The science behind the techniques isn’t new. Researchers have probed neurons with specific RNA bits in a revealing game of genetic hide-and-seek for 40 years. But the speed and scope with which they’re tackling the problem with specially-constructed robots that automate most of the data-gathering and analysis is unprecedented. When the Atlas is finished in 2012, scientists will start untangling the whys and hows of our neural network.

From Wired: Creating an Atlas of the Human Mind.

Tags: brain scanning, Physiological

“… Rational choice theory predicts that people will not gamble, thus it is theorised that regular gamblers gamble because they make the wrong decisions – that cognitive bias (irrational thinking) distorts their reasoning. The aim of this study was to increase understanding of the cognitive processes and behaviour of persistent fruit machine gamblers.”

Almost 18 months ago I interviewed Mark Griffiths about his 1994 research into cognitive bias and skill involved in fruit machine gambling.  In this study Mark Griffiths is investigating some of the cognitive differences between regular and non-regular gamblers. In particular he is interested in discovering whether regular fruit machine payers think differently to non-regular players. That is, whether regular fruit machine players display cognitive distortions.

You can read the full text article of the 1994 study here at PsychExchange or for a more concise and readable versions pop over to Holah.co.uk.

Last January Mark Griffiths spoke at conferences in Leeds and London about this study and the context into which it fell.  Here we have podcasts of the conference and the PowerPoint which was used at the conference (Thanks to Mark Griffiths for providing the powerpoint).

Mark Griffiths Talk: Full Version

Mark Griffiths Talk: Edited Version

PsychBLOG Interview

Following on from the excellent OCR conferences in Leeds and London where we were given the opportunity to see Griffiths and Reicher & Haslam OCR have made available ‘podcasts’ of the talks so that everyone can hear what they have to say.

Tags: addiction, AS, blogcast, gambling, griffiths, Individual, podcast

We all like to think that we have good memories for events and that if we were to be witness to a crime or incident that we would be able to recall in detail the events of the day. However our memories are not that reliable at all.  This has implications on many levels, but especially in the courtroom and with the police.

For example:

“Some researchers in Bologna demonstrate the spectacular hopelessness of memory. One morning in 1980, a bomb exploded in Bologna station: 85 people died, and the clock stopped ominously showing 10.25, the time of the explosion. This image became a famous symbol for the event, but the clock was repaired soon after, and worked perfectly for the next 16 years. When it broke again in 1996, it was decided to leave the clock showing 10.25 permanently, as a memorial. The researchers asked 180 people familiar with the station, or working there, with an average age of 55, about the clock: 173 knew it was stopped, and 160 said it always had been, ever since 1980. What’s more, 127 claimed they had always seen it stuck on 10.25, ever since the explosion, including – fairly excellently – all 21 railway employees. In a similar study published last year, 40% of 150 UK participants claimed to remember seeing closed circuit television footage of the moment of the explosion on the bus in Tavistock Square on July 7th 2005. No such footage exists”. [From Bad Science via Folens Psychology Blog]

A further example this can be seen here in this video where students at a US University are part of a staged theft. Watch and see how accurate they are and how our perception of an event can be molded so easily be events following an incident.

Loftus & Palmer have put forward the Reconstructive Hypothesis which suggests that our memory is a combination of both things that happen at an event but also can be distorted by events after – either other memories and events or more malicious leading questions during interegation.

They found that events following an incident can have a dramatic effect on a persons memory of that event.  As we saw in the video above one of the student’s memories of the offender was distroted by something as simple as the teacher saying that he had a ‘funny nose’.

How can we ever rely on courtroom testimony if this is the case? Can we really trust memories or are they too fallible?

Tags: Cognitive, courtroom, crime, loftus and palmer, memory, video

There has been an almost widespread consensus amongst social psychologists that tyranny triumphs either because ordinary people blindly follow orders or else because they mindlessly conform to powerful roles. Much of this consensus has been influenced by the work of Milgram and Zimbardo

However, more recently, British psychologists S. Alexander Haslam and Stephen D. Reicher have written numerous papers criticising these views. They argue that Milgram and Zimbardo were wrong in arguing that ‘ordinary men’ can become brutal by becoming mindless under the influence of leaders and groups.

Haslam and Reicher suggest that brutality occurs when people identify strongly with groups that have a brutal ideology. They believe that whether we listen to authorities or support victims depends upon the extent to which we perceive ourselves to share social identification with them. This argument is based on social identity theory.

They argue that there are three main factors determining whether people create and maintain such social identifications to groups with a brutal ideology

1 Individual differences
Haslam and Reicher suggest that people will be less likely to identify with groups with tyrannical norms the more that their membership of groups with different norms is salient and the more that they are made accountable to those alternative groups.

2 Contexts of crisis and group failure
Haslam and Reicher argue that some contexts make everyone more likely to accept certain groups. For example, groups become more authoritarian as such groups fail to function effectively and the overall system falls into chaos

3 Leadership
Haslam and Reicher believe that the role of leaders become particularly dangerous when leaders suggest that ‘our’ problems come about because of the threats posed by a harmful out-group. In this way, they can begin to take the groups with which we already identify and develop norms of hostility against outsiders.

