rules. They were encouraged to compare their token totals each evening and a winner was declared for each day following an "Olympics style" format. At the end of the camp, the tokens could be exchanged for prizes. A control group of 19 age-matched children with ADHD, also on medication, didn't go to camp, but their parents received a one-and-a-half hour-long psycho-educational session in which they were taught, amongst other things, about using a token strategy in the home. Six months later, the children from both groups were tested on a range of neuropsychological measures and their outcomes compared with their pre-intervention test performance. The key finding is that only the Summer Camp kids showed a reduction in the variability of their reaction times. This is significant because highly sporadic reaction times are a hallmark of ADHD, indicative of reduced self control. Moreover, only the Summer Camp group showed significant improvements in selective and sustained attention and the capacity to integrate information. It's likely these cognitive changes were clinically significant. Only those children who received higher ratings from their teachers (in terms of improved impulsivity, hyperactivity and inattention) showed positive changes in the variability of their reaction time scores on the neuropsych tests. "We believe this study has merit" the researchers said, "as the ADHD Summer Camp can be regarded as a novelty in ADHD treatment. We could find no comparable intervention programmes that included stringent ... [token reward and punishment] techniques." _________________________________ Gerber, W., Gerber-von Müller, G., Andrasik, F., Niederberger, U., Siniatchkin, M., Kowalski, J., Petermann, U., and Petermann, F. (2012). The impact of a multimodal Summer Camp Training on neuropsychological functioning in children and adolescents with ADHD: An exploratory study. Child Neuropsychology, 18 (3), 242-255 DOI: 10.1080/09297049.2011.599115 Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest....

Gerber, W., Gerber-von Müller, G., Andrasik, F., Niederberger, U., Siniatchkin, M., Kowalski, J., Petermann, U., & Petermann, F. (2012) The impact of a multimodal Summer Camp Training on neuropsychological functioning in children and adolescents with ADHD: An exploratory study. Child Neuropsychology, 18(3), 242-255. DOI: 10.1080/09297049.2011.599115

Emotional Intelligence, the NHL, and Legal Talent Management

2012-05-24T06:30:44Z

Should Law Firms, Legal Departments, and Lawyer Hiring Decision-Makers Look For Attorneys Who Are As “Good” As NHL Hockey Players? A Canadian research team systematically studied the emotional intelligence [EI] level of NHL hockey players recently. They reported several notable findings. While the research study concerns talent management in the NHL, an [...]...

Perlini, A., & Halverson, T. (2006) Emotional Intelligence in the National Hockey League. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue canadienne des Sciences du comportement, 38(2), 109-119. DOI: 10.1037/cjbs2006001

Can Motivation Be A Bad Thing?

2012-05-24T00:43:29Z

If I ever stumble upon a wish-granting genie, my first wish will be to have the motivation necessary to accomplish all of my goals. Motivation is like salt or nice weather — it makes everything better. Well, almost everything. A new study by psychologists from Ghent University in Belgium and the University of Maryland suggests that [...]...

Roets, A., Van Hiel, A., & Kruglanski, A. (2012) When motivation backfires: Optimal levels of motivation as a function of cognitive capacity in information relevance perception and social judgment. Motivation and Emotion. DOI: 10.1007/s11031-012-9299-0

