Category: Togetherness

My latest ‘Beyond Boundaries’ column for The Psychologist discusses politics, social engineering and the use of mimes as a traffic calming measure.

For those following the UK election, there are also elections here in Colombia, albeit to choose the president. In the running is the mathematician, philosopher and ex-Mayor of Bogot√° Antanas Mockus who, whether you agree with his policies or not, is genuinely one of the most interesting politicians in the world.

The (English language) documentary Cities on Speed – Bogot√° Change is a fascinating account of how he and subsequent mayor Enrique Pe√±alosa transformed the Colombian capital into the safe, modern city it is today. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube if you want to check it out. If you’ve never been interested in politics or social planning before, this documentary might just pique your interest.

The film puts the moment that Bogot√°’s transformation began when Mockus, then an unknown in the mayoral election, dropped his trousers in front of rioting students who were shocked into stunned silence.

Since I wrote the column, Mockus has announced he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Despite this he says has no intention of abandoning his candidacy and has just taken a lead in the polls.

In 1995, the traffic in Bogotá, Colombia, was so chaotic that drivers had long since given up obeying the rules of the road, resulting in a disorderly free-for-all that was a major impediment to the city’s economy. The recently elected mayor of the city, who came to prominence after dropping his trousers to silence a hall of rioting students, decided on a creative solution to this similarly vexing problem: a troop of mimes.

Antanas Mockus realised that the people of Bogotá were more concerned about social disapproval than traffic fines, and so hired mimes to playfully reproach drivers that crossed red lights, blocked junctions and ignored pedestrian crossings. One cannot police by mimes alone and in a further measure to address driving behaviour, the mayor’s office brought in flashcards to allow social feedback. Each citizen was given a red card to signal to someone that their driving was poor and a white card to signal that the person who been particularly courteous or considerate.

When I tell British people this story, they seem mildly amused by the mimes, but fall about laughing when I mention the card scheme. It was, however, a great success both in terms of reducing traffic violations and in changing the culture of Bogot√° and was based on the best principles of social psychology. That is, we learn collegiate behaviour by social feedback and the best methods of social feedback are the ones that cause the least personal offence.

The British are much more averse to this sort of overt social engineering (it seems to evoke the “oh, come off it!” response identified by anthropologist Kate Fox) although subtler methods are now being raised in the run up to the elections. In late January, behavioural economist Richard Thaler and Tory Shadow Chancellor George Osborne wrote an article for The Guardian, championing behavioural economics as a way of altering citizens’ behaviour without mandating change. The idea is to take advantage of people’s cognitive biases and social tendencies – for example, they cite the fact that people use less energy when they get feedback on how much their using in comparison to similar homes in the area.

Whether this turns out to be an election gimmick to appeal to science literate voters or a genuine policy objective remains to be seen. Thaler was also involved in the Obama campaign who similarly touted behavioural economics as a policy measure, although the post-election reality has largely been business as usual.

Thanks to Jon Sutton, editor of The Psychologist who has kindly agreed for me to publish my column on Mind Hacks as long as I include the following text:

“The Psychologist is sent free to all members of the British Psychological Society (you can join here), or you can subscribe as a non-member by emailing sarsta[at]bps.org.uk”

I’ve just read a fantastic article in the Journal of Sex Research on culture and how we decide what is a sexual disorder or ‘paraphilia’. It has a fascinating section where it talks about cultural variation in common or acceptable sexual practices and it touches on how foreplay differs between societies.

Kissing during foreplay, it seems, is not universal and seems to be a particular fetish of Western lovers.

Finally, in most cultures, sexual intercourse is preceded by some degree of foreplay—that is, sensory and sexual stimulation intended to induce arousal. This stimulation may be visual, tactile, or otherwise. When visual, it may be the sight of the partner or parts of his or her body or clothing, but these may vary across cultures (Bhugra, 2000). Kissing as part of sexual foreplay is common in the West but virtually unknown in other parts of the world (Ford & Beach, 1965). There are some cultures where penetration was the key element to intercourse, and neither foreplay nor afterplay was recorded. Ford and Beach pointed out that physical pain and biting are sometimes permitted as part of sexual foreplay and, therefore, such behaviors are likely to be readily incorporated into the sexual repertoire. Thus, individuals learn about methods of sexual arousal and sexual activity from their cultural habits and, in order to avoid being labelled and treated as deviant, they conform to prevalent and expected mores.

