When Situations Not Personality Dictate Our Behaviour

When Situations Not Personality Dictate Our Behaviour: "

A modern test of an ancient bible story demonstrates the power of situations to trump personality in determining behaviour.

A fundamental mistake we often make when judging other people is assuming that their behaviour mainly reflects their personality. Unfortunately this ignores another major influence on how people behave staring us right in the face: the situation.

Our personalities certainly have an influence on what situations we get into and how we deal with them, but situational factors — even relatively subtle ones — can completely obliterate the effects of personality.

Don't take my word for it, though, consider a modern take on an ancient bible story. Prominent social psychologists Darley & Batson (1973) were interested in what influences people's helping behaviours and decided to test the parable of the Good Samaritan. The parable is about a Jewish man travelling to Jericho who has been attacked by bandits and lies half dead at the side of the road. A priest and temple assistant pass him by before finally a Samaritan (who stereotypically hated Jews) stops to offer his assistance.

The moral of the story is clear enough but, wondered Darley and Batson, have we judged the priest and the temple assistant too quickly, perhaps they were just in a hurry?

A good Samaritan

In their classic social psychology study the experimenters recruited 67 students from the Princeton Theological Seminary and told them it was a study about religious education and vocations. They were asked to fill in some personality questionnaires and told they were going to give a brief talk in a nearby room. Some were asked to give a short talk about the types of jobs that seminary graduates would be suited for, while the others were asked to talk about the parable of the 'Good Samaritan'.

Unknown to the study's participants, they were to experience their very own 'Good Samaritan' test. For after filling out their questionnaires and while making their way to the other office to give their talk, they would encounter an experimental confederate lying in a doorway, doubled over, eyes closed and coughing. Participants would have to pass the apparently highly distressed man, but would they stop to help?

The experimenters thought it would depend on how much participants were hurried, so they manipulated this by giving them a map and one of the following three instructions:

1. 'Oh, you're late. They were expecting you a few minutes ago. We'd better get moving...'


2. 'The assistant is ready for you, so please go right over.'


3. '...It'll be a few minutes before they're ready for you, but you might as well head on over...'

This created three conditions: high, medium and low hurry. So some students left the office thinking they needed to go quickly, others less so, while some were relaxed. Each of these conditions was also split into two: half about to deliver a talk on the Good Samaritan, the other half on job prospects for seminary graduates. This meant that the experimenters could assess both the effect of hurry as well as the talk they were giving on the students' helping behaviours. Would having a relevant parable uppermost in their minds nudge participants into helping?

Before I give you the results try to predict them for yourself. How many future priests do you think would stop to see if the man was OK? Would you stop? What will be the effects of the situation compared with the individual personalities of the seminarians?

In a hurry, can't stop

Here's what happened. On average just 40% of the seminary students offered help (with a few stepping over the apparently injured man) but crucially the amount of hurry they were in had a large influence on behaviour. Here is the percentage of participants who offered help by condition:

• Low hurry: 63%


• Medium hurry: 45%


• High hurry: 10%

The type of talk they were giving also had an effect on whether they offered help. Of those asked to talk about careers for seminarians, just 29% offered help, while of those asked to talk about the parable of the Good Samaritan, fully 53% gave assistance.

What these figures show is the large effect that subtle aspects of the situation have on the way people behave. Recall that the experimenters also measured personality variables, specifically the 'religiosity' of the seminarians. When the effect of personality was compared with situation, i.e. how much of a hurry they happened to be in or whether they were thinking about a relevant parable, the effect of religiosity was almost insignificant. In this context, then, situation is easily trumping personality.

Judge on context

Before I asked you to imagine what the results might be, were you close? Perhaps you were surprised by how little effect personality had on whether the seminarians stopped? That is what catches most people out because of what psychologists call the 'fundamental attribution error'. This is the aforementioned tendency to assume that other people's behaviour reflects on their personality rather than on the situation they are in. Contrary to our instincts, however, studies such as this one demonstrate that it is frequently the situation that controls our actions more strongly than personality.

If you saw the trainee priest stepping over the moaning man, what would you think? Perhaps time for them to switch to a career in investment banking? Maybe, but in the light of this experiment that's probably unfair on the priest (and the investment bankers) because we all of us have situational pressures on us that can easily drown out the influence of our personalities (see also the bystander effect). 'Bad' actions don't necessarily mean 'bad' people just as 'good' actions don't issue forth solely from 'good' people.

The old adage that a person can be judged on their actions isn't the whole truth. Often people's behaviour, and our own, may say very little about our personalities and much more about the complexities of the situation in which we find ourselves.

What’s Wrong with Positive Thinking?

What’s Wrong with Positive Thinking? | World of Psychology

For older adults, participating in social service activities can improve brain functions

For older adults, participating in social service activities can improve brain functions: "(Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health) The study, led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is the first of its kind to demonstrate that valuable social service programs can have the added benefits of improving the cognitive abilities of older adults. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers found that seniors participating in a youth mentoring program made gains in key brain regions that support cognitive abilities important to planning and organizing one's daily life."

Student self-testing earns high marks as study tool

Student self-testing earns high marks as study tool: "College students who pore over their notes again and again as they prep for finals could use their studying time more wisely, according to new learning research from Purdue University."

Video games take bigger role in education

Video games take bigger role in education: "Teachers trying to get students interested in molecular biology or space now have a new tool — video games."

Brainstorming works best in less specialized efforts, says Management Insights study

Brainstorming works best in less specialized efforts, says Management Insights study: "(Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Applying brainstorming techniques to new product development works best when the collaboration employs participants from varied specialties gathering to develop a less complex product, according to the Management Insights feature in the current issue of Management Science, the flagship journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences."

