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                    Thanks to Steve for permission to use this Photo.

Most famous for his radical theories on language learning and evolutionary psychology, Steven Pinker is a thinker with a vision that tends to provoke strong emotional responses in anyone who will listen.  The reason may be rather simple.  Pinker analyzes human intelligence from a zero sum perspective in which he meticulously deconstructs the foundations of what’s been established as scientific fact.  The following video presentation was made at Google Headquarters.  The Google geniuses always seem to bring in other geniuses to make the room smarter.  Afterwards, please share your thoughts with the Ashworth Psychology community.  Click on the image above to watch this video.  It’s good.

Ryan Rode
Interactive Services Manager
Ashworth University Psychology Program

                             Image courtesy of storyspinn. 

Recently I was contacted by an associate producer from the Dr. Phil show. Are they seeing if I’d be a good guest? It certainly appears like that’s a possibility. So, in addition to getting some very desperately needed help from Dr. Phil and his team, I may one day soon be able to give my bastion of loyal readers a quasi-insider’s view of the show and its’ process. All I can say is, pray for me, and, for now, enjoy this correspondence, edited, of course, for privacy reasons: (more…)

                          Thanks to Karen Geiger for permission to use this Photo.

I really enjoyed Seth Woolf’s response to Deb’s solid commentary on his previous post. Since we don’t yet have our comments section clearly displayed on this blog, I’ve posted this conversation as an original post for everyone to see and engage. What are your thoughts?

From Deb: 

Dear Sir — I believe you have missed the point of what Dr. Phil has been trying to achieve. As young people, typically all of us do not realize the consequences of actions. I can indicate to you that as a owner of a company, these kind of posting would stop me from hiring an individual, no so much as their right to participate in such activity, but in that the judgment of said individual is not who I want representing my company. In short…it is that simple and professionally said individuals are limiting their options later in life, as they age and realize that childhood was not meant for public display. 

From Seth: 

It is perhaps true that I have “missed the point of what Dr. Phil has been trying to achieve” but, if so, it is because I find his aims pointless. I simply feel the cause and effect of this situation has been confused. If employers look down on such technological behavior and confessionalism, I think it says more about their own bourgeoise biases, and less about the quality of the candidates. More importantly, I would also like to counter your claim that “As young people, typically all of us do not realize the consequences of our actions.” This is a sweeping statement about young people, one which I do not follow. For one, I don’t see “young people” as a definable, homogeneous group. I’m 22, am I a young person? What about a twelve year old in Auswitz? What about an eighty year old with the mental capacities of a person one tenth his or her age? Is it for individuals to decide, society, or who? Similarly, I don’t see how a person, regardless of age, could realize all the consequences of his or her actions. Everyone, again regardless of age, must simply act with what information they have at a given moment. (more…)

              Thanks to David Zellaby for permission to use this Photo.

I have believed this for the longest time, while I was in school that those dreaded essays topics used by English and Health teachers Junior High and High School are used for identifying potential problem student. 

These very personal essay topics: 

“What was the saddest day of your life?”

“Describe a family argument, and how it turned out.”

“Write fictional essay of why you would run away.” and other similar essays….

I have always wondered, why they would ask such personal questions?  This is not the type of question I would ask someone I barely know, so why would they ask the class?  My theory was to weed out those with psychology, emotional, and family problems.  I asked a Doctor of Education and his opinion was that it’s designed to find and identify potential problem students.  Another rationale is to bring-out the passion in a student’s writing. 

In 1991, first period Health Class, I refused to write one of those essays.  I just did not do it.   One student stated he did not wish to share that information.  The health teacher yelled at him.  I simply said “I forgot”, and left it at that.  I also got yelled at for not turning in an assignment.  The topic was  “Write a Fictional essay of why you would run away from home.”  My thought was, I am not going to run away, I have no intentions to, and I refuse to write such rubbish. (more…)

              Thanks to Todd Ehlers for permission to use this Photo.

It is likely that many diverse factors have contributed to the current obesity epidemic. Fast food, less activity, trans fats, viruses, big portions, and so on have all been blamed for our increasing waistlines. The more we understand the phenomenon, the better equipped we are to deal with it.

Adina Lemeshow and her colleagues have added a new consideration–social status [1]. Teen girls were asked to rate themselves on a ten point social standing scale, with 10 representing people with the most respect and highest standing and a 1 representing people “no one wants to hang around with.” Girls who rated themselves less than 5 were 69 percent more likely to experience a two unit or more increase in BMI over the following two years, even after other factors such as socioeconomic status, TV viewing habits, mother’s BMI, and depression were controlled. (more…)

               Thanks to Angel Schatz for permission to use this Photo.

Answer the following questions, and don’t look at the next until you answer the previous: 

Does depression in kids raise their risk of violence? 

If a kid is violent, is it more or less likely they are depressed? 

If someone is depressed and violent, is it likely they are a kid? 

Can you define any of the nouns in the preceding questions? 

In a study called Perceived Dangerousness of Children With Mental Health Problems and Support for Coerced Treatment the perceptions of 1100 members of the public were evaluated, finding: 

“Children… with major depression were perceived (by 81% of the sample) as somewhat likely or very likely to be dangerous to themselves or others, compared with children with asthma (15%) or those with “daily troubles” (13%).”
and, later: 

“…compared with the child with “daily troubles,” the vignette child with depression was more than twice as likely to be assessed as dangerous toward others and ten times as likely to be assessed as dangerous toward himself or herself.”

Now, you lose no money assuming the public at large merely guess at probabilities.  So what they think may be right, wrong, both– who knows.  But whatever they think, it’s probably important to quote them correctly:

“The issue that was highlighted by this study that was really concerning to us was that Americans have linked depression in youth and violence, particularly violence towards others,” said Dr. Pescosolido [”distinguished professor of sociology, Indiana University.”] [emphasis mine, but, face it, really theirs.]