Unfortunately, the article is locked behind a paywall. Undoubtedly for your own good though. Imagine what would happen if you started to deviate from culturally accepted foreplay practices. Anarchy. And then where would we be?

Link to PubMed entry for article.

I just found a completely charming study from 1977 that tested whether psychiatric patients with mind-reading delusions were really telepathic.

Telepathy in mental illness: deluge or delusion?

J Nerv Ment Dis. 1977 Sep;165(3):184-200.

Greyson B.

The belief that one can read others’ minds has long been considered a symptom of psychosis, despite reports in the parapsychological literature of veridical telepathy. All patients admitted to an inpatient psychiatric unit were screened for paranormal beliefs, and those claiming telepathic abilities were tested in a free-response ESP task. Eighteen per cent of the inpatient population claimed telepathic abilities; of the nine patients who completed the task, none performed above chance expectations. Higher frequencies of paranormal experiences than those reported previously in the psychiatric literature were attributed to the context of the study. Schneider’s first rank symptoms and a belief in telepathy discriminated schizophrenics more reliably than other paranormal experiences. Possible psychodynamics of delusions of telepathy were discussed in view of the predominance of women and younger men reporting them, as were the possible effects of such research on patients’ delusions.

Link to PubMed entry for study.

The New York Times has a fantastic article on how the way married couples relate to each other can have a major impact on health, although there are many intriguing interpersonal subtleties that go beyond simply being in a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ relationship.

The piece reviews the extensive evidence on how stress impacts on the immune system and discusses how, in general, marriage has a host of health benefits. However, relationship conflict can have some dramatic negative effects on well-being. In one eye-opening study just getting couples to discuss a marital disagreement slowed minor wound healing down by up to a day.

One of the most interesting bits of the article tackles the link between risk for heart disease and arguing style, noting that even in happy couples, specific ways of resolving disputes had an impact on health – although interestingly different styles had a different effect on men and women.

The women in his study who were at highest risk for signs of heart disease were those whose marital battles lacked any signs of warmth, not even a stray term of endearment during a hostile discussion (“Honey, you’re driving me crazy!”) or a minor pat on the back or squeeze of the hand, all of which can signal affection in the midst of anger. “Most of the literature assumes that it’s how bad the arguments get that drives the effect, but it’s actually the lack of affection that does it,” Smith told me. “It wasn’t how much nasty talk there was. It was the lack of warmth that predicted risk.”

For men, on the other hand, hostile and negative marital battles seemed to have no effect on heart risk. Men were at risk for a higher coronary calcium score, however, when their marital spats turned into battles for control. It didn’t matter whether it was the husband or wife who was trying to gain control of the matter; it was merely any appearance of controlling language that put men on the path of heart disease.

In both cases, the emotional tone of a marital fight turned out to be just as predictive of poor heart health as whether the individual smoked or had high cholesterol. It is worth noting that the couples in Smith’s study were all relatively happy. These were husbands and wives who loved each other. Yet many of them had developed styles of conflict that took a physical toll on each other. The solution, Smith noted, isn’t to stop fighting. It’s to fight more thoughtfully.

A thoroughly fascinating article.

Link to NYT piece ‘Is Marriage Good for Your Health?’.

The Frontal Cortex reports on an interesting study that found that the personality characteristics teachers define as creative are the same ones that make their pupils least likeable in the classroom.

Eric Barker recently referred me to this interesting study, which looked at how elementary school teachers perceived creativity in their students. While the teachers said they wanted creative kids in their classroom, they actually didn’t. In fact, when they were asked to rate their students on a variety of personality measures – the list included everything from “individualistic” to “risk-seeking” to “accepting of authority” – the traits mostly closely aligned with creative thinking were also closely associated with their “least favorite” students. As the researchers note, “Judgments for the favorite student were negatively correlated with creativity; judgments for the least favorite student were positively correlated with creativity.”

This shouldn’t be too surprising: Would you really want a little Picasso in your class? How about a baby Gertrude Stein? Or a teenage Eminem? The point is that the classroom isn’t designed for impulsive expression – that’s called talking out of turn. Instead, it’s all about obeying group dynamics and exerting focused attention. Those are important life skills, of course, but decades of psychological research suggest that such skills have little to do with creativity.