To read just one of the many articles by Haslam and Reicher click here.

Tags: obedience, prison, reicher haslam, Social, Zimbardo

Solomon Asch was interested to find out about conformity and in particular, the circumstances in which people would be more likely to conform.

In 1955 Asch conducted a classic experiment on majority influence. The aim of the study was to investigate how people behave when given an unambiguous task. That is, would participants give the answer to what they knew to be correct or would they be influenced by the behaviour of others.

The basic design of Asch’s study consisted of groups of seven to nine male college students seated in a classroom for a ‘psychological experiment in visual judgement’. There was in fact only one participant in each group and the rest were confederates of the experimenters. The real participant sat one from the end of a row, so all but one of the confederates gave answers before them.

The experimenter told them that they would be comparing the length of lines and he showed them two white cards below.

The card on the left was the standard line to be judged and the card on the right shows the three comparison lines

The participants were asked to give their judgement aloud and they did so in the order in which they were seated. On certain pre-arranged trails the confederates were told to give the same incorrect answers. The researchers were interested to find out the response of the one participant to this majority opinion.

Each series of line judgements had 18 trials, and on 12 of these, the majority gave unanimous incorrect answers. On these 12 unanimous incorrect trials around 75% of the 123 participants went along with the majority at least once. Under the pressure of the group, the participants accepted the judgement of the majority on 37% of the trials.

There were, however, considerable individual differences, with about 25% of the participants never agreeing with the majority, while some other participants agreed with the majority most of the time.

The participants were interviewed after the study to discover the reasons for their behaviour.

Many of the non-conformers said that they had confidence in their own judgement and had a capacity to recover from doubt. Other non-conformers believed that the majority were correct but continued to dissent because they believe that it was their obligation to ‘call it as they saw it’.

Some of the conformers said that ‘I am wrong, they are right’, and some suspected that the others were simply following the first person to answer, but still conformed. Others saw it as a deficiency in themselves and tried to merge with the majority to cover up.

A number of variations of the study were carried out and it was found that the conforming pressure peaks with three or four confederates.

Another variation of the experiment investigated the effect of dissenting partners whereby one of the confederates disagreed with the majority and halfway through the dissent of this confederate was removed by leaving the room. Following the removal of the dissenter conformity rose a little.

A further variation investigated the effect of dissenting partners whereby one of the confederates disagreed with the majority and halfway through the dissenter ‘went over’ to the other side and started to agree with the majority. This desertion induced high levels of conformity in the participants.

Tags: conformity, obedience, Social

The Little Book of Thunks: 260 questions to make your brain go ouch!: 260 Questions to Make Your Brain Go Ouch! The first question I had to ask myself when I found out about this book, and I’m sure you’re doing the same thing now, was: what is a thunk? After a bit of trawling I found the website the compliments this quirky little book and found that:

A Thunk is a beguilingly simple-looking question about everyday things that stops you in your tracks and helps you start to look at the world in a whole new light.

The book contains 260 ‘thunks’ that really do get you thinking and can create some provocative discussions. At the beginning of the book is a great chapter on thinking (or should we call it ‘thunking’) and some ideas about how to use the book. Here’s a few to get your brain in ticking over:

• If I borrow a million pounds am I a millionaire?
• Could a fly cause a plane to crash?
• Are you man-made or natural?
• Do dogs believe in God?
• When you comb your hair is it art?

All-in-all this is a great little book to get students and teachers alike thinking ‘outside of the box’. There’s no real relevance to psychology teaching but I can see how it could be used to teach critical thinking, argument structure, and analysis of arguments. Also, it could make an excellent addition to a tutorial program (or just something to get the students to have a debate over). For less than £7 The Little Book of Thunks is one of those books that everyone could have on their desk to pass those odd 5 minutes when there’s nothing else to do. From the back of the book:

Another gem from Ian Gilbert. Stimulating and enthralling. Without realising it I have been doing Thunks for years, as a parent, rugby coach and Open University tutor, helping my children and students to develop their own thinking. These statements will form the basis of my brain gyms, to stimulate mental skills and personal confidence. This is not a book to be left on the shelf, these THUNKS can be great for -thought for the Day in schools, colleges, the office, factory and … the kitchen at home. Enjoy the discussion. John Morris, JTM Educational Consultants –John Morris, JTM Educational Consultants.

You can get The Little Book of Thunks from Amazon for £6.99 or direct from Crown House publishing. Crown Publishing provided a review copy of this book for my reading pleasure.

Tags: Books, review

Tags: twitter

“Milgram left us with a vital legacy of brilliant ideas that began with those centered on obedience to authority and extended into many new realms—urban psychology, the small-world problem, six degrees of separation, and the Cyrano effect, among others—always using a creative mix of methods. Stanley Milgram was a keen observer of the human landscape, with an eye ever open for a new paradigm that might expose old truths or raise new awareness of hidden operating principles. I often wonder what new phenomena Stanley would be studying now were he still alive.” [Zimbardo on Milgram]

Part 1 and Part 2.