Old math reveals new thinking in children's cognitive development

Old math reveals new thinking in children's cognitive development: "(Public Library of Science) Five-year-olds can reason about the world from multiple perspectives simultaneously, according to a new theory by researchers in Japan and Australia. Using an established branch of mathematics called Category Theory, the researchers explain why specific reasoning skills develop in children at certain ages, particularly at age five. The new theory, published December 11 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology, shows that these reasoning skills have similar profiles of development because they involve related sorts of processes."

Cardiovascular Fitness is Linked to Intelligence

Cardiovascular Fitness is Linked to Intelligence: "

The case for cardio exercise just keeps on getting stronger. First a University of Princeton team shows that exercise lets lab rats (Note: I mean actual laboratory rats here) produce neurons with improved stress response (i.e. they don't respond), and now a group of Swedish neuroscientists is telling us that improved cardiovascular fitness actually makes young men smarter:

The study looks at more than 230.000 adolescent men at their time of enlistment into the Swedish army, and finds a very strong effect of cardiovascular fitness on multiple dimensions of intelligence. Newly recruits who performed best on a regular ergonomic cycle also performed strongest on a series of tests for global intelligence, verbal, visuospatial, logical and technical intelligence. As an even stronger test for this correlation, the researchers additionally assessed their subject's physical education records at age 15 and then mapped changes in fitness to changes in intelligence. They found that - on average - those young men who moved in their percentile ranking for cardiovascular fitness also moved in their percentile ranking for intelligence. In other words: Changes in intelligence from age 15 to age 18 seem to track changes in fitness.

A likely biological mechanism behind the observed effect relates to the impact of physical exercise on the brains plasticity (the brain's ability to adapt new situations and environments), and one of the physiological mediators for this mechanism may be the simple fact of improved blood circulation among those who exercise more. This relationship between exercise and improved cognitive function has of course repeatedly been shown for mice (basically cute pocket sized humans), but - as far as adolescent men - were concerned the scientific evidence has until now been somewhat inconclusive.

Although improved intelligence, and in consequence improved socioeconomic status and educational attainment later in life, show this very strongly relation to cardiovascular fitness, no such relation could be shown for muscle strength in this study; which again speaks for the mediating function of improved blood flow and circulatory consequences in causing the effect.

Main Reference:

Aberg MA, Pedersen NL, Torén K, Svartengren M, Bäckstrand B, Johnsson T, Cooper-Kuhn CM, Aberg ND, Nilsson M, & Kuhn HG. (2009) Cardiovascular fitness is associated with cognition in young adulthood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. PMID: 19948959

<Cross-posted with Ingenious Monkey>

More here:

Fit teenage boys are smarter: "(University of Southern California) In the first study to demonstrate a clear positive association between adolescent fitness and adult cognitive performance, researchers find that better aerobic health among teenage boys correlates to higher scores on a range of intelligence tests -- and more education and income later in life."

People who chew gum report feeling less stressed

People who chew gum report feeling less stressed: "It's not so pleasing when it glues your shoe to the pavement but a new study suggests chewing gum could be a great stress-reliever, with consequent health benefits. Perhaps the finding could help explain why Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson - an incessant gum chewer - has coped for so long with the stress of top-flight football?

Andrew Smith at Cardiff University surveyed over 2,000 workers and found that the 39 per cent of respondents who reported never chewing gum were twice as likely to say they were extremely stressed at work, compared with gum chewers, and one and a half times as likely to say they were very or extremely stressed with life in general.

Of course, rather than chewing gum having a stress-relieving effect, it's perfectly possible that some other factor reduces stress and encourages chewing gum. Indeed, Smith looked at a range of potential confounds and found that women, lower earners, younger, less educated respondents, smokers, people with demanding jobs and neurotic extraverts were all more likely to chew gum. Crucially, however, the link between chewing gum and lower stress held even after taking all these extraneous factors into account.

What's more, chewing gum was also associated with better mental and physical health. Again, this remained true even after controlling for extraneous factors, such that gum chewers were less likely to have symptoms of depression and half as likely to have self-reported high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

Smith concluded that chewing gum may be a 'readily available and relatively cheap method of addressing' stress and stress-related ill health. Possible mechanisms that might explain the associations reported here include an effect of chewing gum on autonomic nervous system activity and/or on the neurotransmitter serotonin. Smith noted that he has an intervention study underway that will provide a more robust test of the possible stress-related benefits of chewing gum.
_________________________________


Smith, A. (2009). Chewing gum, stress and health Stress and Health, 25 (5), 445-451 DOI: 10.1002/smi.1272

How Other People’s Unspoken Expectations Control Us

How Other People’s Unspoken Expectations Control Us: "

We quickly sense how others view us and play up to these expectations.

A good exercise for learning about yourself is to think about how other people might view you in different ways. Consider how your family, your work colleagues or your partner think of you.

Now here's an interesting question: to what extent do you play up to these expectations about how they view you?

This idea that other people's expectations about us directly affect how we behave was examined in a classic social psychology study carried out by Dr Mark Snyder from the University of Minnesota and colleagues (Snyder et al., 1977). They had a hunch that people automatically sense how others view them and immediately start exhibiting the expected behaviours.

Feeling the attraction

To test this in the context of interpersonal attraction they had male students hold conversations with female students they'd just met through microphones and headsets. One of the quickest ways that people who've just met stereotype each other is by appearance. People automatically assume others who are more attractive are also more sociable, humorous, intelligent and so on.

So to manipulate this, just before the conversation, along with biographical information about the person they were going to meet, the men were given a photograph. Half were shown a photograph of a woman who had been rated for attractiveness as an 8 out of 10 and half were given a photo of a woman rated as a 2 out of 10.

Then the men talked to the women but without seeing them so they didn't know they weren't actually talking to the woman in the picture. Half expected to be talking to the attractive woman, half to the unattractive woman. The question is, would the women pick up on this fact and unconsciously fit into the stereotype they had been randomly assigned. By doing it this way the experimenters could rule out the influence of individual personalities and focus on the effect of expectations.