This is a classic example of the conflict where an institution that imposes strict group standards of behaviour claims to promote individuality and self-expression.

A lovely study published last year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology demonstrated how people who don’t go along with a task for justifiable moral reasons are typically rejected by the group, even when the individuals in the group might otherwise agree with their moral stand.

In other words, we like rebels as long as they are not bothering us.

Link to Frontal Cortex on ‘Classroom Creativity’.

It seems you’re more likely to die from a heart attack when having sex while having an affair, than during sex with your regular partner, although this seems largely to apply to men.

A case report in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine reports on the death of a woman who had a heart attack during extra-marital sex, something unusual in women. This is not conclusive evidence for the link between heart attacks and affairs in itself, of course, but the article reviews some suggestive evidence about sex, risk of death, physical and psychological stress.

Recent studies dispute early popular belief that sexual activity necessitates extraordinary physical effort, by showing that in normal settings, healthy adults show only mild to moderate increases in heart rate and blood pressure. However, this is not the case in individuals suffering from cardiovascular pathologies [heart problems], in which the relative risk of myocardial infarction [heart attack] in the two hours following sex increases 2.5-fold over the baseline. Furthermore, all reported cardiac deaths surrounding sexual conducts involved extramarital sex, suggesting psychological stress as an added factor.

However, as there is no data about behaviour, it’s not clear that psychological stress is the primary thing that increases risk, or whether people are just doing more strenuous things in their extramarital trysts.

The paper does mention one study from Israel, however, that sets the scene, and largely rules out the fact that this may be due to taking Viagra, which can put a strain on the heart

Between the years 1999 and 2008, the National Center of Forensic Medicine in Israel (population of 7.4 millions) investigated at least one case annually of sudden death of a male engaged in sexual activity. All these events took place with substantially younger women, in extramarital settings… In only one instance the toxicological examination revealed traces of sildenafil [Viagra] in the blood.

In all of the cases in this study, the cause was sudden heart failure in men with coronary heart disease.

Link to case report on PubMed.

About a year ago, we posted about a study at the University of Manchester who were evaluating the impact of podcast about psychosis on attitudes towards unusual mental states. Mind Hacks readers formed a large bulk of the participants and the paper has just been published in the journal Psychosis.

So, in possibly one of the most recursive posts you’re likely to read for a while, I’m going to write about a study you were part of because you read about it on Mind Hacks.

The research was motivated by the fact that although anomalous psychosis-like experiences are common (for example, about a third of people report naturally occurring hallucinations) those who end up in front of mental health professionals are more likely to have assumed that these psychological distortions are uncontrollable, unacceptable or dangerous.

Imagine if you started occasionally hearing voices. The majority of people who hear voices don’t become mentally ill, they’re absolutely fine. But if you didn’t know this you might automatically think you were ‘going mad’ or ‘losing your mind’ and become, understandably, very distressed.

Of course, voices can be a symptom of mental illness but headaches can be a symptom of a brain cancer and imagine how you’d feel if you assumed that every headache meant you had a tumour.

Importantly, there is evidence that distress from worry about unusual experiences can actually worsen the mental state, making it more likely that the person becomes mentally ill.

Ideally, we’d want everyone to know that unusual experiences, like headaches, can be normal but to go to the doctor if they are causing any sort of interference or difficulty.

Unfortunately, most people don’t know this and getting the word out is hard, so the team at Manchester decided to run a pilot study to see if a short podcast that gave good advice would help, so they set about evaluating it.

They asked people to complete some psychological questionnaires online that measured attitudes to hearing voices and attitudes to feeling paranoid, asked people to listen to the podcast, and then return to complete the questionnaires again afterwards.

I have to say, the podcast was not the most gripping and the sound quality could have been improved but despite this, after listening, participants were more likely to accurately rate how common unusual experiences are reported less negative and distressing attitudes towards voices and paranoid thoughts.

As the researchers note, to understand whether this was genuinely an effect of the psychosis podcast, rather than just spending 30 minutes relaxing with an mp3 player, they’d need to run a control group who listened to something else, but this is a promising start and they hope to take the project further to develop a useful mental health education tool.

This is also the first time Mind Hacks appears in the medical literature. The paper mentions Mind Hacks, quotes our entire post, and links to us:

The authors of a popular high-quality psychology blog (http://www.mindhacks.com) also kindly agreed to mention the study to their readers in a short internet post.

