As recently reported in the journal Psychological Science, new research has found correlations between both the amount of talk a person engages in, the type of talk, and their reported happiness.

What was the source of their data? Good question.

Volunteers [doesn't say how many] wore an unobtrusive recording device called the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) over four days. This device periodically records snippets of sounds as participants go about their lives. For this experiment, the EAR sampled 30 seconds of sounds every 12.5 minutes yielding a total of more than 20,000 recordings. Researchers then listened to the recordings and identified the conversations as trivial small talk or substantive discussions. In addition, the volunteers completed personality and well-being assessments. [bold mine; source]

The research findings include two noteworthy results.

1) Greater well-being was related to spending less time alone and more time talking to others: The happiest participants spent 25% less time alone and 70% more time talking than the unhappiest participants. [bold mine]

“Related to” = there was a correlation. Causal?

2) The happiest participants had twice as many substantive conversations and one third as much small talk as the unhappiest participants.

I must give the article writer kudos for including numbers. With numbers a vague statement like “more time talking” becomes more precise.

So, what does the above mean? Are happier people happier becomes they more readily express their feelings, their thoughts about matters important to them? Maybe. Before engaging in my own analysis, I’ll share the researchers’:

These findings suggest that the happy life is social and conversationally deep rather than solitary and superficial. The researchers surmise that — though the current findings cannot identify the causal direction — deep conversations may have the potential to make people happier. They note, “Just as self-disclosure can instill a sense of intimacy in a relationship, deep conversations may instill a sense of meaning in the interaction partners.” [bold mine]

Again, kudos for acknowledging the inability to jump from a correlation to causation. Which brings us to this: “Deep conversations may have the potential to make people happier.” May have — good. But there are a number of things that I suspect are involved, including these:

A. Happier people are likely more inclined to engage in conversation and perhaps even have the emotional fortitude to venture into deeper conversations. In this case, the arrow of causation between the correlated variables would be the opposite of the implied.

B. Extroverted individuals, on average, score higher on measures well-being. And extroverts are more driven to engage in conversation. If not controlled for, it is possible that this other variable caused increases in both talk, depth of talk, and happiness.

To me, a most likely scenario includes a bi-directional influence between talk and happiness, with other factors, including personality, exerting influence as well. The bi-directional element would consist of this: People who feel more comfortable with themselves and accepted by others are more likely to engage in more intimate conversations. Likewise, people who are capable of engaging in appropriate self-disclosure with others will likely develop intimate relationships with others — and talk is by-and-large how we form and maintain relationships — and subsequently feel better about their condition.

As social creatures we feel better when we have people in our lives who understand and accept us. We feel secure when we have relationships we can trust and rely upon. Security in relationships equals a healthy and satisfied social self. And perhaps we can throw into the mix an element of self-efficacy. People who have developed and maintained “deeper” relationships subsequently have the confidence that they can form new relationships if and when needed.

Can more substantive talk make us happier? Sure, if it helps build and maintain quality relationships. And that’s what all this talk about talk boils down to — in my opinion. The ability to forge and sustain relationships.

Technorati Links: correlation, psychology, relationships

Null results are important. “We tried to find something, and it twerent’ there.” But “nothing there” results rarely get reported, which is a shame. I can certainly see how positive results are more exciting — we gave group x a natural supplement consisting of purified essence of apple seeds (a cyanide compound), than they all died! Contrast that with a recent study into the use of Gingko Biloba and memory preservation in old age that produced this — we found nothing, no measurable response to the herbal supplement. Finding nothing just doesn’t capture our imaginations.

But in terms of science and becoming better informed, these “nothing” findings are important. An analogy might be the master car mechanic talking to the shop apprentice busy attempting to fix a difficult, persistent problem. The very first thing the master mechanic will ask is, “Well, what have you tried so far?” He wants to know what has thus far produced null results. For it is important information.

The following are two illustrations of the importance of frequently un-reported null results from the field of psychology.

1. In, Choosing a university degree is not linked to personality we learn that . . . well, the title told it but it’s worth re-telling.

The results indicate that personality does not have an influence when choosing a professional career.