When independent observers listened to the tapes of the conversation they found that when women were talking to men who thought they were very attractive, the women exhibited more of the behaviours stereotypically associated with attractive people: they talked more animatedly and seemed to be enjoying the chat more. What was happening was that the women conformed to the stereotype the men projected on them. So people really do sense how they are viewed by others and change their behaviour to match this expectation.

Now this experiment just happened to be carried out by manipulating the stereotype of attractiveness but the same rule applies to many different areas of life. Think of any of the standard stereotypes about class, race and nationality. Each of these create expectations in other people's minds, expectations that are difficult for us to avoid playing up to.

Changing others' behaviour

Understanding that other people's expectations about us directly and immediately affect our behaviour is a vital component in understanding how we can come to be quite different people across various social situations.

I leave you with one final thought: in the real world two people are influencing each other continuously, trying to live up (or down) to each other's expectations. Of course we only have direct control over our own expectations of others, so one implication of this study is that by changing our expectations of others we can actually change their behaviour for worse or, should we choose, for the better.

The effect may be subtle, but it's a powerful realisation that other people's behaviour is partly derived from how we view them, just as our behaviour is partly derived from how others view us.

» Positive psychology workbooks - intelligent self-help - download now.

Cardio = higher IQ (?) [Gene Expression]

Cardio = higher IQ (?) [Gene Expression]: "

Cardiovascular fitness is associated with cognition in young adulthood:

During early adulthood, a phase in which the central nervous system displays considerable plasticity and in which important cognitive traits are shaped, the effects of exercise on cognition remain poorly understood. We performed a cohort study of all Swedish men born in 1950 through 1976 who were enlisted for military service at age 18 (N = 1,221,727). Of these, 268,496 were full-sibling pairs, 3,147 twin pairs, and 1,432 monozygotic twin pairs. Physical fitness and intelligence performance data were collected during conscription examinations and linked with other national databases for information on school achievement, socioeconomic status, and sibship. Relationships between cardiovascular fitness and intelligence at age 18 were evaluated by linear models in the total cohort and in subgroups of full-sibling pairs and twin pairs. Cardiovascular fitness, as measured by ergometer cycling, positively associated with intelligence after adjusting for relevant confounders (regression coefficient b = 0.172; 95% CI, 0.168-0.176). Similar results were obtained within monozygotic twin pairs. In contrast, muscle strength was not associated with cognitive performance. Cross-twin cross-trait analyses showed that the associations were primarily explained by individual specific, non-shared environmental influences (≥80%), whereas heritability explained <15% of covariation. Cardiovascular fitness changes between age 15 and 18 y predicted cognitive performance at 18 y. Cox proportional-hazards models showed that cardiovascular fitness at age 18 y predicted educational achievements later in life. These data substantiate that physical exercise could be an important instrument for public health initiatives to optimize educational achievements, cognitive performance, as well as disease prevention at the society level.

The figure to the left is pretty striking, though the general correlation between intelligence and overall health has been long known. I'm not too sure if I really accept that this correlation is as causal as they say it is, but it probably can't hurt to encourage for moderate exercise within the population. So even if this is another spurious correlation which leads to educational programs which don't have the effect intended (increase IQ), it wouldn't do that much harm, and perhaps might result in some good.

Citation: Maria A. I. Åberg, Nancy L. Pedersen, Kjell Torén, Magnus Svartengren, Björn Bäckstrand, Tommy Johnsson, Christiana M. Cooper-Kuhn, N. David Åberg, Michael Nilsson, and H. Georg Kuhn, Cardiovascular fitness is associated with cognition in young adulthood, PNAS 2009 : 0905307106v1-pnas.0905307106.

Read the comments on this post..."

Measuring Porn's Effects: What About the Users?

Measuring Porn's Effects: What About the Users?: "

Dear Professor Lajeunesse,

I've just read about your conclusion that porn is harmless. I'm wondering if it might be worth redesigning your questionnaire. I've been witnessing (secondhand) a lot of harm from porn, as well as some surprising benefits from leaving it behind. What I'm learning suggests that you would have to ask very different questions of your subjects if you want to measure the dangers of Internet porn use.

It does not surprise me that the immediate risk to third parties from porn users is minimal. I'm more concerned about the risk to the users themselves.

I have a unique perspective because my website tends to attract a lot of men who are hooked on porn and desperate to stop. (For why, see Unexpected Lessons from Porn Users.) When they do manage to unhook—generally after a severe trial—they report a decrease in social anxiety, increased confidence, greater attraction to real potential partners, and more enjoyment from life's subtler pleasures. Many of their experiences are collected in a chapter called The Road to Excess.

Just to clarify where I'm coming from, I don't think the chief danger from porn has much to do with sex directly. It comes from the effect of intense stimulation on the reward circuitry of the brain. If you're not familiar with this part of the brain, its role in driving our behaviors, its part in addictions, or the role of the neurochemical dopamine in these processes, I would be happy to suggest some reading material. Here's a short article by a neuroscientist that will give you some idea of what I'm talking about.

The risk I'd like to see experts address also exists for video game users. It's inherent in any activity (or substance) that can become compulsive because of the effects of dopamine in the brain's primitive reward circuitry. "Novelty-on-demand" is so enticing for this primitive part of the brain, that compulsion is a very real risk. Could this be part of the reason you couldn't find a porn-free control group for your study? (Without a control group, it's tough to conclude that porn use has no ill effects.)

Unfortunately, when it comes to masturbation to sexually explicit materials, our society tends to get lost in debates about free speech, content, sexual repression, and harm to third parties. This veils the important issue of the brain's vulnerable reward circuitry. This part of the brain evolved to value highly not only novelty-on-demand, but also the genetic bonanza of sex with a novel partner. Therefore, today's supranormal sexual stimuli, which offer new partners moaning for ejaculate at each click of a mouse, register as so beneficial that the brain easily rewires itself to focus more and more attention on such 'valuable' experiences.

