Mr Gallagher sent me this article. It is about the human tendency to be overly optimistic about one's future. This is unlike people with clinical depression, who are pessimistically biased about the future. But what is interesting is that when it comes to predicting future events, those who have mild depression are more accurate than others. The optimism bias prevents us from developing depression, but make us less realistic about the future.
The optimism bias
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One can be prejudiced even if one is a scholar in psychology, it seems:
Blogger's ugly conclusions anger some in the black community Here is yet another example of a culture bound syndrome. During the period of the Weimar republic in Germany in the 1920s, there existed a mental disorder called "Zero stroke". The primary symptom of the disorder was a desire to write an endless row of zeros. It was thought to have been caused by the hyperinflation in Germany, when money lost its' value so quickly so that you had to pay very large digit figures of D-mark even for the cheapest things. Cashiers, bookkeepers and bankers were the ones that were most prone for the Zero stroke.
Maybe you will find this article interesting. It relates to the validity and reliability of diagnosis of disorders. There is a possibility that psychopaths are over-diagnosed.
How to spot a psychopath Many years ago I read Antonio Damasio's Descartes error. Last year he came out with a new book; Self comes to mind: Constructing the conscious mind. I have not read his new book.
In Descartes error Damasio suggests, after research with the Iowa gambling task, that emotion is vital for making rational decisions. In the gambling task, it has been demonstrated that individuals with brain damage in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex cannot learn from punishment and therefore continue to go for the chance of high reward even though it turns out to be punishing in the long run. Other case studies show that people with damage in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex can logically reason how they should act, but they have difficulty in making an appropriate decision. Emotion may well be the factor that can help us choose one thing over something else. Damasio explains this with his somatic marker hypothesis. According to the hypothesis, we learn to associate a particular physiological affective state with a particular situation. This associated physical state is reproduced whenever we end up in a similar situation again. This may also be what we usually call "gut feeling". The hypothesis in itself bears resemblance to the theory of operant conditioning which I mentioned in an earlier article (the idea that we learn to associate behavior with reinforcers and punishers). The hypothesis has some support in that there are slightly different physiological reactions for different emotions (such as different facial expressions, different hormonal secretion, varying heart beat and body temperature). More research is needed to support this mechanism. What Damasio and other researchers have taught us, however, is the importance of emotion in decision making. This article relates to both philosophy and psychology, because it is related to moral decision making.
Blood on the tracks In this experiment they used the classic runaway train dilemma. It involves the issue whether it is right to sacrifice one man in order to save the lives of five people. Depending on how the scenario is presented, people will give different answers. This study showed that the general mood of the individual affected their decision. So it provides some evidence that emotion is involved in moral decision making. If you wish to participate in a moral sense test, go to this website: The moral sense test The study will not display it's findings yet as the researchers are still collecting the data, but taking the test may have you realize some inconsequential thinking inherent in your moral sense. May the researchers forgive me if I have biased their experiment. Slavoj Zizek is actually a philosopher and sociologist and not a psychologist. However, sociology and the sociocultural level of analysis have much in common, as they both focus on the shaping of society on individual´s behavior. Further on, Zizek is a Lacanian. Sociologists often apply psychological theories on society, and the Lacanian approach uses psychoanalysis.