Rich People May Not Be So Unethical

2012-05-23T14:47:31Z

There was quite the stir a few weeks back about a psychology paper claiming that rich people aren't very nice: Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior. The article, in PNAS, reported that upper class individuals were more likely to lie, cheat, and break traffic laws.However, these results have been branded "unbelievable" in a Letter to PNAS just published. Psychologist Gregory Francis notes that the paper contains the results of 7 seperate experiments, and they all found statistically significiant socioeconomic effects on unethical behaviour.Those 7 replications of the effect "might appear to provide strong evidence for the claim" - one study good, 7 studies better, right? - but Francis says that actually, it's too good to be believed.Each of the studies was fairly small, and the effects they found were modest, and only just significant. So the observed power of the studies - the probability that a study of that size would detect the effect that they did, in fact, find - was only about 50-88% in each case.Think of it this way: if you took a pack of cards and discarded half of the black ones, then shuffled the remainder, a random card from the deck would most likely be red. But even so, it would still be very unlikely that you'd pick 10 reds in a row.The chances of all 7 studies finding a positive result - even assuming that the effect claimed in the paper was real - is just 2%, by Francis's calculations.Ow.He concludes "The low probability of the experimental findings suggests that the data are contaminated with publication bias. Piff et al. may have (perhaps unwittingly) run, but not reported, additional experiments that failed to reject the null hypothesis (the file drawer problem), or they may have run the experiments in a way that improperly increased the rejection rate of the null hypothesis (4)".What might have happened? Maybe there were more than 7 studies and... maybe they peeked at the data before deciding on the same size, took other outcome measures unreported. See also the 9 Circles of Scientific Hell.Piff et al respond, firmly denying that they ran any other unpublished experiments, and saying that they "scrutinized our data collection procedures, coding protocols, experimental methods, and debriefing responses. In no case have we found anything untoward." They go on to criticize the method Francis used to get his magic 2% figure, which they point out relies on some debatable assumptions.Even if you buy the 2% figure, it doesn't mean that the true effect is zero; it might be real, but exaggerated. Ultimately it all becomes rather murky and subjective, which is why I think we need preregistration of research, which would prevent any possibility of such data fiddling, and also remove the possibility of false accusations of it... but that's another story.Francis, G. (2012). Evidence that publication bias contaminated studies relating social class and unethical behavior Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1203591109...

Francis, G. (2012) Evidence that publication bias contaminated studies relating social class and unethical behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1203591109