Tags: AS, Milgram, Social, Zimbardo

At this very moment in time there are 82,813 people in prisons in the UK (weekly updates of prison UK populations) whereas in February 2004 there were only 69,122. We are punishing more-and-more people every year with prison but is it effective (a topic for another post) and does it only punish those who were at fault?

In the first known study of its kind, University of Michigan researchers found that people with a family member or friend in prison or jail suffer worse physical and mental health and more stress and depressive symptoms than those without a loved one behind bars. Moreover, these symptoms worsen the closer the relationship to the person who was locked up

According to the study, those who knew someone in prison had 40 percent more days where poor physical health interfered with their usual activities, including work, and 54 percent more days where poor mental or emotional health interfered with these activities.

Should this be a consideration when deciding on a suitable punishment for an offender?

Many people believe that all offenders should be punished. Some believe individuals can change and can be responsive to rehabilitative interventions, either within prison or the community others feel that prisons should be more strict than they currently are (or at least seem to be if you believe the media).

There are many motivations behind punishments, some negative, so to reinforce the concept that the individual has done wrong, some supportive to help rehabilitate the offender.

Many would consdier these factors when thinking about the punishment of going to prison but it seems that we have ignored those that could be at risk in society – those related to offenders who are sent to prison.

Talking about the study into the effects of prison on ‘loved ones’ the research states: “Our study demonstrates that incarceration is not only enormously expensive economically, it also has public health costs and these should be taken into consideration. In the last 30 years or so, we have seen a more and more punitive system, one where judges no longer have discretion for sentencing.”

Moving toward a rehabilitation model may benefit both the offending individuals and society – but should we?

Kruger, D.J., & De Loney, E. H. (in press). The association of incarceration with community health and racial health disparities. Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action.

Tags: crime, prison, punishment

We all know the power of role models and I have written about the effect of role modes on behaviour many times before: from the moving ‘Children See, Children Do‘ campaign to talking about the effectiveness of the pictures of death and destruction that now adorn our fag packets.

All these ideas are supported by Bandura and his Social Learning Theory which proposes that children especially learn their behaviours through the observation and imitation of role models.  Bandura demonstrated this in his 1961 research where he exposed children to aggressive role models who acted violently (both physical and verbal violence) towards an inflatable bobo-doll.

He found that children who were passive witnesses to this violent act were more likely to imitate this behaviour when given the chance.  There are many criticisms of this study but if the conclusions are right then there are implications for us all as role models.

Recent research (Albers, 2008) has been investigating the effect of parental smoking behaviour in homes on the likelihood of their children starting up the habit.  They found that parents who enforce no-smoking rules at home are less likely to have teens who experiment with cigarettes. This basic intervention implementing a household smoking ban has the potential to promote anti-smoking norms and to prevent adolescent smoking.

Albers and colleagues interviewed 2,217 Massachusetts adolescents ages 12 to 17, and followed them for four years. They discovered that teens living in households that did not ban smoking were more likely to report smoking as socially acceptable, compared to teens whose parents banned smoking.

Teens whose parents allowed smoking at home also tended to believe that a higher percentage of adults in their town smoked, compared to teens with household bans. [From Medical News Toady]

This suggests then that the behaviours in homes can have a massive effect on behaviours. As these bans send a strong message to teens that it’s not okay to smoke, and in the face of so many other external factors that may influence teens to smoke peers, advertising a home smoking policy is one thing that parents can control to some extent.

It would be naive to assume that parents smoking in the home is the only factor that influences smoking behaviour is children but it is one more thing that parents can be aware of and another piece of evidence supporting Bandura’s Social Learning Theroy.

Tags: addiction, Bandura, core studies, developmental, health, health promotion, SLT, smoking

Did you struggle teaching the BBC Prison Study?

I did and was annoyed at myself because I knew it was a good addition to the core studies and I believed that my enthusiasm for this new study, and in particular Reicher and Haslam’s critique of the flawed Stanford Prison Experiment, would reach my students.

However, I probably spent far too much time reviewing the SPE with my students and did not teach the BBC study in its chronological order and am sure that I lost most of my students on what should have been a fantastic journey.

Thankfully the authors of the study have collaborated with onelineclassroom.tv and produced an excellent DVD which takes students through the important stages of their experiment.

This is easily the best DVD that onelineclassroom.tv have produced so far, in terms of editing, animation and use of original footage.

More importantly though is the performance of Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher who take the viewer (student) through an easy to understand and enthusiastic step-by-step description of their study from the context and setting up of their study, detailing their interventions and finally to their conclusions of their findings in just over 27 minutes.

I will be using the DVD as a revision lesson for my students this year and because of this DVD will do a much better job of teaching this fab study next year.