So forget your hit counts and blog rankings, the claim that Mind Hacks is a “popular high-quality psychology blog” is now SCIENTIFIC FACT! Although, largely of course, because of you. Researcher Paul Hutton also asked us to pass on his thanks to you all, and we can only do the same.

Link to DOI entry and summary for psychosis podcast study.

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article on the ‘superstar effect’ where competition against someone who is perceived as far superior actually makes the other competitors perform worse due to a sort of ‘implicit intimidation’.

The piece, by science writer Jonah Lehrer, riffs on a study [pdf] by economist Jennifer Brown who looked at the effect of Tiger Woods presence in a tournament on other golfers’ performance:

Ms. Brown discovered the superstar effect by analyzing data from every player in every PGA Tour event from 1999 to 2006. She chose golf for several reasons, from the lack of “confounding team dynamics” to the immaculate statistics kept by the PGA. Most important, however, was the presence of Mr. Woods, who has dominated his sport in a way few others have.

Such domination appears to be deeply intimidating. Whenever Mr. Woods entered a tournament, every other golfer took, on average, 0.8 more strokes. This effect was even observable in the first round, with the presence of Mr. Woods leading to an additional 0.3 strokes among all golfers over the initial 18 holes. While this might sound like an insignificant difference, the average margin between first and second place in PGA Tour events is frequently just a single stroke. Interestingly, the superstar effect also varied depending on the player’s position on the leaderboard, with players closer to the lead showing a greater drop-off in performance.

The article lifts off from there and virtually every paragraph has an insight into how we internalise skills and how our performance is affected by our perceptions and mental activity.

Link to WSJ article ‘The Superstar Effect’.

As a follow-on from our recent post on the psychology of urban legends, I’ve just found a video interview with psychologist Nicholas DiFonzo, author of the book Rumor Psychology that we mentioned previously.

DiFonzo discusses some of the main conclusions of the research, including the major motivations for why people pass on hearsay, the most significant reasons for why people believe it, and the most effective ways of combating rumours.

A brief but interesting interview.

Link to interview on YouTube.

Wired magazine’s Haiti Rewired blog has an excellent piece on the ‘psychological typhoon eye’ phenomenon, discovered after studies of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China, where those closest to the centre of the devastation actually reported less concern about their safety and health.

The effect was initially reported shortly after the disaster and was found to still be present in a follow-up study one year later.

From the Wired piece:

Two suggestions have been provided to account for the psychological eye, namely “psychological immunization” or “cognitive dissonance”. The former seemed like a plausible explanation after the initial survey, since there is wide anecdotal documentation of “coping measures” adopted by those who experience significant personal trauma or hazards. However, the fact that subsequent surveys found relatives experiencing a variation of the psychological eye, suggests that the extent of personal experience, which strongly drives psychological immunization, is not sufficient to account for the observed effect.

Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance is defined as an uncomfortable psychological state in which two opposing cognitions are experienced and need to ultimately be reconciled. In the example of the psychological eye, the devastation of the area creates a sense of danger, yet the individual may have no choice but to remain close by, counter to the survival instinct. To reconcile these conflicting beliefs, the individual may unconsciously lower self-assessed risk to justify remaining in the area. Cognitive dissonance is very difficult (impossible?) to modify in the field, as noted by the authors, and thus, this proposal will remain more speculative until follow-up studies in a controlled fashion can be done.

The author, Nature’s Noah Gray, goes on to suggest that “Surveyors must maintain a cautious and healthy skepticism when interviewing survivors and assessing areas for aid because information provided and opinions given will not likely reflect the dire situations being experienced.”

One difficulty in these situations is that mental health workers usually hurriedly arrive from other countries and may not fully understand how trauma and psychological distress are experienced by the local population, or how they integrate with other sorts of decision-making.

We tend to assume that trauma is a universal reaction to a difficult situation but this singular concept is something of a mirage – common psychological reactions to devastation have differed over time and differ between cultures.

The model of trauma described as the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD simply doesn’t fit the common reactions of people from many cultures, despite the fact that this is the most common conceptual tool used by Western mental health workers.

In a 2001 article for the British Medical Journal psychiatrist Derek Summerfield noted:

Underpinning these constructs is the concept of “person” that is held by a particular culture at particular point in time. This embodies questions such as how much or what kind of adversity a person can face and still be “normal”; what is reasonable risk; when fatalism is appropriate and when a sense of grievance is; what is acceptable behaviour at a time of crisis including how distress should be expressed, how help should be sought, and whether restitution should be made.