Snakes Deceive to Get a Little Snuggle

2012-05-23T14:09:25Z

A lone red-sided garter snake. Photo by Tracy Langkilde.The red-sided garter snake is a small snake species with the largest and most northern distribution of all reptiles in North America. These northern ranges can get quite cold for any animal, let alone a reptile. Like most reptiles, they are ectotherms, meaning they regulate their body temperature largely by exchanging heat with their environment. If an animal gets almost all of its body heat from a cold environment, its body is also going to be cold… So what is a poor red-sided garter snake to do?Red-sided garter snakes that live in the northern end of their range in Manitoba, Canada spend their cold-season (6-8 months of it) hibernating in underground dens called hibernacula. Tens of thousands of snakes may share a winter den and every spring, they emerge to mate and eat and do all the other fun things that snakes do when they’re awake. (If you would like to witness the spectacular sight that is the emergence of the garter snakes, it is occurring this month in the world-famous snake-watching Interlake region of Manitoba).A whole lotta red-sided garter snakes in a spring-mating frenzy. Photo by Tracy Langkilde.When a snake first emerges from its groggy hibernation state its body is cold and movements are sluggish, which puts it at a high risk of predation from animals like crows and weasels. Females are generally at less risk of predation at this time because emergence-time is also sexy-time for this species and females generally find themselves in the middle of a writhing ball of already-warmed-up male suitors (appropriately called a mating ball). For the female, this both increases her body temperature faster (which will allow her to move faster sooner) and provides any would-be predators with many other snakes to choose from.Female red-sided garter snakes produce a male-attracting pheromone (a chemical released by an animal that affects the physiology and/or behavior of other individuals of the same species). Researchers Rocky Parker and Robert Mason at Oregon State University found that the amount of pheromone females produce increases as the females hibernate from fall to spring. This pheromone is a blend of saturated and unsaturated methyl ketones (molecules responsible for many natural odors and flavors) and males are more strongly attracted to the unsaturated components. The chemical composition of the female pheromone also changes from fall to spring, such that female spring pheromones are dominated by these highly attractive unsaturated pheromone components. Presumably, the sexier the pheromone, the more suitors are attracted and the more benefits a recently-emerged female can acquire.It seems that this smell-sexy-and-create-mating-ball strategy is a useful solution for recently-emerged females, but what about recently-emerged males? Parker and Mason collected courting male red-sided garter snakes and brought them into the lab. Then they either implanted them with estrogen (a sex hormone strongly involved in female sexual physiology and behavior) or did not (as a control group). Males with estrogen implants produced more pheromones, had higher ratios of unsaturated pheromone components to saturated pheromone components, and were more attractive to courting males. When the researchers removed the estrogen implants from some of the males, they became less attractive again. So in the lab, estrogen treatment of males makes them produce more female-like pheromones that other courting males respond to. This shows that males are capable of using this smell-sexy-and-create-mating-ball strategy, but do they use it in nature? This graph shows the amount of courtship received by females, "she-males", and "he-males" when either cold or hot. Figure from Shine, Langkilde and Mason's Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Paper (2012). Robert Mason at Oregon State University and Rick Shine and Tracy Langkilde at the University of Sydney, Australia collaborated to explore this relationship between temperature and male production of female-like pheromones. It turns out, male red-sided garter snakes in nature can and do produce female-like pheromones when they emerge from their den. Shine, Langkilde and Mason collected some of these males that were being courted by other males (the researchers refer to them as “she-males”). They also collected some males that were courting females (they called them “he-males”) and some females. They then exposed the snakes to different temperatures for 15-minute intervals and tested their attractiveness to other courting males. This graph shows the amount of courtship received by "she-males" when cooled (open circles) and heated (filled circles) for 15-minute intervals. Figure from Shine, Langkilde and Mason's Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Paper (2012). The researchers found that females were courted the most, “he-males” the least, and “she-males” were courted an intermediate amount. Interestingly, “she-males” only attracted courtship when they were cold (and their chances of survival could be improved by a mating ball) and their attractiveness shifted with every 15-minute shift in temperatures. How did they do this? 15 minutes is probably not enough time for a hormonal change to alter the pheromone composition enough to change attractiveness so drastically.An important clue comes from the composition of the pheromones themselves. Remember that red-sided garter snake pheromones are a blend of saturated and unsaturated methyl ketones and males are more strongly attracted to pheromones that have a high ratio of unsaturated components to saturated components. Well, saturated and unsaturated fats respond differently to cold: Unsaturated fats (like cooking oil) remain a liquid at cooler temperatures, whereas saturated fats (like margarine) become solid. Solids are less volatile than liquids, which makes them not smell as much. Shine, Langkilde and Mason hypothesize that the ratio of unsaturated to saturated ketones is lower in “she-males” than in females. In the cold, the high amount of saturated components of the “she-male” pheromone is turned off, which raises the ratio of unsaturated to saturated ketones, making them a...

Shine, R., Langkilde, T., & Mason, R. (2012) Facultative pheromonal mimicry in snakes: “she-males” attract courtship only when it is useful. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 66(5), 691-695. DOI: 10.1007/s00265-012-1317-4

Parker, M., & Mason, R. (2012) How to make a sexy snake: estrogen activation of female sex pheromone in male red-sided garter snakes. Journal of Experimental Biology, 215(5), 723-730. DOI: 10.1242/jeb.064923

Parker, M., & Mason, R. (2009) Low Temperature Dormancy Affects the Quantity and Quality of the Female Sexual Attractiveness Pheromone in Red-sided Garter Snakes. Journal of Chemical Ecology, 35(10), 1234-1241. DOI: 10.1007/s10886-009-9699-0

