Category: Togetherness

A study that followed the lives of young males for 20 years has found that cognitive ability predicted whether the person was likely to engage in violence or theft if they had a tendency for antisocial behaviour.

Way back in ’79, the researchers recruited 698 males from 12 to 18 years of age from a random telephone survey in New Jersey. They kept in contact with them until the year 2000.

The researchers interviewed the participants and asked about any antisocial behaviour or offences.

They also tested the participants using neuropsychological tests of verbal IQ and executive function – the ability to co-ordinate mental resources that is closely linked to the frontal lobes.

In the males who did end up engaging in antisocial behaviour, the ones with cognitive difficulties tended to be violent, while the ones who were cognitively more able tended to steal.

In other words, low mental ability was associated with violence while the brighter individuals tended to engage in theft.

This could be because successful theft could require more thought, from planning a robbery to tricking another individual, whereas successful violence just requires a target.

One of the difficulties in interpreting these sorts of studies, is that they rely on participants admitting their own offences, so maybe more intelligent people are likely to describe their crimes differently.

However, it certainly wasn’t the case that more able people simply kept quiet about antisocial behaviour, as both reported wrongdoings, but of a different type.

UPDATE: Romeo Vitelli makes an interesting point in the comments:

All things being equal, theft is regarded as being less serious than violence is. Given that this study depends on self-report, are the ones who commit violence less likely to admit to committing violent crimes than the ones who commit theft?

Link to abstract of scientific paper.
Link to brief jargon-free summary.

Wired has picked up on the annual ‘psychiatrists diagnose fictional character’ story by noting that researchers have diagnosed Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader, with borderline personality disorder. But is he genuinely disordered or just misunderstood?

The diagnosis of personality disorder describes someone who is consistently emotionally unstable, impulsive and has difficulty forming stable relationships, often seeming aggressive and lacking in self-control.

Borderline personality disorder or BPD is a subtype, particularly characterised by feelings of emptiness and unstable identity, suicide and self-harm, extreme and fluctuating views of others, and occasional paranoid thinking.

In 1988 two psychiatrists published an influential study that questioned the diagnosis of personality disorder, suggesting it was just a label for patients that psychiatrists didn’t like.

Lewis and Appleby gave a group of psychiatrists a number of clinical case studies, and asked them to rate their attitudes towards the patients, and say how they would treat them.

All the psychiatrists were given the same descriptions, except that some included an additional piece of information: that the patient had been given an earlier diagnosis of personality disorder.

This simple piece of information led the patients to be rated as less deserving of care, more difficult, manipulative, attention-seeking, annoying, and more in control of their suicidal urges and debts.

The authors of the study concluded that personality disorder “appears to be an enduring pejorative judgement rather than a clinical diagnosis. It is proposed that the concept be abandoned”.

Although widely used, the diagnosis is still controversial, with some researchers arguing it is a useful and important classification, although admitting there’s still plenty of work to be done.

So does Anakin Skywalker have borderline personality disorder? He probably fulfils the diagnostic criteria.

But the questions should really be ‘does the diagnosis do anything except express our dislike for him?’ and ‘will medicalising his problems help him to improve his life?’.

Link to Wired article on diagnosing Anakin Skywalker (via OmniBrain).

Two articles published yesterday examine youth suicide by focusing on the increasing number of suicides among US college students and how Korean authorities are trying to crack down on suicide websites and online pacts.

An article in the The LA Times examined how student suicides are leading people to question the adequacy of campus mental health services.

The student years often put a particular strain on mental health.

Because of existing support, many people are now able to attend university that would have never gone before because their mental disorder couldn’t be adequately managed.

However, the transition to university life can put additional strain on some people, and the late teens and early twenties are when most mental health problems emerge, even for people who don’t attend college.

The New York Times article investigates how suicidal young people in South Korea are using the web to trade tips and organise suicide pacts.

As part of a wider suicide prevention plan, The Korean authorites are now trying to crack down on these websites in a bid to stop young people encouraging each other’s suicidial tendencies.

