Predicting Our Emotional Future

Here is an excerpt from the BPS blog describing research on our ability to predict the future. Also of interest is Dan Gilbert and Tim Wilson's work on this same topic.

Nick Sevdalis and Nigel Harvey gave 47 participants £10 each to split as they chose with an unseen stranger in another room. If the stranger rejected the amount they were offered as too mean, then both the participant and stranger would go away empty handed. The participants were asked how much regret and disappointment they expected to experience if their offer was rejected.

In fact, the task was fixed - there were no strangers, and every participant was told that their offer had been rejected. Immediately after receiving the rejection, the participants were asked to report how much regret and disappointment they actually felt. Participants who had made reasonably high offers experienced significantly less regret than they thought they would, and on average, all participants experienced less disappointment than they expected.

In a second experiment, 27 students were asked to predict the grade they would receive for a real piece of coursework and to say how much regret and rejoicing they would experience if their actual mark was higher or lower than they expected. After receiving their grade, they reported how the news actually made them feel.

Overall, the students underestimated the mark they received, but they overestimated how delighted this better-than-expected result made them feel. Together with the first experiment, the findings suggest we overestimate how despondent bad outcomes will make us feel, and we overestimate how pleased good outcomes will make us feel.

The researchers suggested that to improve our decision-making, we should discount how we think different outcomes will make us feel. “Anticipated regret is certainly a powerful decision cue,” they said. “Whether it is an effective one remains to be empirically demonstrated.”

Sevdalis, N. & Harvey, N. (2007). Biased forecasting of postdecisional affect. Psychological Science, 18, 678-681.

Tragic Fallacy

Here is an excerpt from the Addiction in Society Blog:

Hillary Clinton, in presenting her argument for why her campaign should continue in the face of overwhelming statistical odds, noted that Robert Kennedy was assassinated at a point later in the 1968 presidential campaign than the current date. ... Why would she draw such an ugly analogy? To understand how such a smart, savvy, and campaign-seasoned person as Senator Clinton could miscalculate so badly, we need to understand her and husband Bill's world view.

For the Clintons, all things relate back to them, and to their current effort to regain the presidency. One critic, commenting on the frame of reference of a writer detailing her efforts to become famous early in the last century, noted that she saw World War I primarily as an interruption of her career - as though the entire world existed to provide a set and characters for her life story.

In literature, viewing all events as centering around your own life is called the "tragic fallacy." The scientific/religious equivalent is the view that the universe revolves around the earth and human beings. In psychopathology, this way of interpreting the world is called "feelings of reference," as in the paranoid delusion that people on television are talking about you.

For the Clintons, Robert Kennedy's death on June 6 "proves" that Hillary should keep running until at least that date.

Jealousy

There is a great article by Robert Leahy that appeared in the International Journal of Cognitive Therapy. In this article, he and his colleague, Dennis Tirch, discuss feelings of jealousy and how to deal with them. Below is an excerpt from Robert Leahy's blog on some of the strategies.

Jealousy is angry agitated worry.

When we are jealous we worry that our partner might find someone else more appealing and we fear that he or she will reject us. Since we feel threatened that our partner might find someone more attractive, we may activate jealousy as a way to cope with this threat. We may believe that our jealousy may keep us from being surprised, help us defend our rights, and force our partner to give up interests elsewhere. Similar to worry, jealousy may be a “strategy” that we use so that we can figure out what is going wrong or learn what our partner “really feels”. We may also think that our jealousy can motivate us to give up on the relationship—so that we don’t get hurt any more. If you are feeling jealous, it’s important to ask yourself what you hope to gain by your jealousy. We view jealousy as a coping strategy.

Similar to other forms of worry, jealousy leads us to focus only on the negative. We interpret our partner’s behavior as reflecting a loss of interest in us or a growing interest in someone else: “He finds her attractive” or “He is yawning because I am boring”. Like other forms of worry, jealousy leads us to take things personally and to mind-read negative emotions in other people: “She’s getting dressed up to attract other guys”.