Neuroscience still haunted by Phineas Gage

2012-05-23T04:51:03Z

From Van Horn et al 2012 Seven years after his death, Phineas Gage's body was dug out of the ground and his skull passed to a doctor, John Harlow, who'd treated him in life. Although Gage's brain had long-since decayed, his skull remained intact and was of particular medical interest because in 1848, in an explosives accident, Gage had survived a three and a half foot long iron rod shooting straight into his face, through his brain, and out the top of his head. Although he died in 1860, Gage has lived on as one of psychology's foundation myths - a classic example of frontal brain damage affecting personality. Traditional accounts have it that Gage was permanently changed by his injury, becoming a drunken, aggressive waster. But in recent years a reappraisal of Gage's activities during the remainder of his life suggests he underwent an impressive social recovery. For example, he worked as a stagecoach driver along a 100-mile route in Chile, a job that would have required significant psychosocial competence. If we could ever find out exactly the brain damage that Gage suffered it would help inform the debates surrounding how much he did or didn't recover and provide intriguing insights about neurorehabilitation. That's what Harlow hoped to do back in the nineteenth century. From inspecting Gage's skull he concluded that the left frontal and middle lobes must have been destroyed and that the partial recovery made by Gage was likely due to compensation by the right hemisphere. Housed in a museum together with the rod that made him famous, Gage's skull was then left untouched for nearly a hundred years. However, beginning in the 1980s, each new generation of scientists has used the technology of the day to make another attempt to recreate Gage's injury. In 1982, using CT scans of the skull, Rick and Ken Tyler concluded that although the left side of the brain suffered the most damage, the right hemisphere was probably damaged too. In the nineties, Hanna Damasio and her colleagues performed a 3D reconstruction of Gage's injury and they too concluded the damage was bilateral (pdf). Another ten years went by and then another simulation. In the most sophisticated analysis to date, Peter Ratiu and his colleagues overlaid a 3D representation of a brain within a 3D reconstruction of Gage's skull and simulated the path of the iron rod (pdf). They concluded that the damage was only to the left, just as Harlow had said, which would make the new claims about Gage's recovery more explicable. Now Gage's skull has been analysed yet again. A team of experts, led by John Van Horn, based at the University of California and Harvard Medical School, has used diffusion imaging data, together with anatomical MRI, to try to find out how Gage's injury affected the connective tissues of his brain. As they explain: "while many authors have focused on the gross damage done by the iron to Gage's frontal cortical grey matter, little consideration has been given to the degree of damage to and destruction of major connections between discretely affected regions and the rest of his brain." Van Horn's team scanned the brains of 110 right-handed men (Gage was right-handed) of a similar age to Gage at the time of his injury (the range was 25 to 36; Gage was aged 25 when the rod entered his head). The scans used diffusion tensor imaging to map the connective white-matter tracts of the men's brains in intricate detail. Next, these scans were averaged and integrated with the 3D reconstruction of Gage's skull that was created by Ratiu's team back in 2004. The trajectory of the rod was simulated and an estimate was made of the damage the rod would have done to the connective tissues of Gage's brain, based on it resembling the average of the 110 healthy men's brains. Is it reasonable to suppose that the connective networks of Gage's brain were akin to the averaged networks of 110 healthy men scanned in the twenty-first century? "Such a supposition may have its limitations and could be open to debate," the researchers conceded. "Nevertheless, ours represents the best current estimation as to the extent of brain damage likely to have occurred at the level of both cortex and white matter fiber pathways." So what damage do they think Gage incurred? Van Horn's team think that 4 per cent of Gage's cortical grey matter was damaged in the left hemisphere and 11 per cent of his cortical white matter. Among the important connective bundles that were damaged, they said, are the uncinate fasciculus (which connects the frontal lobes with the limbic system), the cingulum bundle (connecting parts of the limbic system with each other), and the superior longitudinal fasciculus (long-distance fibres linking the front and back of the brain). Abnormalities in the uncinate fasciculus, they explained, have previously been associated with mental illness and related to cognitive deficits in traumatic brain injury. This spread of damage to Gage's white matter tracts would have affected not only the left frontal lobe, the researchers explained, but indirectly would have affected the functioning of the right hemisphere too. The pattern of damage Gage suffered would be expected to have a profound effect, the researchers said, having "a considerable impact on executive as well as emotional functions," and "likely combined to give rise to the behavioural and cognitive symptomatology originally reported by Harlow." However, they stressed that it could have been a lot worse. A simulation of 500 random similarly-sized lesions showed the damage caused by the iron rod was below the average you'd expect by chance. Gage was lucky not to have been left blinded or dead. The researchers concluded that "consideration of white matter damage and connectivity loss is ... an essential consideration when interpreting and discussing this famous case study and its role in the history of neuroscience." But how useful is this new analysis really? In particular, does it shed any light on the re-appraisal of the Gage myth that's emerged over the last decade or so, in which Gage is considered to have made an impressive psychosocial recovery? This photo of Gage was discovered in 2009 The man responsible for much of this reassessment is the historian Malcolm Macmillan, the author of An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage, and several subsequent articles. He told the Digest that the results were "very interesting" and that it was "particularly gratifying" that the new analysis had confirmed the earlier conclusions of Ratiu's team that Gage's damage was left frontal. However, Macmillan has some reservations - for example he pointed out the limitations in the method of averaging from multiple brains to estimate the structure of Gage's brain. Moreover, whilst the inferred damaged to Gage's connective pathways might explain the changes to his behaviour in the first two to three years post-accident, Macmillan and his colleague Matthew Lena, "are most interested in what happened in the last five or six years of Phineas' life. If Lena and I are right about the post-accident Phineas gradually changing from the commonly portrayed impulsive and uninhibited person into one who made a reasonable 'social recovery,'" Macmillan said, "we need to know if and how changes in the tracts contributed. As I see it, and unfortunately, it seems unlikely that we will ever be able to reconstruct those long-term changes." But there's always room for hope. Macmillan added: "From people who use tractography to map the changes in the connections following traumatic brain injury, I understand there is evidence that damaged tracts may re-establish their original connections or build alternative pathways as the brain recovers from oedema. In the short-term, some of the original functions may thus recover. It would be truly wonderful if were we able to confirm that possibility in Phineas' case." _________________________________...