Link to LA Times article ‘Suicides a symptom of larger UC crisis’.
Link to NYT article ‘Tracking an Online Trend, and a Route to Suicide’.

The New York Times has an interesting piece on an often neglected area of psychology that looks at the significance of the stories we use to explain our lives to ourselves and others.

A small but active area of research called ‘narrative psychology‘ has been examining how we make and use stories about our experiences for some years now.

The NYT article picks up on some research findings from Dr Dan McAdams’ research group that show some common themes in life stories and suggest they may be linked to particular psychological characteristics:

In analyzing the texts, the researchers found strong correlations between the content of people’s current lives and the stories they tell. Those with mood problems have many good memories, but these scenes are usually tainted by some dark detail. The pride of college graduation is spoiled when a friend makes a cutting remark. The wedding party was wonderful until the best man collapsed from drink. A note of disappointment seems to close each narrative phrase.

By contrast, so-called generative adults — those who score highly on tests measuring civic-mindedness, and who are likely to be energetic and involved — tend to see many of the events in their life in the reverse order, as linked by themes of redemption. They flunked sixth grade but met a wonderful counselor and made honor roll in seventh. They were laid low by divorce, only to meet a wonderful new partner. Often, too, they say they felt singled out from very early in life — protected, even as others nearby suffered.

The article also suggests that the narratives are heavily influenced by our social knowledge, so we apply cultural templates for stories of success, failure and redemption to best make sense of our experience.

Link to NYT article ‘This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It)’.

New Scientist has a short report suggesting that the face contributes more to the overall impression of attractiveness than the body.

The research was led by biologist Marianne Peters who asked participants to rate the attractiveness of a number of people, presented as photographs of either the whole person, the face only or the body only.

They found that faces account for more of the variation among ratings than do bodies; in other words, faces are more important. For women rating men, 52 per cent of the attractiveness score was made up by the face rating, while for bodies it was 24 per cent. The trend was similar when men rated women, with 47 per cent of a woman’s overall attractiveness accounted for by her face, and 32 per cent by her body.

Interestingly, the face and body affected the overall attractiveness independently and there was no interaction.

For example, there was no ‘double whammy’ effect for having a face and body that were both rated either high or low on the attractiveness scale.

Link to NewSci report ‘The face, not the body, attracts a mate’.
Link to abstract of scientific paper.

NPR has a short video report on how social conventions, like keeping personal space, transfer into virtual worlds like Second Life.

The report focuses on the work of psychologist Nick Yee who we interviewed last November about his research into the social psychology of virtual worlds.

Yee and the NPR reporter go and field test some of his findings in Second Life, demonstrating that we use the same rules of social psychology taken from physical space to moderate online interactions.

As an aside, Yee’s has recently written a fascinating article on the psychology of how players develop superstitions in virtual worlds.

Link to NPR report with video and podcast.

Prospect magazine has an engaging article by psychologist Judith Rich Harris who argues, contrary to popular belief, that parents are not the most important influence in a child’s development.

Harris wrote a book called The Nurture Assumption, and more recently No Two Alike, that both took a similar line, suggesting that the influence of the home environment is relatively small in shaping a child’s personality.

She bases this on research suggesting that children can and do adapt their behaviour according to whether they’re with their parents, with others, in the home, or otherwise.

Harris suggests that child behaviours that remain the same across various environments are more likely to be influenced by genetics.

In other words, she argues that the idea we relate to others in specific ways because we’ve learnt certain core relationship styles with our parents is mistaken, and in fact, we develop context and person specific relationship patterns that can be seen even from an early age.