The DVD also includes extra bits where Alex and Steve again talk lucidly about social identity theory, ethics, data and the SPE.

I have a spare copy to give away to the best comment left on this post. Jamie will judge this.

Oh and if you are a teacher and attending the 2009 ATP conference Professor Alex Haslam will be there delivering a keynote talk.

The DVD can be bought from onlineclassroom for just 48 quid – A bargain I think.

Tags: reicher haslam

If you’ve ever seen the Channel 4 comedy Teachers then you might understand why the GTCE is considering implimenting a ‘role model’ code.  But is this really needed or necessary?  Yes, role models are influential, especially in the earlier years of childrens’ development, but shouldn’t they be allowed a private life?

Teachers are  set to get a ‘role model’ code outlining what behaviour is seen as ‘acceptable’ both in and out of school.  We could face losing our status if we get drunk and into arguments while out socialising, or do not get help for drink or drug problems if a draft GTCE code it approved. 

Obviously, as we know from Behaviourist theories like Social Learning Theory (SLT) that children are impressionable and will, if given the right environment and resinforcement immitate behaviours which they see ‘role models’ doing; but are we taking this ‘code of conduct’ too far? 

Some of the comments from the BBC News website highlight this:

“Teachers are human beings. Their private lives should not be the subject of scrutiny by anybody”

“Isn’t the principle of teachers as role models common sense? If a teacher falls too far short of this, they are probably better suited to a different career. It’s insulting that teachers are told something so basic, after all their more advanced training and experience. Wouldn’t the government’s budget be better spent dealing with real educational issues, rather than formalising and drafting policies for common sense?”

What are your thoughts on this?  Should teachers have a ‘code of conduct’ that dictates what behaviours are seen as appropriate or should it be left to individual teachers to understand the important role they play in childrens’ lives?

Tags: behaviourism, news commentary, SLT, teaching

Recently we have looked at the impressive progression in the ability of fMRI scanners to record brain activity in ‘real time’ but are we over interpreting these results?  Over the last decade-or-two more-and-more researchers have been turning to fMRI scanners to open the ‘black box’ which is the brain. These scanners measure brain activity by measuring the amount of oxygen in the different parts of specific cortical or sub-cortical areas (this is a very simplistic view of the technology).

However, there is a storm brewing about the validity of these scanners and questions being raised about the short-sightedness of using fMRI scanners to ‘pin-point’ specific areas within the brain when localising functions; asking the question are we oversimplifying the location of functions in the brain by doing this? 

[fMRI] scanners, they say, excel at measuring certain types of brain activity, but are also effectively blind when it comes to the detection of more subtle aspects of cognition. As a result, the pictures that seem so precise are often deeply skewed snapshots of mental activity. [Boston Globe via Frontal Cortex]

Could we then be basing some of the conclusions from studies that utilize fMRI (such as Maguire) on distorted data and can we really be confident in localising complex functions within the brain to just one location?

These critics stress the interconnectivity of the brain, noting that virtually every thought and feeling emerges from the crosstalk of different areas spread across the cortex. If fMRI is a window into the soul, these scientists say, then the glass is very, very dirty! 

I think it’s important to note that fMRI is one of (if not the) best imaging technique that we have at the moment and the data that it provides is invaluable to both the medical and psychological research teams that utilize it.  We just need to be aware of it’s limitations, well, actually the limitations of any brain scanning technique, in trying to pinpoint specific functions in our magnificently complex brain.

Tags: brain scanning, core studies, Maguire, Physiological, Research

January 2008
In January I wrote about Maguire’s research into the size of cab-drivers hippocampi where she used fMRI scanners to investigate the relative size of this part of the brain. Her research showed that these London cabbies did have enlarged hippocampi, but at a cost, other brain structures around it were ’squashed’ to make room for it.  This had effects on associative memory among other cognitive skills.

February 2008
February was a busy month full of Love and Happiness (and some ‘unspeakable acts‘ for good measure).  But among the most important questions we asked was Parental Influence: is it really their fault? With all the talk of parents being blamed for their children’s behaviour are they really to blame – apparently not.  It has suggested that our behaviours are context dependent and just because we are dominant in the household doesn’t mean that this will transfer over to other parts of our lives.  As if that wasn’t enough; February was the time of the year for you to MOT your corpus callosum.

March 2008
Not as busy-a-month in March but still important questions being discussed: stress in the home. It seems that psychologists can’t make their mind up – in February it wasn’t the parents fault for their child’s behaviour, and this month we’re telling them to reduce stress in the home as it’s easily picked up by children exposed to it (think SLT).  Also, we explored inside the human body and brain with the new Visible Body website.

April 2008
April started with a shock: Universities are no longer accepting Psychology A Levels!  After that had passed we could focus on the important bits – PsychBLOG’s first birthday and the launch of one of my other sites: PsychClips.co.uk.  But, back to psychology – it’s what you’re all here for – my favourite article of the month had to be the Phantoms in the brain one.  Phantom limbs fascinate me as they provide so much support for the thesis that pain is mediated hugely by cognitive processes. And the lets not forget about the phantom penis (and that one wasn’t an April Fools!).