Jealousy can be an adaptive emotion.

People have different reasons—in different cultures---for being jealous. But jealousy is a universal emotion. Evolutionary psychologist David Buss in The Dangerous Passion makes a good case that jealousy has evolved as a mechanism to defend our interests. After all, our ancestors who drove off competitors were more likely to have their genes survive. Indeed, intruding males (whether among lions or humans) have been known to kill off the infants or children of the displaced male. Jealousy was a way in which vital interests could be defended.

We believe that it is important to normalize jealousy as an emotion. Telling people that “You must be neurotic if you are jealous” or “You must have low self-esteem” will not work. In fact, jealousy—in some cases—may reflect high self-esteem: “I won’t allow myself to be treated this way”.

Jealousy may reflect your higher values

Psychologists---especially psychoanalysts---have looked at jealousy as a sign of deep-seated insecurities and personality defects. We view jealousy as a much more complicated emotion. In fact, jealousy may actually reflect your higher values of commitment, monogamy, love, honesty, and sincerity. You may feel jealous because you want a monogamous relationship and you fear that you will lose what is valuable to you. We find it helpful to validate these values in our patients who are jealous.

Some people may say, “You don’t own the other person”. Of course, this is true---and any loving relationship with mutuality is based on freedom. But it is also based on choices that two free people make. If your partner freely chooses to go off with someone else, then you may rest assured that you have good reasons to feel jealous. We don’t own each other, but we may make affirmations about our commitment to each other.

But if your higher values are based on honesty, commitment and monogamy, your jealousy may jeopardize the relationship. You are in a bind. You don’t want to give up on your higher values---but you don’t want to feel overwhelmed by your jealousy.

Jealous feelings are different from jealous behaviors

Just as there is a difference between feeling angry and acting in a hostile way, there is a difference between feeling jealous and acting on your jealousy. It’s important to realize that your relationship is more likely to be jeopardized by your jealous behavior---such as continual accusations, reassurance-seeking, pouting, and acting-out. Stop and say to yourself, “I know that I am feeling jealous, but I don’t have to act on it.”

Notice that it is a feeling inside you. But you have a choice of whether you act on it.

What choice will be in your interest?

Accept and observe your jealous thoughts and feelings

When you notice that you are feeling jealous, take a moment, breathe slowly, and observe your thoughts and feelings. Recognize that jealous thoughts are not the same thing as a REALITY. You may think that your partner is interested in someone else, but that doesn’t mean that he really is. Thinking and reality are different.

You don’t have to obey your jealous feelings and thoughts.

Notice that your feeling of anger and anxiety may increase while you stand back and observe these experiences. Accept that you can have an emotion—and allow it to be. You don’t have to “get rid of the feeling”. We have found that mindfully standing back and observing that a feeling is there can often lead to the feeling weakening on its own.

Recognize that uncertainty is part of every relationship

Like many worries, jealousy seeks certainty. “I want to know for sure that he isn’t interested in her”. Or, “I want to know for sure that we won’t break up”. Ironically, some people will even precipitate a crisis in order to get the certainty. “I’ll break off with her before she breaks off with me!”

But uncertainty is part of life and we have to learn how to accept it. Uncertainty is one of those limitations that we can’t really do anything about. You can never know for sure that your partner won’t reject you. But if you accuse, demand and punish, you might create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Examine your assumptions about relationships

Your jealousy may be fueled by unrealistic ideas about relationships. These may include beliefs that past relationships (that your partner had) are a threat to your relationship. Or you may believe that “My partner should never be attracted to anyone else”. You may also believe that your emotions (of jealousy and anxiety) are a “sign” that there is a problem. We call this “emotional reasoning”—and it is often a very bad way to make decisions.

Or you may have problematic beliefs about how to feel more secure. For example, you may believe that you can force your partner to love you—or force him or her to lose interest in someone else. You may believe that withdrawing and pouting will send a message to your partner---and lead him to try to get closer to you. But withdrawing may lead your partner to lose interest.