She gives the example of the classic distinction made between the personalities of first and last born children:

Firstborns and laterborns do behave in characteristic ways when they’re in the presence of their parents and siblings, but they drop these behaviours when they’re away from their family. Like James in [TV programme] Child of our Time, they adapt their behaviour to their setting. The firstborn who dominates his younger siblings at home doesn’t automatically assume that he will also be able to dominate his classmates. After all, even though he’s the largest child at home, he may turn out to be the smallest one in the playground. Research confirms that firstborn children are, on average, no more dominant in the playground than are laterborns. Nor do laterborns go through life permanently cowed. A laterborn who is pushed around by his older brother at home is fully capable of stepping into a dominant role with his peers.

Link to Prospect article ‘Why home doesn’t matter’.
Link to Wikipedia page on Judith Rich Harris with many links.

Zimbardo’s famous ‘Stanford Prison Experiment‘ is often cited as an example of where circumstances influence average people to take up abusive roles.

In a recent article in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, psychologists Thomas Carnahan and Sam McFarland tested the idea that the people who volunteer for this sort of study were truly ‘average’ and found that they had character traits that could encourage abuse.

To recruit participants, the researchers used the newspaper advert from the original Stanford Prison Experiment, as well as another advert that was identical, except for the mention of ‘prison life’.

They found that volunteers who responded to the advert that mentioned ‘prison life’ scored significantly higher on measures of the abuse-related dispositions of aggressiveness, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance and lower on empathy and altruism.

This suggests that circumstances may not be the only factor in influencing the sort of behaviour seen in the original study, as some people may have particular attitudes that could make abuse more likely when the circumstances allow for it.

There is further commentary and analysis of the research over at the ever-excellent CrimePsychBlog.

Link to CrimePsychBlog on ‘Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment’.
Link to abstract of research study.

The current issue of the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry has a curious letter about a patient who had the delusional belief that emails were being delivered directly to her mind:

Dear Editor

We report the case of an elderly lady with no experience of using a personal computer or internet technology, whose delusional experiences included the direct personal receipt of email.

Ms T, an 84-year old female with a 40-year history of schizoaffective disorder, presented with a delusional belief that something precious and of value ‘for all people’ had been inserted into her body by a doctor in Germany in the 1950s. She had sought medical help because she believed that an abdominal operative procedure would be necessary to remove a “rat and a teddy bear made of diamonds” that she believed had grown within her.

Following admission, she remained highly guarded, distressed and preoccupied with the need of urgent surgery, which she demanded every time she met her medical team. When asked about the origins of this belief and her desire for surgery, she said that she had gained knowledge about this from a friend, whom she had seen last in 1945.

She explained that she received emails from this friend. These arrived in her mind, exactly like electronic mail, but were managed without a computer. Rather than receiving messages in text form, she received what she described as ‘an impression in my mind’, which conveyed an unequivocal meaning to her. She also believed that her friend had some valuable information for the medical team and that he would be able to contact the senior physician by a similar mechanism.

Following 4 weeks of treatment with risperidone 1.0 mg bd her mental state improved to the point where she stopped receiving the emails, gained insight into her primary belief and told us that she was satisfied that surgery was no longer needed.

There have been previous reports of delusions specific equipment components (Schmid-Siegel et al., 2004) and general activity in the internet (Tan et al., 2004). Most reported cases tend to be in young people, often with a particular experience in using the internet (Bell et al., 2005). To our knowledge, there have been no previous reports of the particular delusion of email receipt by the self. Our case shows that internet-based delusions are not restricted to the young or to those familiar with use of the internet.

Dr Malgorzata Raczek
Prof Robert Howard

Link to PubMed entry for letter.

Dr Petra Boyton casts a critical eye on recent media stories suggesting that sex on first date releases ‘brain hormones’ that increase trust and intimacy that might improve the long-term chances of a relationship. So what does neuroscience tell us about the link?

The claim is made by Dr Barry Gibb [insert Bee Gees joke here] in a new book The Rough Guide to the Brain.

The claim is likely based on the fact that the hormone oxytocin has been reported to increase trust in humans when deliberately administered by experimenters, and has been linked to sexual response in humans.

The trouble is, the evidence for a strong and consistent link with sexual response isn’t really there yet.