May & June 2008
May and June were quiet times here at PsychBLOG as we (Mark and I) prepared and presented a lecture and workshop at the Lincoln ATP Conference – and we think it went pretty well as we have been invited back to the 2009 conference and we even did a teacher INSET.  But, again, I digress.  More importantly BBC Radio 4 had a cracking set of talks on famous case studies in Psychology – most notably were the one’s on Freud and the case of Kitty Genovese.  And, quiet appropriately, as we move into the season of ‘New Years Resolutions’ we found that quitting smoking is aided by social facilitation and comparison – so make sure you surround yourselves with others that are doing the same!

July & August 2008
These were ‘painful’ months with discussion of pain and pain experience (plus one of my favourite youtube clips I use in teaching pain).  Also, the first guest post of the year: an excellent follow up to my ‘So you want to be a psychologist‘ posts all about getting into clinical psychology – straight from a clinical psychology student himself.

September 2008
As the academic year starts again we opened with news of the ongoing attempts to shock smokers into quitting.  The ‘Smoking Kills’ and ‘Smokers Die Younger’ labels seem to be ignored (or maybe we’ve just habituated to them) but the government has gone one step further this time: images (and not pleasant ones).  This was followed up with another wonderful guest post from Amit on Maguire and his experiences of teaching the study to his class.

October & November 2008
There was plenty to talk about in October (which made up for the complete lack of anything in November) and even more to watch with Stress: portrait of a killer – an excellent documentary that was shown in the US covering the causes and needs of stress in the real world.  From documentaries to Grey’s Anatomy: can a hit American TV show actually be used to educated and promote health awareness? Apparently so! No-one went away empty handed in October with resources galore: Baron-Cohen himself defining autism in 100 (well 99 actually) words; a selection of strange stories that were used in a recent Baron-Cohen study as a control condition; and finally the Rorschach Inkblot tests were released.

December 2008
We’re almost there now with the December archive. We started the month looking at the phenomenal advancements in fMRI scanning which will soon allow us to see inside the brain in ‘real time’ and what this means for learning behaviours and controlling pain.  One of the biggest stories of the year was left right to the end – a chap called Berger has replicated Milgram’s original research (well it’s a semi-replication really) and found similar results (and possibly similar controversy).

So, our journey throughout the year has drawn to a close with this post – published in the final minute of 2008 (automatically through some computer wizardry as I was / am / will-be enjoying the evening in a semi-sober – or more likely rather well oiled way!).  These were just some of my ‘best bits’ of the year; I’ve only just scratched the surface of what’s been written about – so if that’s whetted your appetite you could check out the full archive.

That only leaves me to bid 2008 a fond farewell and wish all my readers a very Happy and prosperous  2009.  Thank you for reading and supporting the site in 2008; I hope that you continue to join me and my rants in the new year.  I’m looking forward to see what it brings as PsychBLOG enters it’s third year of publication.

Signing off 2008 – Jamie :)

Tags: psychblog, PSYlent, review of the year, special feature

Where ever you are have a fantastic festive feast of fun. Happy Christmas.

- Jamie :)

Edit: I’ve already had a few emails asking for a download of this video – download it here (much higer quality) [22MB]

Tags: christmas, PSYlent

With the recent announcement of Jerry Berger’s (2009) soon-to-be-published (but available to download here) Replicating Milgram: Would People Still Obey I will be writing a series of articles considering the theories, methods and repercussions of both Berger’s 2009 research and the original that started this journey over 50-years-ago.

• Part I: Ethics
• Part II: Was it really a replication?
• Part III: What does this mean?
• Part IV: All evil starts with 15 volts?

Milgram’s experiment is infamous in the world of Psychology with every student who has ever taken any intro-to-psychology class being able to recant the horrific stories of participants willing to administer shocks of 450 volts to someone whom they believed was just another participant. Even when they heard protests coming from the ‘learner’ they continued just because of the encouragement of a perceived authority figure.

Back in July I wrote a post that considered the question: would I pull that switch? Now we have a replication of the original Milgram research that tries to answer exactly that question; and the answer seems to be: yes – we are just as willing to pull that switch today as participants were over 50 years ago!

Obedience rates in the 2006 replication were only slightly lower than those Milgram found 45 years earlier. Contrary to expectation, participants who saw a confederate refuse the experimenter’s instructions obeyed as often as those who saw no such model. Men and women did not differ in their rates of obedience, but there was some evidence that individual differences in empathic concern and desire for control affected participants’ responses. Burger, 2009 (in press).