Why is this discovered non-relationship important, if it stands up to analysis and replication? For one, many colleges and universities use personality measures to help guide students to their ideal career.

Admittedly, I was somewhat surprised by this finding, for I had assumed — assumed — that the trait of introversion/extroversion would likely influence what type of career a person pursued. I can picture introverts working in a science lab more than I can extroverts. And I can picture extroverts being more drawn to teaching. But it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Of course, the finding is about the choice of a degree, not the success an individual later experiences.

Another noteworthy null result was this:

The data obtained reconfirmed that “the sex of the individual is not an important variable in the connection between personality traits and general preference for topics studied at university”.

This “no connection” tells us something important about gender behavior today. It seems that on college campuses, in the least, men aren’t from planet medicine and women from planet English lit.

Thanks to that bit of null result I can sharpen the lense of my view of the world. Null results help trim away distortions in our thinking. Or, at least, they can shake the confidence with which we hold presuppositions.

2. Here’s another title that tells it all: IU study finds no consensus in definitions of ‘had sex’

A new study from the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University found that no uniform consensus existed when a representative sample of 18- to 96-year-olds was asked what the term meant to them.

How is this important? In the least, when formally questioning individuals about their sex lives, you’ve got to get more specific in how you word the questions. You can’t assume that your concept of “had sex” is the same as another person’s. For instance, does oral sex count? Anal sex? Are those “having sex?” It depends who you ask.

In the area of gender, another null finding was produced.

Responses did not differ significantly overall for men and women.

Good to know. Certainly there are some average differences between the sexes. But being informed about when none are discovered plays an important role in honing our understanding.

Reporting and heeding null results is good science.

Technorati Links: gender, psychology, science

Many people find it ironic and/or startlingly hypocritical when men, or women, who have risen to high places are discovered to have committed lowly behavior. Other people, myself included, may think something along the lines of, “What do you expect, they are still human beings.”

New experimental research out of Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University has revealed that people in high places may actually be more likely to engage in what we call moral transgressions. When in a position of power, subjects tended to be both stricter in their judgments of others while being more lenient in their view of their own behavior [source].

While I guess this certainly can be classified as hypocritical if the person in question had gone on record condemning the behavior that he/she subsequently engaged in, I also believe that the perceived hypocrisy reflects our own psychological naiveté.

How so? First, we tend to hold idealistic morals. That something is absolutely wrong or right. More realistically, there are degrees of wrong and right-ness, determined in part by the motive and particular context the behavior occurred in. For example: Is killing an animal wrong? More wrong would included killing an animal for pleasure. Less wrong for food. Even less wrong, as self-defense. Etc. Also under consideration would be the social and emotional factors that may have played a role in the “decision.” Yes, it is often expedient and smart to judge guilt strictly, as if each us had a totally free will. But that isn’t the case. Motivations don’t grow on trees and are than consciously selected by those under their influence.

The other manner in which this perceived hypocrisy may be naive (and even the article title and the research paper title itself used the term “hypocrisy”) is the expectation that our current standards of right and wrong would be reflected in the behavior of all people, regardless of their social position.

But study the behavior of all the other primate species and you will discover that — gee, equality isn’t the norm. Not only does social position influence the behavior of primate individuals — from the extremely subordinate to the most dominant — but it also influences their expectations of the behaviors to anticipate from individuals in differing social positions.

Would we say it is absolutely wrong for one non-human primate male to mate with more than one female, more than “his share?” Actually, in terms of evolution, it may be more right. For often the more dominant individuals are stronger, more aggressive and fearless (great feature when needing protection) and even healthier than the less dominating individuals. While we may like to pretend that all primates, whatever species, are created equal, they are not.

Of course the contemporary human environment is very complex and different than that of our distant ancestors. I would be naive myself to apply, say, chimpanzee morality to human beings. But I do believe it bears keeping in mind that a one-size-fits-all morality is idealistic versus realistic. And that while our present moral standards — our thoughts — can be fully modern, the roots of our behavior may be much, much older.

Technorati Links: evolution, morality, psychology

Two recent studies from the psychological sciences have perfectly illustrated the problem of variable correlation: Why we can’t jump to the conclusion of causation when we find an association between two measures.