A clear understanding of the reward circuitry reveals why your analogy that 'vodka ads are to alcoholism what porn is to porn addiction' may not be the best analogy. Porn users use porn images to masturbate, thus reinforcing the wiring of their brains with the neurochemical blast of orgasm. Vodka ads won't get anyone high. Porn is the addiction; pictures of vodka are not.

This rewiring process can swiftly reorder the user's priorities. Some users begin to substitute porn for friendly interaction, intimate relationships, learning life skills, and so forth. Their reward circuitry does not perceive the latter as worthwhile.

Compulsive masturbation sounds like fun, but trust me it's not. As with any addiction, too much intense stimulation dysregulates dopamine. Results include becoming desensitized to life's subtler pleasures, such as the charms of normal partners, and, at the same time, becoming extremely hypersensitive to any cues the brain has rewired itself to associate with 'relief.' The user's brain constantly scans the environment for any sign of sexual stimuli that would facilitate, in this case, masturbation to orgasm. Tolerance builds, making the pursuit of more stimulating materials mandatory to relieve the misery of withdrawal.

This combination of effects can make the world look gray. It is quite normal for men caught in this cycle to feel social anxiety around others, depression, despair, apathy, and so forth. Until they 'reboot' their brains, life seems meaningless, but for the single-minded pursuit of hotter stimuli. Ironically, porn does not even ease sexual frustration, except in the very short-term...sometimes. It's not uncommon for users to binge with orgasm after orgasm because they simply cannot scratch their itch successfully. (Intense highs cause intense lows, and a desire for more.)

Often users don't realize they are hooked or what they're passing up until they unhook from frequent porn use and give their brains a chance to return to equilibrium. The lengthy withdrawal required to achieve this can be so agonizing (shakes, insomnia, despair, cravings) that many feel trapped.

I suspect compulsive porn use is more widespread than recognized, and increasing. I think the validity of my observation will become evident if you design a study around the method used by the author of The Great Porn-Off . Find out if your porn-using study participants can go for a few weeks without watching porn. Meanwhile, track their moods during the time they are without it.

Incidentally, Internet porn appears to entail a special risk. Here's what one man posted on my forum today:

With the magazines porn was a few times a week and I could basically regulate it. Cos it wasn't really that 'special'. But when I entered the murky world of internet porn, my brain had found something it just wanted more and more of.... I was out of control in less than 6 months. Years of mags, no problems. A few months of online porn...hooked.

That said, another man pointed out that masturbation became compulsive for him even though he never liked porn (pre-Internet) and never felt guilty about masturbating. So obviously, reward circuitry sensitivity varies.

I said above that I'm most concerned about the harm to porn users themselves. The truth is that I'm deeply concerned for us all. I think a planet where computer literate men run a high risk of compulsive porn use is likely to be a very unhappy planet. Imagine all those princes trapped in frog costumes, futilely attempting to ease their intense cravings for more and more stimulation, with little time, sensitivity or resolve left for creativity, good causes, relationships, or nature's pleasures.

Here are the recent posts of two men who are returning to balance:

I feel again. I feel emotions again. Having cut way back on porn viewing, I notice I find it less stimulating every time I see it. I actually fell asleep during an adult movie the other night! My interest in women has heightened, my confidence is up and gives me motivation again. I'm 28 now and until the last couple of years I felt I had the maturity of a 15 year old. But as I heal and recover from this addiction, I've felt emotions I've never had to deal with before. It has helped me grow up.

I am more at ease with myself and can look people in the eye, with kindness and a superhuman confidence. I had two women introduce themselves to me yesterday, shake my hand and HOLD IT. Wow. I was so comfortable talking to everyone—not my usual chicanery of waiting to speak or trying to hustle someone with what they think is a cool guy. I have the beginnings of a resolve now, and my groin feels solid and 'peaceful'? I wrote two pages of a script that went in an even deeper direction than I was aiming for. Exercising is through the roof.

I hope you can find a way to measure such subtleties, because happy, healthy men are a precious resource. In any event, I wish you the very best with your research.

"

A “looming crisis” in human genetics?…

AWKWARD NEWS AHEAD? A “looming crisis” in human genetics?…: "

Study suggests link between working memory and reactive parenting

Parents gone wild? Study suggests link between working memory and reactive parenting: "It can be challenging sometimes for parents to maintain a cool head around their misbehaving children. The results of a new study reveal that the mothers whose negativity was most strongly linked with their child's challenging behaviors were those with the poorest working memory skills. These findings suggest that education and intervention efforts for improving parenting may be more effective if they incorporate strategies that enhance working memory skills in parents."

Scientists find way to strengthen memories during sleep

Scientists find way to strengthen memories during sleep: "If only we could make more constructive use of all the time that we spend asleep. People have tried playing various tapes to themselves while they're dozing, from foreign vocab lists to stop-smoking mantras, but they're all the wrong side of useless. What we do know for sure is that sleep is important for memory consolidation, if only we could tap into this somehow. Now, finally, John Rudoy and colleagues have provided some elusive evidence for how learning during sleep can be enhanced.

Twelve participants looked on as fifty objects appeared one at a time in various locations on a computer screen. Importantly, as each object appeared it was accompanied by a characteristic noise - for example a cat appeared with a meow and a kettle with a whistle. Several rounds of learning took place until the participants had estimated the approximate location of each object at least once. A final pre-nap test was then performed so that the researchers knew how well participants knew each object location before they went to sleep.