Sometimes your assumptions about relationships are affected by your childhood experiences or past intimate relationships. If your parents had a difficult divorce because your father left your mother for someone else, you may be more prone to believe that his may happen to you. Or you may have been betrayed in a recent relationship and you now think that your current relationship will be a replay of this.

You may also believe that you have little to offer—who would want to be with you? If your jealousy is based on this belief, then you might examine the evidence for and against this idea. For example, one woman thought she had little to offer. But when I asked her what she would want in an ideal partner---intelligence, warmth, emotional closeness, creativity, fun, lots of interests---she realized that she was describing herself! If she were so undesirable, then why would she see herself as an ideal partner?

Use effective relationship skills

You don’t have to rely on jealousy and jealous behavior to make your relationship more secure. You can use more effective behavior. This includes becoming more rewarding to each other--- “catch your partner doing something positive”. Praise each other, plan positive experiences with each other, and try to refrain from criticism, sarcasm, labeling, and contempt. Learn how to share responsibility in solving problems---use “mutual problem solving skills”. Set up “pleasure days” with each other by developing a “menu” of positive and pleasurable behaviors you want from each other. For example, you can say, “Let’s set up a day this week that will be your pleasure day and a day that will be my pleasure day”. Make a list of pleasant and simple behaviors you want from each other: “I’d like a foot-rub, talk with me about my work, let’s cook a meal together, let’s go for a walk in the park”.

Above Average

An excerpt from the Freakonomics Blog:

What do American drivers, the children of Lake Wobegon, and termites have in common?

They are all above average.

Here’s what a regular reader called LLP pointed out in an e-mail:

There is a TV ad running here in Southern California for a pest control company. It states that “the average termite eats 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” so your million dollar home is at risk.

This got me thinking that the idea of average is on the upper limit — which does not make sense since no termite can exceed the maximum time alloted in a day or a week.

Reinforcing Sickness

Here is an excerpt from slate.com providing a doctor's account of why too many antibiotics are given out. It brings up an interesting question to psychotherapy. That is, should we kick out patients who we don't feel need treatment? If we keep them in treatment, are we reinforcing the idea that they are sick and need help?

While working a busy night shift in the ER recently, I evaluated a 13-month-old girl. On her chart, the triage nurse had written: "Infant with fever and runny nose. Mother here for antibiotics." The baby was fussy but probably more tired than uncomfortable. Between her squirms, she cooed and smiled at me. Her anxious and upset mother, however, was in far worse shape, repeatedly sticking a rubber bulb syringe up her infant's nostrils in a futile attempt to suck out an endless stream of snot. The mom was also really mad: She had been waiting for more than three hours for a doctor to see her daughter. Now she wanted antibiotics: specifically, a prescription for bubble-gum-flavored amoxicillin.

By my assessment, the child was not acutely ill: She'd had a low-grade fever for two days, her mother said, and a mild cough, but she had clear lungs and appeared well-hydrated. Her eardrum may have had some fluid behind it but wasn't red or bulging. Just as the baby was trying to put my stethoscope in her mouth, paramedics pushed through the ambulance doors with a patient who was having an acute stroke. I had to decide right then if I was going to give this mother the antibiotics she wanted, even though I thought her daughter probably didn't need them.

The profligate prescription of antibiotics—for children and adults with upper respiratory infections, sinus infections, and even middle-ear infections—is a problem because most of these illnesses are caused by viruses, not bacteria, which are what conventional antibiotics attack.

Interviewer Effect on Children's Answers

Here is an excerpt from the BPS blog on interviewing children and how the interviewer's behaviors can profoundly impact the child's answers:

Eighty-six children, aged 8 to 10, took part in a ten minute lesson on how the vocal chords work, before being interviewed about the session a week later. Some of the children were interviewed by a woman who smiled and did not fidget. The others were interviewed by the same woman, but in their case she was not smiling and she fidgeted by tapping her hand or foot.