Slavoj Zizek is quite interesting to listen to because of his unique way of talking. His arguments and lectures are not especially linear, and he has a "deconstructive" approach. Some may claim that his argumentation is flawed, but he has many profound thoughts. Here is a talk by him on ecology from the documentary "Examined life" Slavoj Zizek in examined life If I understand him right, ecology is an ideology. We tend to think that we are the engineers of nature and separate from it. There is a human need to look for meaning and causes of things, and it is difficult for us to accept that things just happened. Artificiality and trash are also part of nature and like we love other people despite their imperfections we should also come to terms with the society we live in. However, let us hope that he does not think that we should accept pollution and garbage, because I think there is a human need for fresh air and beautiful nature. Maybe we can turn the wilderness into a garden or maybe we can create a beautiful virtual reality which we can hook up to if the earth becomes too polluted, but these are scaring thoughts. There is, by the way an interdisplinary science called Environmental psychology that focuses on how to make the environment more appealing and how to raise environmental awareness and change people´s environmental behavior. The approach is mainly sociocultural and one founder of the discipline is Roger Garlock Barker. When evaluating biological research, you might have heard that I have called it "reductionistic"; that it simplifies all behavior to biological processes and neglects cognitive, social and cultural factors. If you want to learn more of what reductionism is, this is an essay that I wrote two years ago on the topic:
In Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein the University student Victor Frankenstein builds a living creature in his laboratory through methods of science and alchemy by assembling body parts from corpses taken from graveyards, slaughterhouses and dissecting rooms. Shelley's novel deals with an issue that has occupied philosophers for thousands of years. Are the functions of a living organism due to a vital principle distinct to matter, such as a soul, an idea referred to as vitalism, or is life like the theory of mechanism postulates, purely the effect of natural phenomena? Frankenstein uncovers the secret of life by studying medieval alchemy and natural science. In Shelley's time it might have looked like the discovery of the secret of life was close at hand. In 1791, almost thirty years before the publication of Frankenstein's monster, the Italian anatomist and discoverer of bioelectricity, Luigi Galvani had managed to make the leg of a dead frog twitch when his steel scalpel accidently touched the brass hook that was holding the leg in place. In the same century, the famous German physician Franz Mesmer claimed that he had discovered a vital magnetic energy force that he could discharge from his own body. 200 years has now passed since the publication of Frankenstein, and although some scientists think we are close, we have not yet uncovered the secret of life. Frankenstein's monster is however a good illustration of how a reductionist views life. For what, you might ask, is a human being other than body parts? Is she anything else than flesh and bone? Is she nothing but heart, lungs and brain that work together as a system to make a body function? If you believe that a human is just a form of life you can be considered to be a reductionist. Reductionists believe that any complex system is nothing but the sum of its’ components. A cake is its’ ingredients, a painting its’ colors, a human her body parts. This essay will evaluate the use of reductionism in biopsychology. Reductionism is an approach on how to conduct science. It deals with the question of whether qualities, concepts, explanations and methods from one scientific domain can be explained by qualities, concepts, explanations and methods from another domain of science. For instance, a reductionist would believe that psychological concepts like intelligence and mind can be explained by biological factors, such as evolution, brain structure, genetics, and bio chemicals in the body. In addition, a reductionist thinks that psychology would benefit in applying methods used in the science of biology, like the experimental method, genetic research and observations of animal behavior. Reductionist explanations are usually based on “lower” or smaller levels of organization. Reductionists, that follow the law of parsimony, believe that the simplest level of explanation is the best and that complex events can be reduced to simple component processes or a few basic principles. To understand this, we must first understand the world view of a reductionist. Reductionists believe that the world can be organized into levels. This hierarchy is often referred to as the reductionist ladder. Each level in the ladder consists of a complex system; a group of interrelated elements that together creates a unified whole. For instance, on the psychological level we find consciousness and behavior. Consciousness can be seen as a system consisting of thoughts, ideas, memories, beliefs, perceptions, sensations and experiences whereas behavior can be broken down into smaller distinguishable elements, such as reflexes and muscle movements. The elements are inter-related in that they affect each other. Thought can for instance lead to action and several different motor movements are required for the action of kicking a ball. Beneath the psychological level we find the biological level - living organisms, their processes and interactions. A reductionist would claim that psychological processes depend solely on the biological level. In his book The Blind Watchmaker, the biologist Richard Dawkins introduced the term hierarchical reductionism to describe a hierarchy of levels, where each level only can be explained by a level directly underneath and no other level. For a reductionist, the relationship between a higher and a lower level of organization is causal, meaning that phenomena in the higher level of organization can be completely explained by a lower level of organization. Phenomena in the higher level explanation are called epiphenomena, or in another word by-products due to the reductionist assumption that higher levels of organization cannot causally affect lower levels of organization. Reductionism is related to the philosophical theory of mechanism that states that all natural phenomena can be explained by natural causes. Universal mechanists mean that the universe can be best understood as a completely mechanical system, like a machine or a clock. In this view, the universe is a complex system that consists of matter in motion governed by the laws of nature. The enlightenment philosopher Rene Descartes contributed much to the mechanistic