Cognitive Daily reports nearly every day on fascinating peer-reviewed developments in cognition from the most respected scientists in the field.
Greta Munger is Professor of Psychology at Davidson College whose works include The History of Psychology: Fundamental Questions. Dave Munger is co-founder and president of ResearchBlogging.org and a writer whose works include Researching Online. And yes, he is married to Greta.
Anton races home at speeds well in excess of the speed limit. He's rushing to beat his parents home so that he can hide their anniversary present so it will be a surprise. Suddenly, he hits a slick patch and runs his car off the road an into a tree. He's okay, but the car is totaled and his parent's surprise anniversary party is ruined.
How much is Anton to blame for the accident? If you had to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, maybe you'd give him a 7. After all, he was just trying to do something special for his parents.
But what if instead of hiding an anniversary present, Anton was rushing home to hide his cocaine stash? Would you now say he's more to blame for the accident? You might not when the two alternatives are placed side-by-side, but when Mark Alicke told the two versions of this story to different groups, the cocaine group rated Anton as more blameworthy than the anniversary present group.
Alicke's study provided the foundation for an array of studies on the effects of social evaluations of individuals on apparently unrelated events, and even factual recollections about episodes.
But when a team led by David Pizarro addressed this question, no study had yet shown that unrelated details about a person could literally affect witnesses' accuracy in recalling that person's actions. The researchers presented a simple story to 283 college students. The story described a person named Frank entering a restaurant, paying with cash for a drink, then ordering a three-course meal, receiving a cell phone call, and leaving without paying the $56.43 bill.
Ask almost anyone whether willfully deceiving another person -- lying -- is wrong, and they'll say it is. But probe a little deeper and most people will say there are some instances where lying is okay: lying to prevent a crime or an injustice is acceptable, just not lying for personal gain. Parents teach their kids that lying is wrong, and punish them for telling lies.
I can still remember the shock when my parents "lied" about my sixth birthday (which was a day away) at an ice-cream parlor so I could get a free sundae. But eventually, at some point, most American kids end up telling lies to their parents, as did I -- I just can't remember any of them at the moment (honest!).
Clearly children's conceptions of "acceptable" lies change over time. There must be a time in early childhood where they don't understand what a lie is. Then they learn what a lie is, followed shortly by learning that a lying is wrong. But how do they move from this stage to the more nuanced moral assessment of lying held by most adults?
Serena Perkins and Elliot Turiel came up with six situations in which lying might be justified, then asked 64 teens aged 12 to 17 which ones were acceptable and which were not. The situations are below:
If you've had a lot of musical training, you can probably tell the difference between a major and minor key. If you haven't had much training, even after having the difference explained to you, you're still not likely to be able to make that determination. Listen the following clip. It plays the same melody in a major and a minor key. Can you tell which is which?
But if the question is phrased differently, even non-musicians can reliably tell the difference: When listeners are told that some music (which happens to be in a major key) sounds "happy" and other music (in a minor key) sounds "sad," non-musicians can pick out the difference. With that information in mind, do you want to change your answer about the two samples above? If you do, you're probably a non-musician. If you don't, you either got lucky in your answer, or you are a musician. Either way, it's clear that musicians process "major" and "minor" differently from non-musicians. So what's different about the mental processing of musicians and non-musicians?
A team led by Andrea Halpern created 35 short tunes like the clips above. Each tune was then modified to have a minor-key and major-key variant -- this involved changing just a few notes in each tune. Then three expert musicians rated each clip for musicality and how "major" or "minor" each clip sounded. The 24 best examples of tunes with readily-identifiable major and minor keys were selected for study.
One of the amazing things about learning language is that children rarely hear language sounds in ideal acoustic environments. Maybe other people are talking in the background, or the dishwasher is running, or the TV is on. Yet somehow children they learn words just the same. By the time we're adults, we've become experts at filtering out irrelevant sounds and patching together meaning out of the cacophony of everyday life.
As one example, listen to this short clip of me saying the word "dinosaur" three times.
I edited the "s" sound out of the first "dinosaur," so you can clearly hear me saying "dino_aur." The last "dinosaur" is obviously complete. But what about the middle "dinosaur," where I edited in a cough/sneeze right over where the "s" sound is supposed to be? Can you still hear the "s" in the background? Let's make this a poll:
Most adults believe they hear the "s" sound in cases like this, even if the sound has been edited out: the perceptual system adds in a sound where it doesn't exist. (Did I edit the sound out here? I'll keep that a mystery for now.) The effect, known as perceptual restoration, has been observed in children as young as five years old.