One of the reasons that more replications of Milgram’s research haven’t been conducted are the emmense ethical considerations that must be taken into account; especially with todays current standards of ethical treatment of participants. Berger (2009) justified his replication by taking several additional steps to ensure the welfare of his participants:

1. A two-step screening process which was designed to ‘filter out’ any participants who may ‘react negatively’ to the experiment;
2. Participants were told at least three times (twice in writing) that they could withdraw at any time;
3. Only a 15 volt ‘test shock’ was administered to the participants (which is thought to be ‘very mild’);
4. There was very little time between the end of the experiment and the debriefing of the participants (whereas Milgram did like to tease and question the participants in his study prior to the ‘ta-da’ moment of truth);
5. Finally, the research who ran the experiment was a clinical Psychologist who was instructed to end the experiment at any sign of ‘excessive stress’.

Is this enough though? Anyone who has seen video of the original Milgram experiment will testify that the participants there were very-much distressed about the entire event and do the benefits to science actually outweigh conducting this experiment again? Berger does consider this though with a compelling argument in his discussion:

Milgram’s obedience studies have maintained a place in psychology classes and textbooks largely because of their implications for understanding the worst of human behaviors, such as atrocities, massacres, and genocide. Indeed, Milgram frequently drew inferences from his studies to account for the behavior of people who went along with the Holocaust. Although one must be cautious when making the leap from laboratory studies to complex social behaviors such as genocide, understanding the social psychological factors that contribute to people acting in unexpected and unsettling ways is important. Berger, 2009, p10.

Is it important that we conduct research like this? Do these pieces of research really forward our understanding of human behaviour? I’ve been following the commentry of this research in the ‘blog-sphere’ and on many psychological e-lists and opinion is still divided.

If nothing else it makes us ask that question of ourselves once again: would I pull that switch?

Tags: AS, core studies, Milgram, obedience, Research, Social

Struggling to think of a present for that special psychologist, psychology student or teacher in your life? Then here you go: a selection of psychology related gifts that will make that person delight (or maybe not).

The Freud Lolly Pop

Looking for something to suck on this Christmas holiday? Then this is your best bet: a Freud lolly pop.

“Once you get over the initial reluctance to put a human head in your mouth, you’ll find that the subtle contours and watermelon flavor of these Sigmund Freud Head Lollipops are worth the strange looks you’ll get as you suck them. Each sucker is about 2-1/4″ tall with a 4″ plastic stick. Twenty-four individually wrapped lollipops in each illustrated display box.”

Think Gum

Still for those with a sweet tooth we have ‘Think Gum‘. Think Gum is a chewing gum that apparently contains a number of ‘brain boosting’ ingredients, although is mainly notable for its high caffeine content.

“Think Gum is carefully formulated to help chewers take on mentally challenging tasks. Be more alert. Improve information recall. Boost both short and long-term memory.”

Obsessive Compulsive Action Figure

Always wanted that action figure when you were younger but now you’ve out outgrown Barbie and Ken? Then this one is for you: the obsessive compulsive action figure. “Worried about excessive germs, organize your canned foods by their expiration date, and do you know someone who would rather bump elbows than shake hands? This action figure comes with it’s own surgical mask and handy sanitary, hypoallergenic, moist towelette. Also included is a diary of a typical day in the life of the OCD action figure and a short OCD quiz.”

Therapy Flashcards

Have you ever wished you could talk like a therapist? Here is the answer to your dream: Therapy Flash Cards.

“With these clever flashcards, you can enjoy the benefits of therapy without all the work and expense. Each card has a term on one side and reverses to a pronunciation guide, full definition and sample sentence. The perfect gift for the insensitive narcissist or your own codependent inner child.”

Diagnostic Refrigerator Magnets

Feeling creative over the festive season? Create your own diagnoses of mental disorders with Diagnostic Refrigerator Magnets.

“At last! Diagnostic Refrigerator Magnets; now you can create new or existing diagnoses and boldly display them on your refrigerator or filing cabinet. Anyone who is interested in the names of psychological disorders will get a laugh from these magnets.”

Christmas greetings go to all of my readers. I do hope that you all have a wonderful time over the Christmas break.

Tags: christmas, rant

Could it soon really be possible to look inside the brain in ‘real time’. Over the last three decades we have made leaps-and-bounds in developing non-invasive processes to scan brains; PET, MRI, fMRI etc. These scanning techniques have allowed psychologists an insight into the processes of the brain during specific tasks or just to investigate the size, location and use of particular brain structures, but the time needed to process the vast amount of information that is collected has meant that there’s no ‘real time’ option of seeing exactly what is happening, there-and then.

However, neuroscientist and inventor Christopher deCharms demonstrates a new way to use fMRI to show brain activity – thoughts, emotions, pain – while it is happening. In other words, you can actually see how you feel.

Is it possible that in the future we may be able to ‘control’ how we feel; the pain that we perceive. It seems that it through a similar process used by biofeedback techniques today could be employed using these new brain scanning techniques.

In my mind this is an incredible advancement in this technology. Not only can we see into the brain but we don’t have to wait for computers to process the data – we can see it real time. If we can get feedback on our mental process then we can perhaps learn to control our brain on a whole new level. For example, perhaps it is possible to learn to suppress pain altogether on command?