That the participants had nodded off was confirmed with brain wave recordings via scalp electrodes. But here's the clever bit. As the participants dozed off into non-REM slow-wave sleep, the researchers played the sounds associated with 25 of the objects. The objects that were cued in this way were carefully chosen such that pre-nap memory performance had been equal for cued and un-cued objects.

The participants woke up after about an hour and the exciting finding is that although their overall memory accuracy was lower compared with before the nap, their performance for the objects cued whilst they slept was superior to un-cued objects, even though pre-nap performance for the two object groups had been equal.

The researchers also looked back at the brain wave signals recorded during sleep, comparing the brain's response to sounds associated with objects that were better remembered on waking relative to objects for which memory had deteriorated. They found the brain had responded more to sounds belonging to better remembered objects. 'We propose that sound cues presented during sleep prompted preferential processing of corresponding object-location associations,' the researchers said.

For sceptics who think the results may have nothing to do with sleep, the researchers repeated the noise cueing exercise with twelve participants who remained awake. In their case, sounds presented after learning made no difference to subsequent memory performance.
_________________________________


Rudoy, J., Voss, J., Westerberg, C., & Paller, K. (2009). Strengthening Individual Memories by Reactivating Them During Sleep. Science, 326 (5956), 1079-1079 DOI: 10.1126/science.1179013

Study shows new brain connections form rapidly during motor learning

Study shows new brain connections form rapidly during motor learning: "New connections begin to form between brain cells almost immediately as animals learn a new task, according to a study in which researchers observed the rewiring processes that take place in the brain during motor learning."

Women and Math

Women and Math: "

Half of all recent M.D.s are women and nearly half of all recent Ph.Ds in biology are women. So are the majority of new psychologists (67%), veterinarians (75%) and dentists (70%). But why are so few women joining the ranks of mathematicians, engineers, chemists, computer scientists, and physicists?
In the top 100 U.S. universities, only between 9% - 15% of tenure-track academic positions in mathematically-intensive fields are held by women. Among full professors in these math-intensive fields, women number below 10%. In contrast, women are much better represented in the social sciences and humanities, often comprising nearly a third or more of professorial posts, with the exception of economics in which they constitute only 16% of positions.

In our book, “The Mathematics of Sex: How Biology and Society Conspire to Limit Talented Women and Girls” (Oxford University Press), we examine evidence from around the world in endocrinology, economics, sociology, education, genetics, and psychology about why the math-intensive fields of mathematics, computer science, physics, engineering, and chemistry are so lopsidedly male. We examine three classes of explanations that have been offered to explain the dearth of women in these fields: ability differences that favor males in mathematics and spatial ability, biases and barriers that impede women’s progress in these fields, and career/lifestyle preferences that propel women into other fields.

Our general conclusion: The imbalance in math-intensive careers can not be accounted for by sex differences in mathematical and spatial ability that have been reported between male and females (to the extent that this is a factor, it is a minor one), nor can they be attributed to current biases, though past cohort discrepancies may be explained in such terms, because women are hired for tenure-track positions at rates roughly comparable to their proportions in the scientific Ph.D. pools--and often at rates slightly above their proportions. The single biggest factor in women’s underrepresentation in these fields is that women opt out of such careers at a fairly young age: In surveys of adolescent girls, very few say they desire to be an engineer or physicist, preferring instead to be medical doctors, veterinarians, and lawyers. Although females earn a large portion of baccalaureate degrees in all fields of science, including math-intensive fields (e.g., 46% of mathematics majors are females), disproportionately fewer women enter graduate school in these fields, and fewer of the women who go on to earn Ph.D.s apply for academic jobs even though among those who do apply, they are more likely to get interviewed and hired. There is no consensus yet as to why fewer women earning PhDs in math-intensive fields apply for tenure track positions, but one reason that women in all fields opt out of academia has to do with a desire for flexibility: Women want some job flexibility to raise children, and the timing of childrearing coincides with the most demanding period of an academic career, such as trying to get tenure, or working exorbitant hours to get promoted.

For the same reasons, women drop out of scientific fields even after entering them -- especially math and physical sciences -- at significantly higher rates than do men, particularly as they advance. Even in fields such as medicine where women now comprise half of the graduating classes, those entering academic medicine drop out at higher rates than do their male counterparts. The tenure structure in academe demands that women who have children make their greatest intellectual achievements contemporaneously with their greatest physical and emotional achievements, a feat fathers are rarely expected to accomplish. When women opt out of careers (or segue to part-time work in them) to have children, this is a choice men are rarely required to make. Of course, this affects al women, not only those who are in math-intensive fields. And it also can be seen among women scientists who work outside the academe, such as pharmaceuticals, sales, research. They leave these careers disproportionately in their mid-thirties, presumably to start families. But when you couple this with the fact that so many fewer women enter the PhD pipelines in the math-intensive fields, this is a major reason for the shortage of women professors in these fields today.

"

Deconstructing the Placebo

Deconstructing the Placebo: "I want to point you to this great post at Neuroskeptic. Here is its ending text:

'The placebo effect' has become a vague catch-all term for anything that seems to happen to people when you give them a sugar pill. Of course, lots of things could happen. They could feel better just because of the passage of time. Or they could realize that they're supposed to feel better and say they feel better, even if they don't.

The 'true' placebo effect refers to improvement (or worsening) of symptoms driven purely by the psychological expectation of such. But even this is something of a catch-all term. Many things could drive this improvement. Suppose you give someone a placebo pill that you claim will make them more intelligent, and they believe it.

Believing themselves to be smarter, they start doing smart things like crosswords, math puzzles, reading hard books (or even reading Neuroskeptic), etc. But the placebo itself was just a nudge in the right direction. Anything which provided that nudge would also have worked - and the nudge itself can't take all the credit.