1. Long-time cannabis use associated with psychosis

The finding of this study:

Young adults who have used cannabis or marijuana for a longer period of time appear more likely to have hallucinations or delusions or to meet criteria for psychosis, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the May print issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. [bold mine]

How much more likely, the inquiring mind would like to know. Fortunately, this article actually provided the information. A pleasant surprise.

[Y]oung adults who had six or more years since first use of cannabis (i.e., who commenced use when around 15 years or younger) were twice as likely to develop a non-affective psychosis and were four times as likely to have high scores on the Peters et al Delusions Inventory [a measure of delusion]. [bold mine]

Thank you for that precision in reporting.

In a study such as this, having potentially important cultural and political implications, I’d like to see not only the inclusion of a control group — to put things in an absolute perspective, so to speak — but also of a comparison group of alcohol users — to put things in a relative perspective, you could say.

That said, the point I wanted to make is that this finding was not the product of an experiment. No, researchers didn’t randomly assign youth to groups and one of these or more instructed to smoke X amount of marijuana. That type of study would generate results one could be confident about a causal relationship between the variables. But good luck getting a research grant for it. And getting it past the ethics board!

And the authors acknowledged the problem with the nature of their finding.

“The nature of the relationship between psychosis and cannabis use is by no means simple,” they write. Individuals who had experienced hallucinations early in life were more likely to have used cannabis longer and to use it more frequently…..[T]hose individuals who were vulnerable to psychosis (i.e., those who had isolated psychotic symptoms) were more likely to commence cannabis use, which could then subsequently contribute to an increased risk of conversion to a non-affective psychotic disorder.” [bold mine]

Exactly! Kudos to them for keeping that in mind and pointing it out.

Actually, do they deserve kudos for such an elementary level of critical thinking? Because it at least seems relatively rare, at least in the material provided to the more popular media, I’ll applaud it when I find it.

2. Teens with more screen time have lower-quality relationships

In a study on computer and video-game usage and quality of relationships, an association between variables was discovered.

Teens who spend more time watching television or using computers appear to have poorer relationships with their parents and peers, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Again, the skeptical mind wants to know “how much poorer” and “how measured”?

The answer to the latter is “confidential questionnaire” as well as “an assessment of their attachment to parents and peers.” What kind of an assessment and by whom?To the former — kudos again! — the authors provide some numbers, such as:

The researchers also assessed interview responses from 976 individuals who were age 15 years in 1987 to 1988. Among these teens, more time spent viewing television was associated with lower attachment to both parents and peers. For every additional hour of television, teens had a 13 percent increased risk of low attachment to their parents and a 24 percent increased risk of low attachment to peers.

Conducting controlled experiments on lab rats and mice will only get you so far. And mice are notoriously bad video game players, so that would certainly be a confounding factor . . . . Could an experiment be conducted on this topic, with humans? I wonder.

Fortunately, as with the first study listed, these authors too, highlight the hazard of correlational findings by speculating about alternative explanations for theirs:

“However, it is also possible that adolescents with poor attachment relationships with immediate friends and family use screen-based activities to facilitate new attachment figures such as online friendships or parasocial relationships with television characters or personalities,” the authors write.

Exactly! And there are other possibilities.

So, do we conclude that the psychological sciences are worthless? No, not at all. But at the same time, we need to recognize the weak nature of much of the data generation and should refrain from making too much of non-controlled-experiment generated results.

Technorati Links: correlation, psychology, research

A new research finding lands a blow to lazy parents everywhere. It seems you can’t just plunk your young child in front of a television screen and they will learn. In a test of the effectiveness of educational DVDs, for one, the results came back negative. Maybe even worse than negative!

Researchers at University of California, Riverside did this:

…studied vocabulary acquisition among 96 children age 12 to 24 months. Participants were tested on measures of vocabulary and general development, and their primary caregivers (77 mothers, seven fathers and four others) answered a series of questions about their children’s development and previous exposure to educational media. Half of the children were then given an educational DVD to watch in their homes. [source]

The Negative Result:

When additional tests were conducted after six weeks, there was no evidence children learned the words specifically highlighted in the DVDs, and watching the DVDs was unrelated to measures of general language learning. [bold mine]

“Negative” in a scientific sense, simply means not. As in “not related.” How could the results then be worse than “not related.’