One of the questions asked the children whether or not they had been touched by the teacher during the lesson. Only eight children said falsely that they had - all of them had been interviewed by the woman when she was unsmiling and fidgeting. Moreover, significantly more of the children interviewed by the woman when she was unsmiling and fidgeting answered misleading questions incorrectly. "Children may be less prone to oppose an adult who they view as distant and strict," the researchers said.

The children interviewed by the fidgeting, unsmiling woman also said they didn't know the answer to questions far less frequently than did the children interviewed by the same woman smiling and not fidgeting. Perhaps the former group of children felt "more vulnerable and anxious" and therefore "more compelled to give an answer even when they did not know it," the researchers said.

"Better understanding of the effects of interviewers' behaviours should allow professionals to control and manipulate them in interviews so as to increase the reliability of eye witness reports," Almerigogna and colleagues concluded.

Almerigogna, J., Ost, J., Akehurst, L., Fluck, M. (2008). How interviewers' nonverbal behaviors can affect children's perceptions and suggestibility. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 100(1), 17-39. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2008.01.006

Dissociative Identity Disorder

Here is an excerpt from Mind Hacks on the rise and fall of the incidence of Multiple Personality Disorder or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). This excerpt discusses John Kihlstrom's ­2005 review article on dissociative disorders:

Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID is a diagnosis that describes where someone manifests various personalities, often of a diverse range of people - from children to adults of either sex.

It is controversial partly because diagnoses seemed to massively increase when two famous films on the disorder were popular.

Kihlstrom makes the interesting point that the increase in the number of people diagnosed with the disorder was also matched by an increase in the number of personalities each person seemed to have.

An interesting feature of the DID “epidemic” is an increase not just in the number of cases but also in the number of alter egos reported per case. In the classic literature, the vast majority of cases were of dual personality (Sutcliffe & Jones 1962, Taylor & Martin 1944). By contrast, most of the new cases compiled by Greaves (1980) presented at least three personalities; in two other series, the average number of alter egos was more than 13 (Kluft 1984, Putnam et al. 1986).

As Kenny (1986) noted, it was almost as if there were some kind of contest to determine who could have (or be) the patient with the most alter egos. The famous Eve, of course, appeared to have three personalities (Osgood & Luria 1954, Thigpen & Cleckley 1954). But when popular and professional interest in MPD was stimulated by the case of Sibyl, who was reported to possess 16 different personalities (Schreiber 1973), Eve replied with her own account of her illness, eventually claiming 22 (Sizemore & Huber 1988).

Despite the almost-infinite number of possible synaptic connections in the brain, one might say that the mind simply is not big enough to hold so many personalities. The proliferation of alter egos within cases, as well as the proliferation of cases, has been one of the factors leading to skepticism about the disorder itself.

In general, dissociative disorders are where one part of consciousness seems to be 'split off' or inaccessible to another.

For example, psychogenic amnesia or conversion disorder ('hysteria') are more common examples and hypnosis seems to reliably induce the phenomena in some people.

These are still some of the most mysterious processes in psychology and are fraught with controversy, particularly as they're often linked to repressed memories from abuse or trauma.

This is one of the more difficult areas to study scientifically because it largely relies on self-report, and Kihlstrom notes there is still no convincing evidence that trauma or abuse leads to amnesia for the event.

Link to PubMed abstract of Kihlstrom's review.
Link to full-text of pre-print.

Free Advice vs. Advice that is Paid For

An excerpt from the BPS Blog:

Francesca Gino at Carnegie Mellon University, whose new study shows that we're more likely to use advice we've paid for than advice that's free, even if there's no difference in quality between the two sources.

Dozens of students were asked questions about American history and received small cash prizes for correct answers. The students were either given the option of receiving advice on the correct answers, or advice was imposed on them. Sometimes this advice was free; other times it was paid for out of the students' winnings. Crucially, the advice always came from the same source - in the form of the answer that a student from a pilot session had given to the same question - so the quality of advice was held constant regardless of whether it was free or paid for.