understanding of nature. He claimed that all natural objects, including non-human animals and human bodies could be understood as completely mechanistic automata; self governed machines. Being both mechanistic and causal, reductionism is further on related to causal determinism, the idea that every event by necessity is caused by previous events and conditions due to the laws of nature. Reductionists within biology could generally be considered to be biological determinists, in that they assume that biological factors, such as genes, completely determine an individual's psychology and behavior. Reductionism is also related to the philosophy of materialism which holds that matter is the only reality. The reductionist approach has been successfully applied in science. By breaking down phenomena into smaller, simple component, processes are more easily analyzed, and hypotheses of their interaction more easily tested. If we for instance assume that there is a gene that influences learning ability we can compare the difference in that particular gene between subjects with learning deficits and subjects with no learning deficits, or if we have reason to believe that the hippocampal structure in the brain is related to sexual orientation we can compare the differences between the structure of hypothalamus and subjects with differing sexual orientation. Reductionist research is often laboratory or experimentally based in order to discover cause and effect relations and minimize confounding variables, although this type of research often has limited ecological validity. By explaining phenomena in terms of an underlying physical basis, a science like psychology can gain scientific support and credibility from more established sciences like biology, chemistry and physics. By unifying with those sciences, a more consistent, yet materialistic world view is provided. The reductionist approach in biopsychology has also had successful applications, such as drug therapy and psychosurgery, though the effectiveness of some drug therapy still remains inconclusive. Some research has even suggested that effectiveness of drug therapy for treating depression may be mainly due to the placebo effect; the person’s faith in the treatment may affect the outcome of the treatment. Whatever its’ successes, reductionism fails to explain the emergent properties of a system. Emergence is when new properties arise in a system that cannot be found in any of its constituent parts. To use an example, a cake creates a taste experience that hardly can be found separately in any of the ingredients. I doubt that the experience of just eating the ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, salt, baking powder) of a sugar cake separately would add up to the same experience as eating a sugar cake. Or that individually looking at various colors would add up to the same experience as looking at van Gogh art. Another example relates to psychology. The mind is aware and conscious, yet few of us think that single neurons have any mental experience. These examples relate well to the idea of holism, which unlike reductionism states that all the properties of a given system cannot be explained by its’ constituent parts alone. The idea of holism can be traced back to Aristotle, who is said to have declared that "the whole is more than the sum of its parts". Reductionism can be claimed to explain away higher level phenomena, rather than to solve them, a point that the behaviorist Daniel Dennett made in his book Darwin's dangerous idea. For instance, a reductionist may explain consciousness as stemming from unconscious processes in the brain. Conversely, this explanation does not provide an answer on how the addition of several unconscious components can be equal to a conscious process. That is to say, unless even small particles in the universe have a level of consciousness, an idea put forward by dr Bohm, among others. Reductionism can also be criticized for its’ downward causation claim; that only lower level causes phenomena in a higher level and neglecting interaction between levels. One study that challenges this claim is a study by neuroscientist Pascal-Leone in 2002. Pascal-Leone instructed participants to learn to practice a five-finger piano exercise for five days, two hours every day. During the session, the participants’ motor cortex was investigated by the use of a transcranial-magnetic-stimulation test (TMS). The findings showed that practice altered the structure of the area devoted for the finger movements. For a group of participants who also had been instructed to imagine they were playing five-finger piano tone outside of practice, the area for finger movements in the motor cortex expanded even more. The results suggest that training and imagination can alter brain structure. To summarize, reductionism is a belief that qualities, concepts, explanations and methods from one scientific domain can be explained by qualities, concepts, explanations and methods from another domain of science on a more fundamental level. According to reductionism, the simplest level of explanation is the best and complex events can be reduced to simple component processes or basic principles. Reductionism has been successfully applied in science, as breaking down phenomena into smaller, simple component processes allows for easier analysis and testing of hypotheses. By allying with other sciences, psychology can gain support and credibility from the natural sciences. With a unified science, reductionism is able to provide a consistent world view. The reductionist approach has also had some success in treatment of mental disorders, such as psychosurgery and drug therapy. On the contrary, reductionism cannot explain emergent properties in a system and can be accused of explaining away higher level phenomena rather than explaining them. The reductionist approach can also be criticized for its’ assumption of downward causation; that only fundamental levels can affect higher levels of organization and not the other way around. New research suggests an interaction instead of causation between biology and psychology; that beliefs, experiences and training may alter organization on the biological level. In conclusion, though the reductionist approach has contributed to the unification of and collaboration between sciences, it has failed to explain the emergence of psychological phenomena. Interaction and not causation should be the most appropriate and valid assumption for psychological research, with the emphasis of subjective needs, individual, social, cultural and situational variables. The individual must be viewed in her context. Whatever the causes of my behavior, I am more than my causes. Even though I cannot choose my parents or change my past, I may be able to choose my path in life. Last year I read several books by the journalist Malcolm Gladwell. Here is a short review of the books.