Well, no, that’s not what the public thinks, at least according to your study.  They think that depression leads to violence against themselves, and maybe towards others.  Only 9% thought violence towards others was very likely.  The majority thought violence towards others was not likely.  Right? (more…)

 
               Thanks to Chris Gladis for permission to use this Photo.

Psychology studies that rely on deceiving participants have shown we often have little clue what’s going on in our own minds. But what about in everyday situations where trickery isn’t involved?

Here are four everyday situations - shopping, reading, watching TV and judging other people - and four experiments that show how little we know in each situation about what’s really going on in our minds (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977).

Shopping

For this study researchers set themselves up in a mall pretending to carry out a consumer survey on nightgowns and nylon stockings. Passersby were asked to evaluate what they were told were four different nightgowns and four different pairs of stockings. In fact, all four items were identical.

Quite by accident they discovered a positional effect for the identical goods: people seemed to prefer the item that was on the far right. In fact this effect was really obvious for the stockings. The right-most pair, although identical to the left-most was preferred by a factor of four to one.

When asked why they had chosen a particular item, no one mentioned its position. Even when experimenters suggested to people that the position might have an effect, most participants looked at best very confused and at worst utterly dismissive.

Result: these people didn’t have a clue why they preferred one identical pair of stockings over another.

Reading

In this study participants read a passage from the novel ‘Rabbit, Run’ by John Updike. The extract from the book involves an emotionally charged scene in which an alcoholic mother, while washing her baby in the bath, accidentally drowns and kills her.

Click here to read the rest of this entry… 

           Thanks to James Tworow for permission to use this Photo.

When you change your attitude about something, do you know why? Psychologists have argued that the inner workings of our minds are largely hidden away from us. One aspect of this is the surprising finding that people are often unaware when they have changed their attitudes.

We may well, for example, be able to identify our current opinions on global warming. We might find it easy to say, “Yes, I think global warming is occurring and humans are to blame,” or, “No, it’s just a long-term trend that has nothing to do with humans”. But when our opinions change, by say watching Al Gore’s documentary, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, psychologists have found we are unlikely to be aware what changed our minds.

It gets weirder. In certain circumstances we may even be convinced that our attitude has never changed. So that we are convinced our ‘new’ attitude is the one we always had.

Whether or not this sounds far-fetched to you, the effect is dramatically demonstrated in an experiment carried out by Goethals and Reckman (1973).

Attitude change

High school students were asked their opinions on a variety of social issues, including on how children should be bussed to school and whether it would help with racial integration. The actual topic itself doesn’t matter for our purposes, what the experimenters were doing here is getting a measures of participants’ attitudes to a specific issue before the experimental manipulation.

A couple of weeks later the students were invited back for a further discussion on the bussing issue. This time, though, they were split into two groups, one that was pro- and one anti- the bussing issue. These, then, are our two experimental groups, along with a third control group, more of which, later.

Click here to read the rest of this entry… 

           Thanks to Stephan Gellert for permission to use this Photo.

A recent and already infamous episode of Dr. Phil showed that, even with the ongoing writers’ strike, fiction and humor are far from extinct on the airwaves. This episode focused on Wade, who was brought to the Phil by Michelle, his wife. She had recently started to suspect that her husband was a compulsive liar and, as per usual, cheating on her. The standard schema of accusations, phil plashbacks, yelling, lie detector results, crying, and excuses resulted. No big surprises, until the last 5 minutes or so, where we learned that the next episode (today’s) would reveal how Wade admits not only to a long list of affairs and marital transgressions, but also multiple rapes and murders.

Apparently, after the show, when heading back to Iowa (to get their divorce) Wade told Michelle that he had vague memories of raping his ex-wife and a co-worker, as well as a time where he picked up a hitchhiker who refused to have sexual intercourse, leading him to a violent outrage, murdering and dumping the woman’s body on the side of the road. Adding to the intrigue, the audience learns of restraining orders, fruitless FBI investigations, death threats, stalkings, and suicide attempts from basically all the parties involved except Phil. While adding a certain dimension of excitement, and, perhaps most importantly, providing reason to extend the show for 2 more days, it’s also extremely unbelievable. After all, as Dr. Phil actually made clear on the first show, Wade is a compulsive liar, fibbing about little inconsequential things and distorting big, important matters. (more…)

             Thanks to global green for permission to use this Photo.

The ‘How to Be Happy’ article has become a staple of newspapers, magazines, books and, increasingly, of websites. We should ‘accept reality’, or ‘take a break’, or ‘be honest with ourselves’, or ’surround ourselves with happy people’.

These things are unlikely to do us any harm but that doesn’t stop them reading like a list of platitudes - the kind that people are always doling out but never follow themselves.

We can all create our own lists of happiness enhancing activities and argue endlessly about which is better and for whom. While that’s fun for a bit, I always want to ask: which activities have evidence to back up their claims for increasing happiness?

Psychologists have only started investigating this question relatively recently, so there’s not a very long list and it is obviously far from exhaustive, but at least there’s some research to back them up. The activities psychologists have investigated are gratitude, helping others, and firstly, visualizing your best possible self.

1. Visualizing your best possible self

Visualizing your best possible self may sound like an exercise in fantasy but, crucially, it does have to be realistic. Carrying out this exercise typically involves imagining your life in the future, but a future where everything that could go well, has gone well. You have reached those realistic goals that you have set for yourself.

Then, to help cement your visualization, you commit your best possible self to paper. This exercise helps draw on the proven benefits of expressive writing.

Click here to read the rest of this entry…