A recent review article examined the role of hormones in sexual arousal and looked specifically at oxytocin, noting that:

Carmichael et al. (1987) found that plasma OT [oxytocin] increased around the time of orgasm in men and women, remaining raised for at least 5 min after orgasm…. In a recent study of men, OT increased in some subjects following ejaculation, but the individual variability was such that the group effect was not significant (Kruger et al. 2003a).

Murphy et al. (1987) reported an increase in OT in men during sexual arousal, which persisted beyond ejaculation, but with no obvious increase at ejaculation. In a study of women, Blaicher et al.(1999) found an increase in OT 1 min after orgasm, but levels were close to baseline by 5 min post-orgasm.

It is difficult to draw clear conclusions from this literature on OT and sexual arousal. Whether the increase of OT around orgasm, which has been somewhat inconsistently observed in the human literature, has any specific function, rather than being an epiphenomenon of other changes, remains uncertain…

In other words, the evidence for oxytocin being released consistently during sex is mixed and its significance is unclear.

Even if sex and the oxytocin ‘trust boost’ was reliably linked, you would need to do a study looking at whether couples trust each other more after having sex for the first time to really be sure whether the effect actually had an impact.

Sex causes such a strong behavioural, psychological and neurochemical change that a small release of oxytocin might be completely insignificant among the storm of other effects.

So does sex on first date increase the chances of a long-term relationship?

We don’t know, and what we do know about the neuroscience of sexual response doesn’t really tell us either.

UPDATE: Susan Kuchinskas has added some insightful commentary to this post. Check the comments section.

Link to Dr Petra Boyton’s article.
Link to full text of scientific article ‘The endocrinology of sexual arousal’.

St Patrick’s in Dublin is the oldest psychiatric hospital in Ireland. It was founded by the author of Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift, who left his money after his death in 1745 “To build a house for fools and mad”.

Swift was most famous for his satire and it is no surprise that his founding of St Patrick’s was a satirical nod towards his native Ireland.

Famously, he described his gesture in a poem entitled On the Death of Dr Swift:

He gave the little wealth he had
To build a house for fools and mad,
And showed by one satiric touch
No nation needed it so much.

The hospital was intended as more than just parody, however, as Swift was also genuinely committed to the care of people with mental illness.

Swift had served as one of the Governors of Bethlem Hospital in London and, when he became Dean of the city’s cathedral, he began to realise the appalling conditions that mentally ill Dubliners had to endure.

The hospital still stands today, next to that other 18th century Irish institution, the Guinness Brewery, and is one of the leading centres for psychiatric treatment, teaching and research in Ireland.

Link to brief AJP article on St Patrick’s.
Link to Wikipedia page on St Patrick’s.
Link to St Patrick’s website.

Psychiatrist and psychotherapist Irvin Yalom discusses some of the thinking behind his therapeutic approach on p154 of Love’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy (ISBN 0140128468).

Yalom is known for his work in developing existential psychotherapy, group therapy and his engaging and exciting books and novels on the psychotherapeutic process.

To my mind “good” therapy (which I equate with deep, or penetrating, therapy, not with efficient or even, I am pained to say, helpful therapy) conducted with a “good” patient is at bottom a truth-seeking venture. My quarry when I was a novitiate was the truth of the past, to trace all of life’s coordinates and, thereby, to locate and to explain a person’s current life, pathology, motivation and actions.

I used to be so sure. What arrogance! And now what kind of truth was I stalking? I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.

But there is timing and judgement. Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer. Beware of stripping a patient who can’t bear the chill of reality. And don’t exhaust yourself by jousting with religious magic: you’re no match for it.

Link to Irvin Yalom’s website (thanks Annie!).

ABC Radio National’s Health Report had a recent programme in two halves, one looking at how eating disorders manifest in childhood and adolescence and another on girls diagnosed with ADHD.

Unexpectedly, the guest for the second section, psychologist Prof Steve Hinshaw, is asked about his work on stigma and mental illness and has some interesting comments to make about how scientific models of mental illness can influence how stigmatised someone feels after being given a particular diagnosis.