The Tipping point: This is probably the book by Gladwell that I like the most. Gladwell puts forward an interesting hypothesis that social behaviour spreads in the same way as biological viruses. According to him, a novel social behaviour usually originates in a small group, then spreads to other groups, often when the group grows to more than 150 people. When a group reaches 150 person limit, it tends to split into other groups, who will bring the social behaviour to other groups. This can lead to almost exponential growth of a social behaviour. Gladwell identifies three principles for social behaviour to spread: First, the social behaviour needs to be contagious or memorable; secondly, the social behaviour is being spread by just a few people: Salesmen (people who promote the behaviour), Mavens (Experts, knowledgeable people who come up with the ideas) and Connectors (people who have many social relations allowing the behaviour to spread quickly). Thirdly, the social context has a need for the behavior. Blink: In this book, Gladwell investigates the concept of intuition or snap judgment; the ability to make good decisions or judgments without thinking. Gladwell's main point of the book is that so called "thin slicing" is the explanation of snap judgments. Thin slicing is the ability to extract a pattern from a limited amount of information. Gladwell's idea is that too much information often can confuse us instead of making us wiser (this idea is related to what another author, Taleb, is putting forward in his book The Black Swan) One must be aware of, however, that even though thin slicing can be effective because it saves time during decision making, it can also lead to stereotyping. Outliers. The story of success: In this book, Gladwell discusses the strong influence of social and cultural context on success. For instance, he demonstrates how Canadian ice hockey players usually are born the first few months of a calendar year. The reason for this is because the earlier a person is born in the year, the more mature he will be during the NHL draft and thus have an advantage over the less mature (that are born later in the year). Gladwell also shows how many succesful people such as Oppenheimer and Bill Gates were successful because their opportunities. In addition, he argues that the many plane crashes of Korean air in the 1990s were due to Korean culture which emphasizes acceptance of authority and indirect communication. The pilot made the error because the co-pilot did not dare to question his authority alternatively could not communicate that the pilot was making an error with enough clarity. What the dog saw: This book is a compilation of articles that Gladwell wrote for the New Yorker. It covers a lot of interesting topics, such as several fairly unknown geniuses, the influence of social factors on phenomena such as intelligence and the menstruation cycle, late bloomers (people who had little talent initially but developed ability through hard work and time), and a criticism of criminal profiling. Malcolm Gladwell has also given an interesting tedtalk: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce In this talk, he discusses psychophysics, which is the psychological discipline that investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the psychological perceptions and sensations of the physical stimuli. This research has applications in areas such as food science. When food manufacturers want to create taste sensations that are most appealing to consumers, they can use psychophysics research. Gladwell's point of the speech, however, is that there is no ideal taste of a product, because taste preference is very individual and is not distributed in a bell curve. This is the reason why there are so many varieties of products, because people prefer different types of food and tastes. Gladwell's tedtalk is a good illustration of the qualitative approach to behavior. Qualitative researchers, believe, unlike quantitative researchers, that there is no "average" behavior for a particular situation but a variety of behaviors. Thus, a qualitative approach to psychological research is to describe rather than generalize. In the speech, Gladwell also makes the point that experimental research is superior to qualitative research when it comes to taste preference, because people do not always consciously know what they desire. This article relates to altruism:
Nice guys finish first I have written about something similar in an earlier article on altruism. At the moment social psychology is undergoing a paradigm shift. We used to believe that humans were essentially egoistic and driven by self interest for helping behavior. Now we open up for the possibility that we are altruistic and cooperative by nature. The "survival of the nicest", so to speak. David Brooks, the author of the column, has come out with a new book. It is called The social animal. Here he talks about his book on tedtalks: David Brooks: The social animal |
AuthorThis is my class blog for IB Psychology. Here I will publish reflections on psychology, reviews of psychology books, recommended links, lecture notes, and information on psychology topics that are not covered by the syllabus. You are free to add comments or ask me questions. Archives
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