What are your thoughts?

Tags: brain scanning, pain, pain measurement, Physiological, Research

In a ‘hot off the press‘ news story the Januray Issue of The Psychologist has published a trial open access issue for all to view. I’ve spent a few minutes playing with this ‘new way of publishing’ and I’m quite impressed. A nice way to read The Psychologist. A few words of encouragement and guidance from the Managing Editor of The Psychologist:

This electronic magazine is best viewed with Firefox or Safari, with the latest version of Flash installed – it doesn’t seem to display so well in Internet Explorer, although hopefully we’ll have that ironed out shortly. What you should see is the cover of the magazine, and then you can click in the bottom corner to take you to the next page. You can also zoom in, download the whole issue, email to share, comment, rate, etc etc. Hopefully next week I’ll get all the hyperlinks working, and eventually we will be able to embed audio and video content.

In this new issue you will find articles on stigma, gossip, testosterone, and a historical look at propaganda. We have interviews with Daniel Kahneman and Lynne Segal. The new ‘forum’ section includes guest columns by Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher, Vaughan Bell and Christian Jarrett. There is plenty of news, reviews and careers information, along with the latest jobs.

http://issuu.com/thepsychologist/docs/thepsychologistjan09

It seems that this ‘open issue’ is very much a trial so do let The Psychologist know what you think of it – and if you would like to see more issues like this. I’m all for open access articles – it’s very much the philosophy behind the sites that I write for and I would be excellent to see such a big publisher in the Psychology world going the same way. It would be a great resource for students and teachers alike who would be able to make use of this excellent publication in the classroom.

Have a browse and see what you think…

Tags: bps, freebies, journals, resources, the psychologist, websites

Probably one of the most iconic tests that jump to mind when a person starts talking about going to a psychologist (or ’shrink’) is the inkblot tests.  These tests, correctly referred to as the Rorschach Inkblot tests were surrounded in ’secrecy’ as practicing psychologists who used them thought that the tests would be invalid if they had been seen previously.

The Rorschach Inkblot tests are one of a type of test called a ‘projective’ test which are supposedly meant to give insight into a persons psyche and allow us to rate how ‘healthy a personality’ a person has.  The validity of these types of tests was debated with many who were not avid fans of Freudian thinking and psychoanalysis dismissing them and questioning the objectivity of these tests.

Either way, thanks to wikipedia, we can now see the full selection of 10 inkblots that were created by Rorschach all those years ago.  Don’t accept imitations – these are the only 10 ‘official’ inkblots that were created by Rorschach.

These might come in useful when talking about Eve White / Black / Jane in Thigpen and Cleckley’s case study of multiple personality where they administered these tests to the three personalities which emerged throughout the duration of her consultation with the pair.

What do you see?

Tags: AS, core studies, Individual, resources, thigpen-and-cleckley

Only the other week I was talking about the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes‘ task that Baron-Cohen employed in his 1997 research looking at high functioning adults with Autism and Aspergers.

In order to validate the Eyes Task as a theory of mind task, participants in the two clinical groups (ASD & Tourette’s) were also tested on Happe’s Strange Stories.

This assesses the ability to interpret a nonliteral statement. Relative to normal controls who were IQ and age-matched, individuals with autism or Asperger syndrome performed less well on the task, while performing normally on a non-mentalistic control task. Individuals with autism or Asperger syndrome could provide mental state answers, but had difficulty in providing contextually appropriate mental state answers. Rather, their answers tended to concentrate on the utterance in isolation. This replicates Happé’s result. Although the majority of both clinical groups provided context-inappropriate interpretations, the autism group had the greater difficulty. 

It was argued that if the Eyes Task was indeed tapping theory of mind, then performance on the Eyes Task should correlate with performance on Happe’s strange stories – and this is what was found. See Holah for a great summary of the 1997 study.

As they seem to be difficult to come across here’s a selection of ‘Strange Stories’ that were used by Kaland et al. (2005) in a replication-type-study of Baron-Cohen’s (1999) research into those with ASD’s ability to correctly answer these questions.

Thanks to Rosey on the OCR e-list for trawling articles and finding the Kaland et. al (2005) study.

Tags: AS, Baron-Cohen, Cognitive, core studies, resources

As we’ve evolved, the human stress response has saved our lives. Today, we turn on the same life-saving physical reaction to cope with intense, ongoing stressors – and we can’t seem to turn it off. “Stress: Portrait of a Killer” reveals just how dangerous prolonged exposure to stress can be.

Is stress a saviour, tyrant or plague? This, along with many other questions are raised in a recent KPBS television programmme called ‘Stress: Portrait of a Killer’.

The video starts by looking at how it may be possible to make comparisons between wild baboons and humans and their stress responses. In the video it is argued that humans have a specific problem with stress: we don’t know how to turn it off. In the wild the stress response is designed to help in times of crisis – running for ones life – getting away from the thing that’s going to eat you.