In these cases, not understanding the local culture may mean that aid workers may assume that individuals don’t understand the risks of the situation, when, in fact, each may be basing their risk assessment on different priorities – as has been found in studies on cultural differences in risk perception.

Treating trauma seems like a no brainer. It intuitively seems like one of the most worthy and naturally important responses to a disaster, which is probably why disaster areas are now often flooded with ‘trauma counsellors’ after the event (Ethan Watters’s book Crazy Like Us charts the response to the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka where floods of well-meaning but poorly trained therapists arrived in the following weeks much to the bafflement of the locals and annoyance of the established relief organisations).

However, this is one of few areas where well meaning but poorly prepared therapists can actually do harm. Although experiencing extreme danger raises the risk of mental illness, contrary to popular belief, only a minority of people caught up in disasters will experience psychological trauma and immediate psychological treatment, either in single or multiple sessions has found to be useless or to make matters worse.

The psychological impact of devastation changes through time and space and we need to be careful to understand its local significance lest we inadvertently amplify the chaos.

Link to Haiti Rewired on the ‘psychological typhoon eye’.

The Point of Inquiry podcast has a great discussion with psychologist Scott Lilienfeld about his new book ’50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology’ and why scientific-sounding mental fairy tales persist, despite them having no good evidence to support them.

The most interesting bit is where Lilienfeld tackles why such myths have their psychological power, which to me is far the most interesting aspect of why certain stories perpetuate.

Some ideas seem to have properties that give them social currency. Here’s one of my favourite and you can try it out yourself – the usual format of the conversation goes something like this:

– Remember Bobby McFerrin, the ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ guy?
– Yeah, I remember him.
– Killed himself.
– Huh, that figures.

This myth has no evidence for it whatsoever, Bobby McFerrrin is alive and well, but it became so widespread that Snopes created a page debunking the story.

What is it about this story that makes it so easily accepted? Or perhaps, we should ask, what is it about this story which makes it so attractive to pass on to others?

There has been a considerable amount of research on the psychology of rumours that attempts to explain why we are motivated to spread them. A fantastic book called Rumor Psychology reviews the research which indicates that uncertainty, importance or outcome-relevant involvement, lack of control, anxiety, and belief are crucial – but this doesn’t seem to apply to all such rumours (as an aside, it’s interesting that these principles seem rarely applied in military PsyOps campaigns e.g. see PsyWar.org Iraq war leaflet archive).

On a personal level, you can see how these principles might apply to trite ‘women are from mars, women are from venus’ pop relationship psychology, but it doesn’t seem to apply quite so well to the commonly repeated myth that we use only 10% of our brains.

And when we consider the ‘Bobby McFerrin topped himself’ story, none of it seems relevant. Perhaps this is better thought of as ‘gossip’, but unfortunately the psychology of gossip is much less developed and relies largely on pseudo-evolutionary ideas about social bonding and the like (Robin Dunbar’s book Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language is perhaps the most developed example of this).

I often wonder if we need an experimental aesthetics of information that helps us understand why such stories are inherently attractive, in the same way that studies have begun to focus on what makes certain tunes catchy.

Link to Point of Inquiry podcast on PopPsy myths.

If you’re wanting an antidote to all the Brizendine ‘male brain’ silliness which is floating round at the moment, Scientific American Mind has an excellent article by straight-thinking neuroscientist Lise Eliot that looks at the actual evidence for sex differences and how relatively minor differences at birth get shaped and amplified by how we guide children into certain preferences and behaviours.

Eliot has written Pink Brain, Blue Brain, probably the single best book I’ve ever found on the psychology and neuroscience of sex differences and gendered-behaviour.

It carefully and engagingly examines stereotypes in the light of evidence from both biological and social studies and the Scientific American Mind article tackles a similarly incisive tack:

So whereas men and boys score higher on measures of physical and verbal aggression, girls and women score higher on most measures of empathy, or the awareness and sharing of other people’s emotions, conclude psychologist Nancy Eisenberg of Arizona State University and her colleagues in studies dating back to the 1980s.