Throughout the study, the participants took more account of advice they had paid for than advice they were given free, even though it was made clear to them that the advice was of the same quality. A final study showed the students took even more account of advice if it was made more expensive.

Gino said her findings could be explained by a phenomenon in decision-making theory known as the sunk cost fallacy. This is our desire to justify our past investments through our present and future behaviour - it's why that expensive pair of shoes that you never wear is still cluttering up your cupboard. In the case of advice, it seems we feel compelled to use guidance we've paid for, so as to justify the expense. And perhaps it explains why expensive frauds can sometimes be so influential.

GINO, F. (2008). Do we listen to advice just because we paid for it? The impact of advice cost on its use. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2008.03.001

Non-Clinical Community Samples

An excerpt from BPS Reasearch Digest Blog:

The tactic used by most researchers is to recruit from the wider community, for example by advertising in the local paper. But Thurston's team argue a large proportion of the general community actually have their own mental health problems, and many of them are receiving therapy, something many researchers fail to screen for. This means that what research papers describe as a "non-clinical community sample" may not be so "non-clinical" after all.

Thurston and her colleagues assessed 224 families recruited through adverts in local newspapers in south eastern USA as part of a larger study. They found 11 per cent of the teenagers, 20 per cent of the mothers and 13 per cent of the fathers met the diagnostic criteria for one or more psychiatric disorders. Moreover, 12 per cent of the teenagers, 20 per cent of the mothers and 11 per cent of the fathers were currently in therapy. These two groups didn't completely overlap - for instance, there were 25 mothers who met diagnostic criteria for a psychiatric disorder but who weren't in therapy.

Thurston's team said their findings have implications for research validity. Differences previously identified between clinical and so-called "non-clinical" groups may be caused by a factor other than the clinical status of the two groups.

Researchers should screen their community participants to find out if they are currently experiencing mental distress or participating in therapy, Thurston's team advised. But as regards whether such participants should then be excluded from research, Thurston and her colleagues said: "There is no perfect answer, but rather, researchers must weigh the costs and benefits of their exclusionary criteria in relation to the goals of the study."

Thurston, I.B., Curley, J., Fields, S., Kamboukos, D., Rojas, A., Phares, V. (2008). How nonclinical are community samples?. Journal of Community Psychology, 36(4), 411-420. DOI: 10.1002/jcop.20223

The Secret

An excerpt from the "How of Happiness" Blog regarding the book, the Secret:

...the law of attraction [which argues that you can manifest or attract whatever your heart desires, from Prada bags to husbands] sounds ridiculous. But it works! It has truly, sincerely, and genuinely made me happier.”

I am a psychological scientist who conducts randomized controlled experiments that test what strategies make people happier over the long term (and how and why). But I cannot argue with the claim that faithfully using the law of attraction has made particular individuals happy. Of course, such anecdotal evidence can be strongly biased. For example, people may try to convince themselves that something into which they have put a lot of effort is truly valuable, or they may selectively recall successes versus failures. However, my guess is that if we test The Secret’s recommendations in a randomized controlled experiment, it would likely be shown to “work.” Why? Because, as my new graduate student, Matthew Della Porta, announced to me the other day in an inspired understatement, “You know, The Secret is just a giant placebo effect.”

A placebo effect occurs when a pill, procedure, or behavior has the intended salutary outcome – for example, relief of headache or lifting of depression – simply because the person believes that it will have that outcome. The placebo effect is truly mind-over-body, or mind-over-mind, in action. The pill may be a sugar pill and the strategy may be completely worthless, but if you think that it’s going to work, it just might work.

Placebo effects aren’t trivial. A sugar pill or sham treatment (even sham surgery) can lead people to feel less anxious, to show reduced inflammation, to witness declines in blood pressure, and even to build muscle mass. In the case of psychological “sham” treatments, such as those described in Rhonda Byrne’s film and book, people may benefit and become genuinely happier for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they are pursuing a significant, committed, and absorbing life goal (simply having such goals is associated with happiness) and the fact that they are engaged with the world and other people (social bonds are also associated with happiness).