The strongest meaning of the 'placebo effect' is a direct effect of belief upon symptoms. You give someone a sugar pill or injection, and they immediately feel less pain, or whatever. But even this effect encompasses two kinds of things. It's one thing if the original symptoms have a 'real' medical cause, like a broken leg. But it's another thing if the original symptoms are themselves partially or wholly driven by psychological factors, i.e. if they are 'psychosomatic'.

If a placebo treats a 'psychosomatic' disease, then that's not because the placebo has some mysterious, mind-over-matter 'placebo effect'. All the mystery, rather, lies with the psychosomatic disease. But this is a crucial distinction.

People seem more willing to accept the mind-over-matter powers of 'the placebo' than they are to accept the existence of psychosomatic illness. As if only doctors with sugar pills possess the power of suggestion. If a simple pill can convince someone that they are cured, surely the modern world in all its complexity could convince people that they're ill.

New study finds men and women may respond differently to danger

New study finds men and women may respond differently to danger: "(Radiological Society of North America) Researchers using functional magnetic resonance imaging to study brain activation have found that men and women respond differently to positive and negative stimuli, according to a new study."

Waking up memories while you sleep

Waking up memories while you sleep: "(Northwestern University) They were in a deep sleep, yet sounds, such as a teakettle whistle, somehow penetrated their slumber. The 25 sounds were reminders of earlier spatial learning, though the Northwestern University research participants were unaware of the sounds as they slept. Yet, upon waking, memory tests showed that spatial memories had changed. 'We are beginning to see that deep sleep actually is a key time for memory processing,' said Ken Paller, professor of psychology at Northwestern."

The Myths of Intrinsic-Extrinsic Motivation

The Myths of Intrinsic-Extrinsic Motivation: "

What happens when a person is offered an incentive to do something the individual would have done anyway, without incentive? Back in 1975 Edward Deci, Mark Lepper, and their colleagues proposed that rewards undermine intrinsic motivation. In contrast, Len Sushinsky and I argued that the effects of rewards depend on how you use them. If you reward a person for just spending time in an activity, the person will become bored with the activity. If you reward a person for learning a new skill, however, the person is likely to show greater interest in the activity. We also asserted the significance of the symbolic effects of the reward. When reward symbolizes success, for example, intrinsic interest should be enhanced. Back in 1975 we were especially critical of the social psychology experiments that used single trial rewards because novel rewards can be distracting.

That was 35 years ago. In the interim many studies were conducted on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. To prove that rewards undermine intrinsic interest, researchers needed to demonstrate each of the following: construct validity; reliable measures; experimental controls; and favorable experimental results. Let's see what happened.

I believe that intrinsic - extrinsic motivation is an invalid distinction. I would argue that intrinsic-extrinsic motivation is a modern version of mind-body dualism, such that intrinsic motives (e.g., curiosity, self-determination) are those of the mind, while extrinsic motives (e.g., hunger, sex) are those of the body. In any event, I do not think that motives can be divided into just two types. On the contrary, I think there are 16 intrinsic motives (or 'needs') and no extrinsic motives. I have no idea how to even state undermining theory when it is appreciated that any of 16 intrinsic needs can motivate interest in an activity, and any of 16 needs can motivate interest in a reward.

I question the reliability of behavioral measures of intrinsic interest. What activities a child chooses while running around a nursery school may vary from day to day for no particular reason. In any event, I do not recall a study demonstrating the test-retest reliability of the behavioral measure of intrinsic motivation. I believe that measures of self-reported interest are reliable, so if I were to review the literature, I would focus only on the results with self report measures.

Further, I think certain interpretations of the behavior measure have led to circularity and self-fulfilling prophecy. Suppose we offer a boy a prize for making a good drawing; the boy draws and gets the prize; and now we observe the boy to see if he still draws on his own. If the boy draws little after having earned the prize, undermining theorists would interpret this as evidence of decreased intrinsic motivation. However, if the boy draws often after having earned the prize, undermining theorists would not interpret this as evidence of increased intrinsic motivation. That is, the boy drawing less supports undermining theory, but the boy drawing more doesn't contradict it. When the boy draws more, undermining theorists assume that the child was looking for a reward and, thus, was extrinsically motivated. When the boy draws less, undermining theorists assume that the child could not have been looking for an incentive and, thus, was intrinsically motivated. This 'heads I win, tails you lose' thinking is circular; it biased the publication process by mis-identifying disconfirming studies as invalid. Many studies that did not support undermining theory were never published because of this faulty logic applied in the peer review process.

The undermining studies did not control for the known negative effects of reward. Especially when rewards are novel -- nearly all of the undermining studies used only one trial of reward -- they can be distracting, arouse performance anxiety, or even cause doubt that the experimenter will actually give the reward as promised.

Even after setting aside the above issues, meta-reviewers hoping to demonstrate undermining theory still needed to exclude some unfavorable studies to do so. The mentality of 'let's include this study in the meta-review, but not that study' went to what I would regard as extremes. Studies that contradicted undermining theory -- such as a study I published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1975 -- were not counted in meta-reviews, while the 1977 study by Smith and Pittman was included as supporting undermining even though this study gave multiple trials of a reward that symbolized failure.

Personally, I object to intrinsic-extrinsic motivation because it offers 'one size fits all' solutions for educating children and motivating adults. I believe, for example, that some children thrive with cooperative learning, others thrive with competitive learning situations, but intrinsic-extrinsic motivation theory wants all children to grow up with cooperative learning. In the name of self-determination, undermining theory imposes its values on others believing it is for their own good. I think undermining theory could be misused to teach children who are competitive by nature that something is wrong with them for enjoying competition.

Intrinsic-extrinsic motivation has become a dead end. I have seen teachers mope around saying they can't do anything to help students because 'the intrinsic motivation has been beaten out of them.' Our schools do not need a theory that can function as an excuse for inaction.