In our lives we have the same physiological responses to that idiot in the car in front who can’t drive or the fact that we’ve lost out keys once more. The goal in life isn’t to get rid of stress but to get the right types of stress. In some cases we will pay good money to be stressed – think of theme parks and horror movies.

The video is well worth a watch and gives an excellent overview of stress research and thinking currently in psychology and clinical trials.  More importantly, it reflects on how stress is a ’secret killer’ in out society and how this can negatively affect many peoples lives. 

Along with the programme there’s a great website to accompay the show: killerstress.stanford.edu.

Thanks to Contemporary Mottled Sheep for letting me know about the show. 

Tags: A2, health, stress, video, websites

I’m often bullied into watching episodes of Grey’s Anatomy (honest – it was just on!) and occasionally I understand what McDreamy might be saying about hemispherectomies and neural-pathways; but I didn’t realise that Grey’s is raising awareness of health issues throughout the globe.  Well done Dr. Grey and cast.

According to a recent article on the CBS News site a Grey’s Anatomy episode with embedded messages about HIV awareness shifted viewers attitudes about HIV especially attitudes surrounding mothers with HIV and the chances of their baby contracting the disease.

“Health educators slipped a message about HIV-positive mothers into a story line in the popular TV show Grey’s Anatomy. Then they tested whether viewers got that message.”

Three surveys were conducted: one before the episode aired, one shortly after and a follow-up 6 weeks after.  One of the questions asked in the survey was in relation to the probability of contracting HIV from a mother who had the disease.

“As far as you know, if a woman who is HIV positive becomes pregnant and receives the proper treatment, what is the chance that she will give birth to a healthy baby, not infected with HIV?”

Before the show aired only 15% of people questioned got the correct answer (more than a 90% chance), soon after the show this went up dramatically to 61% and at the six-week follow-up 45% got the question correct.

The author of the research, Victoria Rideout, suggests that while watching television we absorb information.

“For better or worse, viewers do absorb the health information they see on TV, so it’s important for these shows to get it right … This study shows the enormous potential for entertainment television to serve as a health educator.”

This obviously raises many questions as far as health promotion goes.  Firstly, that the medium of television, and more importantly entertainment programmes can be very powerful in getting positive messages and health awareness out to the viewers.

However, this power has to be used carfully – if viewers believe that the information they are ‘absorbing’ from medical entertainment programmes are accurate (as almost 60% of viewers do) we need to ensure that there’s no false or misleading information in these programmes.  A real double-edged sword.

Tags: A2, adverts, health, health promotion, prevention, Research

The addition of the new Reicher & Haslam study to the course has introduced to many a long-argued debate surrounding Zimbardo’s original Stanford Prison Experiment; calling into question his conclusions and situational explanation for the behaviour that was seen.  

Reicher & Haslam argue against this in their 2006 research from the BBC’s The Experiment (and they have a great new website to support the study now).  The feel that the SPE was massively flawed in it’s implimentation and, basically, Zimbardo told the guards how to act and it wasn’t a result of the situation that they were all subject to. 

Following on from this you can see Zimbardo answer some uncomfortable questions put to him by Stephen Sackur as he attempts to justify his SPE on the BBC’s Hard Talk programme. Well worth a watch as it brings in Richer & Haslam’s replication too.

To hear more about the original Stanford Prison Experiment and more of Zimbardo’s thesis on tytanny – if you’re in the North – Cara Flanagan is organising another Zimbardo Conference in Edinburgh. 

Dr. Zimbardo will share his views on the nature of evil, revisit the Milgram Obedience studies, his Stanford Prison Experiment, take us to the torture dungeon at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib, and describe why it is essential to understand not only individual temperament, but also situational forces, and powerful system influences that create, justify and maintain, evil-generating situations. Finally, we go from examining how ordinary people do very bad things to how other ordinary people do very good things that qualify as Heroic. We uncover a new perspective on Ordinary Heroes, and why we need to encourage everyone to become Heroes-In-Waiting ready to act on behalf of others or a moral cause when the situation arises. 

Also speaking at the conference is Christina Maslach (Zimbardo’s wife who was the Post Grad student that called a halt to the SPE), Phil Banyard and Mike Cardwell.  Well worth the trip and good to see some conferences up North!

Tags: AS, core studies, reicher haslam, Social, Zimbardo

Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) occur in 1% of the population, are strongly heritable, and result from atypical neurodevelopment. Classic autism and Asperger Syndrome (AS) share difficulties in social functioning, communication and coping with change, alongside unusually narrow interests. IQ is average or above in AS with average or even precocious age of language onset. Many areas within the ’social brain’ are atypical in ASC. ASC has a profile of impaired empathy alongside strong ’systemising’. Hence, ASC involves disability (when empathy is required) and talent (when strong systemising would be advantageous). Psychological interventions that target empathy by harnessing systemising may help.

To save you counting – that’s actually Autism in 99 words! Thanks to MindHacks for this. 

Tags: AS, autism, Baron-Cohen, Cognitive, core studies