And yet the sex difference in empathy is smaller than most people realize and also strongly dependent on how it is measured. When men and women are asked to self-report their empathetic tendencies, women are much likelier than men to endorse statements such as “I am good at knowing how others will feel” or “I enjoy caring for other people.” When tested using more objective measures, however, such as recognizing the emotions in a series of photographed faces, the difference between men and women is much smaller, about four tenths of a standard deviation, meaning the average woman is more accurate than just 66 percent of men.

In children, the difference is tinier still, less than half that found in adults, reported psychologist Erin McClure of Emory University in 2000 after analyzing more than 100 studies of sex differences in facial emotion processing in infants, children and adolescents. So although girls do start out a bit more sensitive to other people’s faces and emotions, their advantage grows larger with age, no doubt because of their stronger communication skills, more practice at role playing with dolls and more intimate friendships as compared with boys.

Eliot effortlessly translates the broad scope of the scientific research into compelling prose and goes about questioning the ‘mars and venus’ stereotypes with an in-depth knowledge of the mind and brain.

If someone could send Brizendine a copy, I think we’d all be better off.

Link to SciAmMind article ‘The Truth about Boys and Girls’.
Link to more info on Eliot’s book Pink Brain, Blue Brain.

Paste Magazine has an article on ‘Eight Musical Homages to the Asylum’ about some of the most famous, and infamous, songs and videos about being institutionalised.

It was kindly posted by Mind Hacks reader Clifton Wiens in response to our previous post about jazz legend Charlie Parker having written what I thought was the only known song about an artist’s own stay in a psychiatric hospital (and not just admission to mental hospitals in general, of which there are lots).

However, the Paste Magazine article notes that James Taylor’s “Knockin‚Äô ‚ÄôRound the Zoo” is about his 1965 stay in McLean Hospital.

Another reader, Hugo, noted in the comments that Scandinavian metal band Diagnose: Lebensgefahr wrote an album called Transformalin about one of the member’s stays in hospital, although forgive me if I remain a little sceptical about the somewhat traditionally theatrical claims of black metal, although I could be wrong.

Recently, however, I’ve discovered that there was a whole concept album based around an artists’ stay in a mental hospital – by who else – but Alice Cooper. The album was called From the Inside and was apparently inspired by Coopers’ admission for alcoholism.

Any other suggestions gratefully received.

Link to ‘Eight Musical Homages to the Asylum’.

This study should cause all sorts of public policy head scratching and hair pulling but will undoubtedly be ignored. It suggests that motherhood, not marriage, reduces the chances of disadvantaged young women getting involved in drug use and delinquency.

A special award to the first politician to argue that young women should be getting up the duff rather than married for the benefit of society, and full marks to the first one that realises that such complex social problems can’t be solved by simple solutions whether that be marriage, pregnancy or whatever else is flavour of the month (Americans: ‘up the duff’ is British slang for ‘blessed with child’).

Motherhood and criminal desistance in disadvantaged neighborhoods

Criminology, Volume 48 Issue 1, Pages 221 – 258

Derek A. Kreager, Ross L. Matsueda, Elena A. Erosheva

Evidence from several qualitative studies has suggested that the transition to motherhood has strong inhibitory effects on the delinquency and drug use trajectories of poor women. Quantitative studies, however, typically have failed to find significant parenthood or motherhood effects. We argue that the latter research typically has not examined motherhood in disadvantaged settings or applied the appropriate statistical method. Focusing on within-individual change, we test the motherhood hypothesis using data from a 10-year longitudinal study of more than 500 women living in disadvantaged Denver communities. We find that the transition to motherhood is associated significantly with reductions in delinquency, marijuana, and alcohol behaviors. Moreover, we find that the effect of motherhood is larger than that of marriage for all outcomes. These results support the qualitative findings and suggest that the transition to motherhood—and not marriage—is the primary turning point for disadvantaged women to exit delinquent and drug-using trajectories.

Link to summary and DOI entry for study.

A new study just published in Psychological Bulletin has reviewed studies on the effects of violent video games and concludes that they cause a small but reliable increase in aggressive behaviour and anti-social thinking.

The study, led by psychologist Craig Anderson, is a type of meta-analysis which attempts to mathematically aggregate the results of past studies to see what the overall effect is.

There have been several similar studies in recent years which have come to different conclusions, based on whether the results have been thought to have been affected by publication bias or not. In other words, while the published studies suggest there is a small reliable effect of video games on aggression some reviews have suggested this is because fewer of the studies that don’t find a link actually get published.