As well as this interesting detour, the programme examines how ADHD and eating disorders can start, and are treated, in childhood.

mp3 of whole programme.
Link to transcript of eating disorders section.
Link to ADHD in girls section.

Edge has a video of Philip Zimbardo talking about what his investigations into the psychology of conformity and abuse have told him about the psychology of non-conformity in the face of evil.

He starts his talk with the following:

One of the questions I’ve been asking myself is, is there a counter point to Hannah Arendt’s classical analysis of evil in terms of her phrase ‘the banality of evil’.

Zimbardo largely describes how his previous work pointed him towards studying heroism and non-conformity, but also gives a nice outline of some of the historical and political background to his work.

Link to page with embedded Quicktime video.

Science News has an intriguing article on how physicists have applied models of fluid dynamics to successfully understand dangerous crowd stampedes.

The joint German-Saudi team were prompted to conduct the research by the tragic events of 2006 where hundreds were killed during a mass stampede during the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.

Various physical models have been applied quite successfully in understanding crowd behaviour. We reported on one using a model of magnetism back in 2005.

These models work because, perhaps surprisingly, many different types of complex system seem to share higher-level or emergent properties: from atoms to neurons to people to telephone networks, and so on.

When trying to understand potentially life-threatening situations like crowd panic or stampede, it would be unethical to do large scale experiments, but these sort of models could be used to understand how they occur.

The researchers simulated crowd behaviour using models from fluid dynamics and compared their predictions with video of the stampede during the 2006 pilgrimage and found that it could accurately model crowd panic.

In normal conditions, pedestrians tend to spontaneously fall into ordered patterns, such as lanes going in opposite directions, previous research had shown. As crowds get denser, stop-and-go patterns begin to propagate in waves, as is typical for cars on heavily trafficked highways. But in critical situations—as when cars get into gridlock—people can break out in panics that result in random patterns of motion, similar to the turbulence of water in the wake of a boat. Crowd members can get squeezed and asphyxiated or fall and be trampled.

These sorts of models can be life-saving as they enable crowd control measures to be tested in the most dangerous conditions without putting anyone at risk.

The full paper is available online as a pdf file.

Link to Science News article ‘Formula for Panic’.
pdf of paper ‘The Dynamics of Crowd Disasters: An Empirical Study’.

BBC News reports on a review paper published in this week’s Lancet on the effects of jet lag – which can include mood changes, cognitive impairments, disruption to the menstrual cycle and psychotic experiences.

Disrupted sleep is often linked to psychosis, and interestingly, both airports and jet lag have been mentioned in the medical literature in relation to this.

In a curious 1982 paper, Shapiro reported a series of cases where individuals with psychosis were found wandering airports, and suggested, rather boldly, that ‘airport wandering’ could be a psychotic symptom.

Nevertheless, some more recent research has suggested this isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds.

A 2001 study by Udo Wieshmann and colleagues looked at people treated for severe mental illness over a four year period at Heathrow Airport.

Although the rate was very low (less than one in a million passengers), for those that did show signs of psychosis, ‘airport wandering’ was one of the most frequent symptoms.

Disruption to our internal ‘body clock’, the circadian rhythm, has been linked to various psychotic disorders over the years and jet lag is known to make mental illness worse in some people.

The fact that being jet lag can also cause temporary or transient psychosis-like experiences in some people, as reported in The Lancet paper, suggests that sleep disruption may play a part in both minor and major reality distortions.

Luckily, this week’s mp3 podcast from The Lancet interviews one of the study authors who talks about the health effects of jet lag, and also gives advice on coping with it as effectively and healthily as possible.

Link to BBC News story ‘Frequent flyers ‘risk own health”.
Link to abstract of Lancet paper.
Link to paper ‘Severe mental illness and airports – the scope of the problem’.
mp3 of Lancet podcast on the effects of jet lag.