Although I disagree with undermining theory, I commend the related social psychological discussion on self-determination. I think the discussion has served to promote policies that helped people with disabilities. I think intrinsic motivation is at its best when used to promote freedom, including the freedom to pursue material rewards. I think undermining theory is at its worst when it implies support for freedom except when people choose materialism, capitalism, or values different from those of undermining theorists.

"

Reward Success, Don’t Punish Failure

Reward Success, Don’t Punish Failure: "

It’s a management maxim that bosses should dole out praise liberally when deserved, although many business environments seem more focused on punishing failure. It turns out there’s solid neuroscience behind the idea of recognizing success, according to research led by neuroscientist Earl Miller of MIT and published in Neuron.
[Miller and his team] [...]

Self regulation – what it is and what to do

Self regulation – what it is and what to do: "So, if self regulation is about exerting control over thoughts, feelings, actions and physiology, how does it work?

When I skipped through some Google references last night (o font of all knowledge!) I found a good number of sites referring to self regulation and children – but not nearly as many relating to adults, or the [...]...

Solberg Nes, L., Roach, A., & Segerstrom, S. (2009) Executive Functions, Self-Regulation, and Chronic Pain: A Review. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 37(2), 173-183. DOI: 10.1007/s12160-009-9096-5 Executive Functions, Self-Regulation, and Chronic Pain: A Review

"

New evidence that dark chocolate helps ease emotional stress

New evidence that dark chocolate helps ease emotional stress: "The 'chocolate cure' for emotional stress is getting new support from a clinical trial published online in ACS' Journal of Proteome Research. It found that eating about an ounce and a half of dark chocolate a day for two weeks reduced levels of stress hormones in the bodies of people feeling highly stressed."

Neural mechanism reveals why dyslexic brain has trouble distinguishing speech from noise

Neural mechanism reveals why dyslexic brain has trouble distinguishing speech from noise: "(Cell Press) New research reveals that children with developmental dyslexia have a deficit in a brain mechanism involved in the perception of speech in a noisy environment. The study, published by Cell Press in the Nov. 12 issue of the journal Neuron, provides the first direct evidence that the human auditory brainstem exhibits remarkable moment-to-moment plasticity and undergoes a fine tuning that is strongly associated with noise exclusion."

Can Your Expectations Shape My Behavior?

Can Your Expectations Shape My Behavior?: "

When I talk about people's stereotypes about singles, one of the reactions I sometimes get is, 'So what?' Why, the skeptics are asking, should I care about what other people think, even if it is negative and wrong.

So suppose I meet someone for the first time, let's say a man, who believes that single people are miserable and lonely and want nothing more than to become unsingle. He has no particular animus toward me or toward single people in general - he just expects single people to have certain emotions and motivations. Those are his beliefs. Would he behave toward me any differently than if he did not have those beliefs? Specifically, might he somehow get me to behave in ways that are in keeping with his false expectations about what I'm really like?

With regard to this specific question about whether expectations about single people can shape singles' behavior in ways that confirm those expectations - well, there is no research that tests exactly that. There are, however, hundreds - if not thousands - of studies of the ways that one person's expectations can shape another person's behavior. This isn't dopey Law of Attraction stuff - the studies show just how the process unfolds, and it is not by 'manifesting' or other voodoo.

Early Studies of Expectancy Effects

One of the classic early studies of expectancy effects was conducted by my graduate advisor, Robert Rosenthal. He told elementary school teachers that some of the students had been identified as intellectual bloomers by a test they took. The teachers were told the names of those students and led to expect that those students would do particularly well over the course of the coming academic year.

In fact, the information given to the teachers was bogus. The students identified as bloomers were no different academically from the other students. Their names were selected at random. Only their teachers' expectations for them differed. Yet, sure enough, the students who were expected to bloom really did do better than the others by the end of the school year.

That study was conducted decades ago. By now, the power of expectations has been demonstrated not just in classrooms, but also in workplaces, courtrooms, doctor-patient interactions, parent-child interactions, psychotherapy, consumer transactions, and more.

After the first 30 or so studies had been published, Rosenthal was able to specify how teachers (and others) behaved differently toward people for whom they had different expectations. For example, when teachers were interacting with students they expected to bloom academically, compared to when they were interacting with their other students:

• They created a warmer interpersonal environment; they smiled and nodded more, and were more supportive, friendly, and encouraging.
• They gave those students more specific feedback.
• They taught those students more material and more difficult material.
• They gave those students more opportunities to show what they knew - for instance, by waiting longer for an answer before moving on to the next student.

In those ways, and others discovered over subsequent years, teachers convey their expectations without ever having to say directly that they think particular students are particularly smart. Most likely, the teachers were good teachers, trying to be fair and encouraging to all of their students. But their behavior was not the same, and their students' outcomes were not the same either.

In other contexts (such as medical settings or courtrooms), the particular ways in which expectations are conveyed may differ, but the point gets across and behavior is shaped.

How Might Single People Be Influenced by Other People's Stereotypes and Expectations?

There are countless factors that influence human behavior; other people's expectations comprise just one of them. Moreover, some people may be more resistant than their peers to the expectations of others. With those qualifications in mind, how - if at all - do you think your own behavior as a single person might be shaped by other people's expectations?

I'll offer just a few suggestions here, then look for your ideas in the comments section. Maybe someone will then go out and conduct the relevant research to see what really does happen.