But what about younger children -- kids who are just beginning to learn language? Do they also exhibit perceptual restoration? It's a difficult question to study, since children who only know a few words aren't able to tell us what they hear with the precision needed (they can't read, so how can they tell us whether they heard an "s" sound?).
Humans are exceptionally good at recognizing faces they've seen before. It doesn't take much study to accurately recall whether or not you've seen a particular face. However, this pattern breaks down when faces come from unfamiliar races. A white person who lives primarily among other whites will have more difficulty recognizing Asian faces, and vice versa.
But how engrained is this difference? How much experience with other-race faces do we need to have before we can recognize them as well as same-race faces? Is learning to recognize other races as difficult as recognizing any new category of objects -- cars, say, or birds? When we do learn to recognize other-race faces, do we really know them as well as more familiar races?
While it has been known for some time that we can learn to recognize other race faces as well as our own, this last question hasn't been studied as thoroughly. Maybe in more difficult tests of recognition, we wouldn't do as well with different-race faces.
To explore this question, a team led by Elinor McKone developed a clever set of three experiments. In the first experiment, white Australian students were exposed to 32 different faces -- some white, and some Asian -- for three seconds each. After a brief break where they were distracted with multiplication problems, they were tested on a set of 64 pictures -- 32 they had seen before, and 32 new pictures. Their job was to say which were old and which were new. As expected, the students were significantly more accurate with same-race faces compared to different-race faces. This showed that with brief exposure, different-race faces aren't recognized as well as same-race faces.
Although not all games are equal, there's plenty of evidence that playing some violent video games can cause aggressive real-world behavior. Sites like addictinggames.com offer popular games whose sole point is to play the role of a hit-man or even to torture animals. Over 85 percent of video games include violence.
When these statistics are combined with the results of studies showing that aggressive attitudes and even actions can be increased after playing violent games for as little as 20 minutes, it's possible that we have a major problem on our hands.
Another potential problem of video game violence is widespread activation of a phenomenon that has been observed in many other domains: desensitization. Some desensitization is undoubtedly good: for example, a surgeon who exhibited the natural disgust and revulsion at seeing human entrails probably would have a hard time doing her job. Desensitization means that after seeing the gore of an operating room many times throughout her training process, she can overcome that natural revulsion to human innards and is prepared to do her job when it counts.
But other types of desensitization are not so good. Desensitization to racism allowed slavery to persist for centuries across much of the world. Desensitization to violence might mean that individuals are less likely to assist someone who's being attacked, or more likely to actively cooperate in a violent act. Aside from some reports of military uses for preparing troops for battle, there has been little study of whether playing violent video games desensitizes people to violence. So does the cartoon violence in games affect our reaction to real-world violence?
Do we have free will? While some may see the question as trivial, it's a challenging topic that has been actively debated for centuries. Whether or not you believe a god is involved, a case can be made that free will is simply an illusion, and that every "decision" we make is completely controlled by factors outside of an individual's control.
Yet others have argued that a belief in free will is essential to morality. If we don't actually have any control over the decisions we make, how can we be held accountable for them? Several studies have suggested that when kids believe their achievements are due to innate ability rather than their own effort, they are less likely to persist at similar tasks in the future. But until recently, no study has attempted to directly study belief in free will and how it affects behavior.
Kathleen Vohs and Johnathan Schooler have found a way to study this question (though they can't tell you whether they were predestined to do it or they came up with the idea through their own independent efforts!). They had 30 students read one of two passages by Francis Crick. The first passage argued that most scientists now recognize free will as an artifact of the way the brain works, that free will is simply an illusion and our actions are determined solely by genetics and the environment. The second passage discussed consciousness and did not bring up free will at all. Then the students were given a test to measure their belief in free will versus determinism.
If you saw a headline like this one in your local newspaper, you might first think it's some type of info-tisement sponsored by the floral industry. You'd probably be right, too. So what is this headline doing in Cognitive Daily? We've found a study to support the notion that flowers actually induce real positive emotions.
Was it paid for by the floral industry? Yes, it was. Does that mean it's bad research? Not necessarily. A team led by Jeannette Haviliand-Jones has conducted an impressive set of three experiments, each of which contributes to the idea that giving someone flowers improves their mood, not just at the moment of delivery, but long afterwards.