The Worse Than Negative Result:

While watching the DVD was not related learning new words, the researchers did find a relationship between age when parents began use of educational media for their child and score “on a test of vocabulary knowledge.”

As is expressed in the news release, this could simply be a case of a non-causal correlation. Rather than the DVD exposure causing the relative delay, parents may resort to educational DVDs when they have a sense the child already needs additional help. Or something.

Some futurists have envisioned a time when all learning is done in separate cubicles, with media tailor-fit to the individual’s present capabilities. But while human beings can be described as learning sponges, we tend to sop up certain types of information better. We also tend to attend better to certain sources of information. At least for children, I really wonder whether anything could replace face-time with a real living and breathing tutor, whether that tutor is mom, dad, grandma, or a caring professional.

—

Addendum: Got to give kudos where they are due.  Just noticed the title — “Infants do not appear to learn words from educational DVDs.”

Do not appear.  Excellent.  For this is only one study.

Technorati Links: education, psychology

In a recent post, Human Sexuality and How Questionnaires Can Fail, I concluded this way:

To the philosophical dictum “know thyself” I would thus add, “and realize there are limits to your self-knowledge.”

Well darn. Should I have five points deducted from my post’s score for going a bit cliché? At least I ended with that bit of over-used Socratic tidbit. A news release out Washington University in St. Louis used it in their first line:

Since at least the days of Socrates, humans have been advised to “know thyself.”

Minus ten for them. But maybe not. For the idea was central to their announcement: Others may know us better than we know ourselves, study finds. Summarizing research results that appeared in the February 2010 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the article states:

Simine Vazire, Ph.D., Washington University assistant professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences, has found that the individual is more accurate in assessing one’s own internal, or neurotic traits, such as anxiety, while friends are better barometers of intellect-related traits, such as intelligence and creativity, and even strangers are equally adept as our friends and ourselves at spotting the extrovert in us all, a psychology domain known as “extroversion.”

Interesting. Of course, as a hard-core skeptic, I’d like some numbers to go along with my study results, please. The only number I found was for the number of subjects: 165 volunteers. This Certainly makes it a preliminary finding/study. But what I really want to know is the degree of difference. How much better are we at gauging our internal states? How much better are others at gauging our intelligence and creativity?

Can we know something of ourselves? Sure. But perhaps we should keep in mind (as should psychotherapists everywhere) that what we know is not so much ourselves as it is our perceptions of ourselves. And not only does our power of perception have limits but it can be altered and skewed. Perhaps even mistaken.

Technorati Links: perception, psychology

Gee, maybe the cliché is wrong. Perhaps you’ve heard it: It’s not the destination, but the journey.

New research suggests that at least when it comes to vacations, the statement ought to be revised this way: It’s not the destination, but having one and planning for it.

A study published in the online in journal, Applied Research in Quality of Life, shared this finding:

[V]acationers tend to be happier than non-vacationers in the lead up to their break, but once they are back, there is very little difference between the two groups’ levels of happiness. [source]

Happy anticipation. A sweet emotion.

And speaking of anticipation (what a lame segue!), I anticipate heading over to the Gaytheists later today to check out this post: Humanist Symposium: A Delightfully Gay Edition.

What will I find there? I don’t know about the destination, yet, but my journey over will bring me some sweet anticipation.

Technorati Links: blog carnival, humanism, psychology

Mood can influence your decisions. Not always, and perhaps not by much. But there is a growing body of research that demonstrates that thinking is not a purely cognitive (“mental”) activity. As mentioned yesterday, social context will influence it. Emotional state will too.

Recent research into mood and shopping decisions didn’t just compare good mood vs. bad, but two varieties of more pleasant moods. The news release posted at ScienceDaily included this summary of the results:

“We found that pride enhanced desire for public display products,” the authors write. “Feeling pride led people to want nice watches, shoes, and clothing for going out. However, pride did not enhance desire for home products.”