• You see someone at a social event whom you haven't seen for a while. (Let's assume it is a woman for this example.) The first thing she asks is, 'Are you seeing anybody?' Then, when you say no, she gives you the pity-look. (Thanks to Psyngle for describing this particular interaction in the comments section of this post.) Our facial expressions often mirror one another's in a way that can be nearly automatic. So if someone is giving you that sad-eyed look, you are probably not going to respond with a great big smile - at least not at first. So think about what has happened. Your acquaintance has elicited an unhappy facial expression from you. Maybe you even do feel a little sad at the moment - not because you are not seeing anyone, but because your acquaintance thinks your relationship status is the most interesting thing about you. Moreover, when that acquaintance looks back at the evening, what does she recall? That the first thing the two of you discussed was whether you were seeing anyone. (Never mind that she brought it up.) Maybe she also remembers that unhappy look she pulled out of you. Now she has her expectations confirmed, at least in her own mind - you are unhappy that you are not seeing anyone!
• When you try to talk about the things that are important, meaningful, or exciting to you, she acts only minimally interested and then changes the subject. Has she gotten you to doubt whether you really do find those aspects of your life fulfilling? (Hopefully not, if you are a regular reader of this blog, but consider everyone else.) Again, she might remember that what the two of you discussed the longest was your status as "not seeing anyone," again taking this as support for her belief that nothing matters more.
• When you start discussing people you both know, the first thing she asks about each of them is whether they are in a serious romantic relationship. (This is not hypothetical. I just saw an acquaintance I hadn't seen in years, and that's the first thing she asked about a mutual friend.)

Okay, well you get the picture. What do you think? Could acquaintances, relatives, and others who believe that singles are miserable, lonely, and desperate to find The One get you to doubt yourself? Could you end up feeling a bit sad and lonely, even if you did not feel that way before the conversation began? If you don't think you would be affected by other people's stereotypes and expectations, what about other singles - could they be affected? I guess an even bigger question is how you can stand your ground and be the person you really want to be, even if others don't get it about the life you prefer.

"

The illusion of time: Perceiving the effect before the cause

The illusion of time: Perceiving the effect before the cause: "

A novel temporal illusion, in which the cause of an event is perceived to occur after the event itself, provides some insight into the brain mechanisms underlying conscious perception. The illusion, described in the journal Current Biology by a team of researchers from France, suggests that the unconscious representation of a visual object is processed for around one tenth of a second before it enters conscious awareness.

Chien-Te Wu and his colleagues at the Brain and Cognition Research Centre in Toulouse used a visual phenomenon called motion-induced blindness, in which a constantly rotating background causes prominent and motionless visual stimuli to disappear and reappear, as demonstrated in the video below. Fixate on the flashing green spot in the centre, and you'll notice that the surrounding yellow spots begin to disappear and reappear after about ten seconds. Then replay the clip and focus on any of the yellow spots; you'll see that it is a visual disappearance illusion. Exactly how it works is unclear; according to one hypothesis it is due to the properties of neurons in area V1 of the visual cortex.

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Brain-Based Sex Differences

Brain-Based Sex Differences: "

Pink Brain, Blue Brain

Mythbusting sex differences in the brain: author/neuroscientist Lise Eliot discusses her book.

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Theory about long and short-term memory questioned by UCL scientists

Theory about long and short-term memory questioned by UCL scientists: "The long-held theory that our brains use different mechanisms for forming long-term and short-term memories has been challenged by new research from UCL, published today in PNAS."

Even without practice, sleep improves memory of movements [Not Exactly Rocket Science]

Even without practice, sleep improves memory of movements [Not Exactly Rocket Science]: "

When we think of memory aids, we consider repeating what we've learned, using clever mnemonics, or breaking information down into bite-size chunks. But one of the best memory aids we have available to us is something we all do on a daily basis - sleep. Studies have found that sleep enhances our memories of facts and physical skills alike. It can even help us remember movements that we see others do.

But this only works within a short window. Ysbrand van der Werf from the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience found that people who saw a video of someone tapping keys on a laptop remembered the sequence more accurately if they slept on it within 12 hours. Any longer than that, and the snoozing didn't boost their recall.

Van der Werf showed the video to 128 volunteers and then tested them on either the same finger-tapping sequence or a different one. The gap between video and test was either 12 or 24 hours, and some of the volunteers were allowed to sleep during the interval while others were not.

If the test sequence didn't match the ones they saw, all the recruits did equally well. But if the sequence was the same, those who managed to sleep within the first 12 hours stood out - they were 22% faster and made 42% fewer errors than their peers who either didn't sleep or who slept later. They even improved whether they had their naps during the day or in the evening.

These results parallel those from experiments where people actually had a chance to practice new skills before their naps. The big difference here is that the improvements came only after watching movements rather than actually performing them.

Van der Werf confirmed that by taking great care to ensure that his volunteers weren't actually trying out the keystrokes for themselves. While watching the video, they had to tap two different keys to keep their fingers busy. Van der Werf even measured the muscle activity in the arms of seven volunteers to rule out the possibility that they were making subtle, unnoticed finger movements.

If it's not to do with practice, it's not to do with memorising the digits themselves or the position of the keys either. If the volunteers just saw the numbers flash up on screen, or if they saw coloured squares light up in the same position as the relevant keys, they didn't become more accurate or faster when they had to replicate the sequence. They needed to actually see someone else doing it.

Van der Werf thinks that the recruits probably imagined their finger movements while watching the video, even if they didn't actually try them out. It may even involve the mirror neurons that fire when an individual performs an action and when it sees someone else doing the same action (although mirror neurons have only been properly found in monkeys, and not humans).

Either way, the results highlight the importance of a good sleep when people are trying to pick up new physical skills. This could be especially important for people who can't possibly to practice the movements in question, such as those who have suffered a stroke or broken a limb. And clearly the most important implication is that the next time I see someone doing parkour, I will immediately lie down and have a little nap. When I wake up, I will be Batman. SCIENCE!

Reference: PNAS doi:10.1073_pnas.0901320106

More on memory:

• Molecule's constant efforts keep our memories intact


• Beta-blocker drug erases the emotion of fearful memories


• 9/11 memories reveal how flashbulb memories are made in the brain


• Our brains have a vast capacity for remembering detail


• Infants remember more by 'chunking' groups

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