In the first experiment, 147 women were recruited using ads in supermarkets to participate in a study about "normal daily moods." In exchange, they would be given one of 10 possible gifts, but they weren't told which gift they'd receive. The women were all called on the phone and given a questionnaire to assess their mood and overall life satisfaction. Then, 10 days later, two experimenters showed up at their door at a scheduled time to deliver the gift.
One third of the women received flowers, one third got a fruit basket, and one third got a candle. These gifts had been pre-selected by a group of volunteers to have equivalent appeal, and they all had equivalent monetary value. Chocolate wasn't chosen as a gift because some raters found it unappealing because of the danger of gaining weight.
Clicking on the link below will bring up an image in a new window (you may need to disable pop-up blockers to do this). The picture contains five rows of asterisks. Your job is to count them as quickly as possible. Try using your finger to point and help keep track.
If you're like most people, this second task was a little more difficult for you. It's not that you need to use your finger to help you count, it just seems to help things along a bit. When you weren't using your finger to point, you may have found yourself nodding your head to help keep pace with all those asterisks.
A team led by Richard Carlson gave 24 tests like this to 17 students, and verified that pointing to help count asterisks resulted in faster and more accurate counts. But why? Maybe the fact that the items being counted are all asterisks tripped up the students, and they had to use their fingers just to keep their place. Carlson's team repeated the study, only using a variety of different symbols, not just asterisks. They found the same result. Even for a simple counting task, pointing at the things we count makes it easier. But once again the question arises: how is it that simply pointing at things helps us count?
How often do you take time to reflect on the things you're grateful for? Once a month? Once a week, at church, perhaps? Maybe you say "grace" at mealtime every day. But even prayers that do express gratefulness, such as a traditional mealtime prayer, are often expressed by rote. Growing up, my family wasn't very religious, but when we had dinner with family or friends, we'd usually say grace. I was probably well into my teens before I understood what "blessusolordforthesethygiftswhichweareabouttoreceivefromthybounty" actually meant.
While many would agree that "counting your blessings" is a worthwhile practice, there hasn't been much experimental research on whether gratitude really has a positive impact on our lives. Several studies have found that gratitude correlates with positive emotions such as happiness, pride, and hope, but experimental work -- showing that gratitude causes these things -- is scarcer.
Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough figured it would be worthwhile to explore this notion. Their method of study was both ingenious and simple: they would ask 201 students in a health psychology class to respond to a weekly questionnaire. Everyone rated their well-being, was tested on a measure of gratefulness, and reported on their physical health and level of exercise. The key to the study was a division into three groups. The first group listed five things they were grateful for each week. The second group listed five hassles or irritants from the past week. The final group simply wrote down five "events or circumstances" from the past week. This continued for ten weeks.
In our little college town, one of the most popular fitness trends over the past few years has been yoga. Friends and acquaintances often suggest we join them in their favorite class, claiming not only that we'll get stronger and more flexible, but that we'll feel better about ourselves.
But Greta and I both have fitness routines that work well for us. I like to go for a morning run, I bike, and I play soccer, and Greta not only walks for 30 minutes on the treadmill every day, she also walks to and from work, 1.3 miles each way. Despite our assurances that we enjoy these things, devout yoga fans seem convinced that we're missing out on something: a chance to improve our self-esteem.
Despite all the hype about yoga and self esteem, there hasn't been a lot of research demonstrating a connection, especially in comparison to other forms of exercise. But Steriani Elavsky and Edward McAuley have conducted a new study comparing yoga to walking. They recruited 164 women age 42 to 56, with offers of a free fitness program. At the study outset, all the women were paid $20 to undergo both psychological testing for measures such as their body image, physical self-esteem, and global-self esteem, as well as physical measures like weight and body fat percentage. Then they were randomly divided into three groups: yoga, walking, and control (no exercise).
The fact that infants are able to learn language without any help from adults can sometimes seem almost miraculous. Not only do children learn to speak and understand language completely on their own, active teaching of language skills seems to make almost no difference in their ability to talk.
One of the first difficulties when learning a language solely from listening to spoken language is determining where one word ends and the next one begins. Native speakers of a language typically leave no audible space between words at all. Even "motherese" doesn't leave any space between words -- if anything the spaces are diminished: "issntdatacutewittlebaby!"