In contrast, the emotion of contentment led people to want products for their homes.

This research actually shows the influence of both emotion and social-emotion on decision-making. Interesting.

Why should findings like this be of interest to non-psychologists? Because any person aspiring to be a critical thinker should be aware of the many ways thought can be influenced. Including those ways outside of conscious awareness.

To know thyself is to understand how thinking can be skewed and to realize the importance of taking remedial counter-measures, whenever possible.

Technorati Links: psychology, skepticism

Do human beings have free will? Well, what do you mean by will and what type of freedom? Seriously.

Students of psychology understand there are a number of things that severely challenge the notion of free will. First and foremost among these is the fact that we are social creatures that have been shaped by others and continue to be influenced by them. Socialization, enculturation, myriad types social learning experiences and events…. Social context has a strong influence on our behavior — even cognitive behavior — an influence we are largely ignorant of.

Recent research into altruism, of all things, demonstrates how our behavior can be influenced outside of conscious awareness.

I wrote, “of all things,” because by definition altruistic behavior requires putting aside selfishness to help others. Which in a sense implies free will, for how else to you put aside selfishness?

As reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, and as it appeared in this EurakAlert news bulletin — Pay it forward: Elevation leads to altruistic behavior — the simple act of watching a video clip of other people expressing an inspired, caring attitude can change the likelihood that a person will choose to behavior altruistically.

The results revealed that participants who watched the uplifting TV clip were more likely to volunteer for another research study than volunteers who saw the neutral TV clip, suggesting that elevation may make us more willing to help others. However, anybody can say they will volunteer for a subsequent study or would be willing to help another person. The researchers wanted to see if elevation can result in actual helping behavior…..

The results of this second experiment were striking — the participants who viewed the uplifting TV clip spent almost twice as long helping the research assistant than participants who saw the neutral TV clip or the comedy clip, indicating that elevation may lead to helping behavior.

Additionally, when it comes to free will — the question whether I am ultimately free to do x or y, this important issue also surfaces: Where did and does the “I” come from? The whole notion of free will rests upon an illusion of pure agency. And in the case of altruism, how truly altruistic is it if the individual behaving unselfishly doesn’t have a fully autonomous self in the first place?

No man or woman is a psychological island. Beneath the sea of conscious awareness lies a substrate of social connectedness. One that shaped the present self and still influences it today.

Technorati Links: free will, social psychology

Last month news of a very interesting study hit my desk. (And subsequently got lost under a stack of papers.) Upon re-reading the article from ScienceDaily this morning it struck me that one of the things the study into human sexuality revealed is that there can be a disconnect between what individuals honestly report and what is actually the case. Self-report questionnaires can be flawed because people do not have perfect knowledge of themselves. In the study in question, the inquiry was into “what turns you on?”

In a meta-analysis of 134 sexual psychophysiology studies, researchers looked at the correlation between subjective reports of sexual arousal vs. physiologic response. And they found an imperfect correlation.

For the male participants, the subjective ratings more closely matched the physiological readings indicating that men’s minds and genitals were in agreement. For the women, however, the responses of the mind and genitals were not as closely matched as men’s, suggesting a split between women’s bodies and minds. The readings from the physiological measurements and their subjective ratings were, in some cases, significantly different.

The above, it should be noted, flies in the face of the popular stereotype about men being the more psychologically clueless sex. Certainly, it is a complicated issue, one that doesn’t readily boil down to “girls are better than boys . . . no, boys are better than girls!”

Also noteworthy was this finding:

The type of sexual stimuli — their content and how it was presented e.g. visually or as an audio recording — made no difference to how well the subjective and physiological responses mirrored each other in men. However, it did influence women’s responses. Women exposed to a greater range and number of sexual stimuli — content and presentation — were more likely to have stronger agreement between subjective and physiological responses.

Sexual arousal aside–well, integral, actually–human psychology is complex and multi-faceted. Many of those facets aren’t readily accessible to conscious awareness and/or honest subjective appraisal. To the philosophical dictum “know thyself” I would thus add, “and realize there are limits to your self-knowledge.”

Technorati Links: psychology, sexuality