This new study aimed to include unpublished studies and also looked at studies from both Western cultures, like the US and Europe, and Eastern cultures, such as Japan, to see if social environment influences any potential link.

The review included both observational studies, which look at what happens in the ‘real world’ but can’t tell us whether gaming causes aggression (it could be just that more aggressive people play more violent games), and experimental studies which can determine cause, because participants are randomly assigned to groups and given either violent or non-violent games, but are a little more removed from everyday life.

The researchers examined whether violent video games led to changes in aggressive behaviour, thoughts and emotions, and for changes in empathy and helpful behaviour to others.

Overall, the analysis concluded that violent video gaming causes a small but reliable increase in aggression and possibly a reduction in helpful behaviour and empathy.

The results on empathy were the weakest, however, as only study was an experiment and the researchers lumped together research that used questionnaires and which tested bodily desensitisation (whether people bodily react less to emotional events when they re-experience them) which is not a good measure of someone’s mental state.

One interesting aspect of the analysis is that the researchers looked at a number of game characteristics to see if they had an effect; for example, whether the people were playing in first- or third-person, whether the violence was towards human or non-human characters; and found that none of this made much difference.

What this suggests is that the effect is not due to non-specific priming, a psychological effect whereby experiencing one type of concept makes closely related concepts and actions more accessible and more likely. In this case, the fictional violence is assumed to make aggressive thoughts and actions more easily triggered.

It must be said that the overall effect was quite small. For the statistically inclined, the correlation was r = .19 for all studies and r = .24 when they looked only at the most rigorous research. This means that violent video games accounted for between about 3.6% and 5.8% of the total change in aggressiveness.

Interestingly, despite the fact that Japan, for example, is more culturally adverse to aggression than Western countries, the effects seems to be equally as apparent on either side of the world.

The journal published a discussion based on the study, including a criticism by psychologists Christopher Ferguson and John Kilburn, who have published previous analyses suggesting that the violence effect is down to publication bias.

The discussion focusses on various technical issues which are well answered by the original authors, although perhaps the most significant points of disagreement focus on two areas.

The first is that this new analyses only focused on simple relations, and didn’t take into account whether other factors could be having an influence. For example, a previous study suggested that when pre-existing emotional, family and social problems are accounted for, the aggression increasing effects of video games disappears.

The second concerns how important this small effect is. On an individual level a small change may be undetectable amid the to-and-fro of everyday life, but at the level of the population it could conceivably increase the number of aggressive incidents, although these are often the hardest effects to track.

Link to PubMed entry for study.
pdf of full text.

I just found a study which specifically investigated which drugs are preferred by clubbers for sex. The study was completed in Spain and it turns out booze is the punter’s favourite, clearly contradicting the widely-held theory that alcohol was invented to help British people have sex.

[Which drugs are preferred for sex in nightlife recreational settings?]

[Article in Spanish]

Adicciones. 2008;20(1):37-47.

Calafat A, Juan M, Becoña E, Mantecón A.

Many people associate the use of alcohol and other drugs with sexuality. It is common to find that each drug is associated with a specific effect on sexuality. Weekend recreational nightlife settings are increasingly important places for the young, and frequented by them more and more in search of sex and drug-taking opportunities. In this research we are interested in the role the young attribute to recreational drugs with regard to their sexual practices. We interviewed a sample of 100 young people from four Spanish cities, using a questionnaire with both open and closed questions. Snowball sampling was used to find those who had had sexual experience, who had taken recreational drugs and who liked going to discos, bars, etc. at the weekend. We found that these young people have a very precise idea of how each drug functions within sexuality. Considering all four parameters analysed, alcohol is by far the most popular (to initiate the sexual encounter, for more unusual or the “hottest” experiences, to increase arousal, and to prolong sex), though in the last case in particular the preferred drug was cocaine. Cannabis does not interest them because of its relaxing effects, while ecstasy is chosen more for remaining active and enjoying oneself than for its sexual effects. Women use alcohol more than men (mainly to increase arousal, when they want unusual sex or to prolong sex) and use cocaine less.

The line “Snowball sampling was used…” made me laugh out loud at the unintentional innuendo. If you’re not familiar with its various meanings, it simultaneously refers to a research method, a drug term and a [NSFW] sexual practice [Wikipedia link, but I did warn you].

Link to PubMed entry for study.