So how do babies learn where one word ends and the next one begins? A group of researchers including Luca Bonatti, Marina Nespor, Jacques Mehler, and Juan Toro, believes it has identified a key pattern that works in a wide range of languages: language learners look to patterns in the consonants for information about where words start and end; they look to vowels to understand the role of words in a sentence. The first part of their explanation was explored in 2005. Their newest paper, led by Toro, considers the second part of the problem. How did they do it? They invented a "language" that had a couple of very simple rules. See if you can figure out the rules by looking at the list of "words" below:
"Outing" gays and lesbians has always been a controversial practice, especially when done without the outed person's consent. But even when an individual outs him or herself, some people argue that outing is inappropriate because of the negative stereotypes that are evoked. But there's a subtler sort of outing as well: even if a person is publicly out, not everyone is immediately aware of it. While most Americans know that Ellen DeGeneres is a lesbian, fewer people might be aware that Alice Walker is too. While they might know Freddy Mercury was gay, they might not know about Cole Porter.
It might seem rather pointless for every news report about Alice Walker to mention her sexual preferences, but those in favor of this subtler sort of outing suggest that it can improve the public impression of gays and lesbians. Up until now, there hasn't been much science to back that claim. What we do know is that people who have gay and lesbian friends and family members tend to show less bias against them, both overtly and in implicit bias tests. Does simply seeing or learning about famous people who are gay or lesbian also decrease bias?
Nilanjana Dasgupta and Luis Rivera recruited 127 heterosexual people via newspaper ads to participate in a paid study. The participants were divided into two groups: one group viewed pictures and descriptions of 15 flowers, while the other saw photos and short biographies of famous gays and lesbians. They were then given an Implicit Attitude Test.
Imagine yourself walking on a treadmill that starts at a reasonable pace: say, two and a half miles per hour. Every two minutes, the treadmill increases its speed by 0.2 mph: 2.7 mph, 2.9 mph, 3.1 mph, and so on. If you're in good physical condition, at some point -- usually between about 3.0 and 4.5 mph -- you'll find it more comfortable to start running instead of walking. Different individuals have different thresholds based on their fitness level and other factors, but even taking these things into account, it's difficult to explain exactly why people start running when they do. Do different people have different thresholds for pain?
Gregory Daniels and Karl Newell paid 12 physically fit college students to walk on a treadmill as it gradually increased in speed. To disguise the real purpose of the study, the students were fitted with fake oxygen consumption meters and cardiographs. They were told to walk, but to begin running as soon as it felt more comfortable. They also rated their physical exertion every two minutes by pointing to a numeric chart on the wall (remember, their mouths were covered with the oxygen consumption meters so they couldn't talk).
But most importantly, the walkers were also sometimes asked to complete simple addition and subtraction problems. Every 10 seconds, a new tape-recorded problem and answer was played, and the walkers had to raise their right hand to indicate a correct answer and raise their left hand for an incorrect answer. They repeated the experiment four times: two times with no math problems, and once each with easy (single-digit) and hard (double-digit) math problems. Here are the results:
Researchers have known for some time that people are surprisingly accurate at visually judging distances to objects as far as 25 meters away. If you're allowed to briefly look at an object up to that distance away, then blindfolded, you'll walk right up to it with great precision. If you walk halfway, you can throw a ball the remaining distance, again, quite accurately.
But in 2000 Marla Bigel and Colin Ellard attempted a simple replication of the study: instead of viewing the object, volunteers were led blindfolded to the object and back, and asked to walk back to the object again. Now, instead of accurately walking the distance, they systematically overestimated the distance to the object. Could our feet deceive us more than our eyes, even when we're simply asked to retrace a path we've just taken?
There's another possible explanation: maybe being led is what causes the deception. In a new study, Ellard and Sarah Shaughnessy asked 30 volunteers to walk blindfolded along a roped-off 10-meter pathway. They could use the ropes to guide themselves, but were never led by researchers. As before, they walked the distance to the object, then returned to the starting point, and finally attempted to walk the same distance again. Another group of volunteers simply looked at the object and then tried to walk to it blindfolded. Here are the results.
Cognitive Daily reports nearly every day on fascinating peer-reviewed developments in cognition from the most respected scientists in the field.
Anton races home at speeds well in excess of the speed limit. He's rushing to beat his parents home so that he can hide their anniversary present so it will be a surprise. Suddenly, he hits a slick patch and runs his car off the road an into a tree. He's okay, but the car is totaled and his parent's surprise anniversary party is ruined.