Van Horn, J., Irimia, A., Torgerson, C., Chambers, M., Kikinis, R., & Toga, A. (2012) Mapping Connectivity Damage in the Case of Phineas Gage. PLoS ONE, 7(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0037454

Why Your Best Friend Ditched You For His Girlfriend

2012-05-23T00:07:21Z

How far is a person will to go in order to attract a romantic partner? It’s a question oft pondered by lonely college students and conniving heartbreakers. Some new research by Erica Slotter and Wendi Gardner finds that, at least from a psychological perspective, the answer is quite far. The researchers asked subjects to rate themselves [...]...

Slotter, E., & Gardner, W. (2012) The dangers of dating the “bad boy” (or girl): When does romantic desire encourage us to take on the negative qualities of potential partners?. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.05.007

No Pain, No Gain: The Psychology of Self-Punishment

2012-05-22T23:07:01Z

Source One of my favorite professors once told the following story: She was in the check-out line at the grocery store, and two young children, a boy and a girl, were seated in the cart behind her. When she unloaded some containers of yogurt onto the belt, the girl gazed at them longingly. Slowly, she began to reach her little arm towards the yogurts. Before she could touch them, her father slapped her arm away and said sternly, "No!" The girl cowered back in shame. A moment later she reached out again, and this time her brother slapped her arm, mimicking his father's admonishment. The girl again pulled back. Being a young child (and really wanting those yogurts), it wasn't long before she made one final attempt. But before anyone could stop her, she slapped her own hand away, shouting "No!" at herself. My professor was struck—and saddened—by this series of events. You could argue that the little girl had learned not to take other people's things and regulate her behavior, which is a good thing. But she had also learned to punish herself. The self-punishment we learn as children may continue into adulthood, when we become, in effect, parents to ourselves. Although some adults are more prone to self-flagellation than others, this tendency appears to be common even among psychologically healthy individuals. Research conducted in the field of social psychology suggests at least three major reasons why people might, at times, choose to punish themselves. Read More->...

Bastian, B., Jetten, J., & Fasoli, F. (2011) Cleansing the Soul by Hurting the Flesh: The Guilt-Reducing Effect of Pain. Psychological Science, 22(3), 334-335. DOI: 10.1177/0956797610397058

Comer, R., & Laird, J. (1975) Choosing to suffer as a consequence of expecting to suffer: Why do people do it?. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(1), 92-101. DOI: 10.1037/h0076785