Psychology Today Blogs - Matthew Hutson

Of Jock Straps and Conspiracy Theories

Matthew Hutson — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:00:05 -0700

Jim Ohms puts another penny in the pouch of his supporter after each win. Clanging against the hard plastic genital cup, the pennies made a noise as he ran the bases toward the end of a winning season. Glenn Davis would chew the same gum every day during hitting streaks, saving it under his cap. Infielder Julio Gotay always played with a cheese sandwich in his back pocket (he had a big appetite, so there might also have been a measure of practicality here). Wade Boggs ate chicken before every game during his career... Mike Hargrove, former Cleveland Indian first baseman, had so many time consuming elements in his batting ritual that he was known as "the human rain delay."

That's from an essay titled "Baseball Magic" by the anthropologist George Gmelch. As I explained in my article on magical thinking, feeling powerless increases superstition. Brains are pattern-finding organs, and when tossed into an unpredictable environment people will grasp for any straw they can get (maybe if I do A, B will happen.) As Gmelch pointed out, batting and pitching are the most fertile activities for superstition in baseball; the factors differentiating a home run from a foul ball are so hard to master that players irrationally look for other ways to control the situation. And according to a paper in tomorrow's edition of Science, skittery jocks may also be more likely to see faces in clouds, construct conspiracy theories, and make biased investment decisions.

The paper, by Jennifer Whitson of the University of Texas at Austin and Adam Galinsky of Northwestern, ties together leads from several areas of research into a tight argument: lacking control increases illusory pattern perception. According to Whitson, "the main contribution of [the six new studies reported in the paper] is that they connect a lot of different things that were previously thought of as separate and reveal that underneath, the same visceral need for control is affecting all of them."

The first study showed that when people receive arbitrary feedback on a cognitive task—denying them the ability to make sense of the task's requirements—they score higher on the Personal Need for Structure Scale by saying, for example, that they find routines enjoyable. In the second study, subjects who received random feedback saw more images in random visual noise (think TV static) than did other subjects.

For the third experiment, subjects recalled an experience when they either lacked control or had control. Then they read scenarios describing potentially meaningful coincidences—in one, a man stomps his feet three times before a meeting and subsequently has his proposal approved. The people who recalled powerlessness saw stronger connections between behaviors and outcomes in the scenarios, and also said they were more likely to try similar stunts in the future.

In the fourth study, people who recalled a situation where they lacked control were more likely to see nonexistent images in snowy pictures and were also more likely to suspect conspiracies in ambiguous vignettes. (In one story, three local construction companies raise their prices after their owners all spend the same weekend at one bed and breakfast. In another, the protagonist was denied a promotion right after his boss and a workmate exchanged a flurry of emails.)

The fifth experiment showed that describing the stock market as volatile (versus stable) renders people more likely to spot false correlations in reports on company financials—and then make stock investments based on their unfounded conclusions.

Finally, the sixth study showed that feeling good about yourself reduces the frantic grasping for straws. There were three groups. One group recalled not having control, another recalled not having control and then performed a self-affirmation task, and a third group did neither. The first group saw more figures in snowy pictures and perceived more conspiracies than the other groups did. Apparently, increasing self-esteem fosters a sense of control over one's life and reduces the need to seek additional stability in random noise.*

One might ask, What does seeing faces in clouds have to do with being in control? Well, according to the embodied theory of mind, we imbue all things with affordances—qualities that describe how we can act on them. The human organism with all its fancy-pants "theories" about the world is just an elaborate iteration of the single-celled action-reaction simpletons we evolved from. Ultimately, thinking serves doing. (Specifically surviving and reproducing.) So seeing a pattern in the world is useful to us only insofar as it lets us form a plan of action, providing control, or at least a sense thereof.

That last part—"at least a sense therof"—is important. As I describe in my piece on magical thinking, the illusion of control is healthy (within reason), as it inspires confidence and pushes us to go out on a limb and sometimes accomplish great things. On that note, Whitson brought to my attention an anecdote from Miroslav Holub (often attributed to Karl Weick): Lost in the snowy Alps and despondent, a party of troops found a map in their belongings, a discovery that revitalized them and got them home. Back at camp they learned that the map they used was actually of the Pyrenees, not the Alps. Just the sense of control—gained from spotting (arbitrary) correlations between the map and the mountains—saved their lives.

In their paper, Whitson and Galinsky also remark on the utility of increasing security and self-esteem through "psychotherapy, which attempts to give clients a sense of control over their lives to reduce the obsessive compulsive tendencies or sinister attributions engendered by seeing too much meaning and intentions in others' innocuous behaviors." As Whitson told me, she sometimes knocks on wood, and "sometimes there'll be a day when something jarring has happened and I'll walk into a room and people will be laughing, and I think, Oh wait, was that about me?"

Stock traders should also probably start the day doing something they're really good at, just so they don't go making crummy investments on shaky ground.

Future research will explore whether lacking control increases non-illusory pattern perception. Are powerless people better at spotting very subtle patterns that others miss? On a meta-level, Whitson says she and Galinsky joke about how things were chaotic for both of them when they came up with the idea for this research, which may have prompted them to see the connections needed to bring all its parts under one umbrella, or tinfoil hat as it were.

*Groups two and three were not significantly different, and I asked Whitson why the decrease in pattern-spotting due to the decreased need for control that comes from increased self-esteem (got that?) would not be buoyed by the mood boost that also accompanies increased self-esteem. Peter Brugger and others have shown that increasing dopamine (via your favorite stimulant) makes people more likely to spot patterns in noise (aka apophenia). Unfortunately the Science study did not measure or control for mood, but Whitson suggested that perhaps a sense of control isolated from mood effects would have dropped apophenia scores below the levels of the third group but that the happiness pulled them back up to match the third group. Room for further study

ADDENDUM: Science's embargo on this story lifted at 2pm today. I wrote the post beforehand and posted it right at 2. Our blog site also broke for several minutes at 2. This was the first time I've ever published a story precisely when a press embargo lifts, and *crunch.* Interesting.

J. A. Whitson, A. D. Galinsky (2008). Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception Science, 322 (5898), 115-117 DOI: 10.1126/science.1159845

Conservatives are Dumber—And Smarter—Than Liberals

Matthew Hutson — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:45:37 -0700

Democrats are fond of declaring that those who vote Republican are on the shorter end of the bus. One line of argument goes that Grand Old Partiers are just not bright enough to figure out what's best for the nation, or even themselves. Another insinuates that they lack the faculties to deal with nuanced issues and therefore hold fast to absolutes: ALL fetuses are full people; ALL taxes go to gay crack-addicted single moms on welfare. Indeed, some studies have supported such a simple correlation between political views and intelligence, but new research soon to be published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences paints a more muddied-and interesting-red and blue picture of IQ.

Sociologist Markus Kemmelmeier compared college students' self-professed political views to their SAT and ACT scores (which are imperfect but useful measures of cognitive ability.) First, he did find a general trend that social conservatives (those who wanted to ban abortion and gay marriage) weren't as gifted as students with a more progressive take on gender roles. But he found the exact opposite pattern with anti-regulation attitudes: The conservatives/libertarians (yay guns boo taxes) appeared to be smarter than their commie compatriots. Kemmelmeier found this crossover "particularly surprising" and says, "It highlights (yet again) that ‘conservatism' is not necessarily a coherent construct, but that you have to distinguish at minimum social conservatism and economic conservatism (libertarianism). If you think about it: Jerry Falwell and Milton Freedman are worlds apart."

Kemmelmeier found another pattern in his data, one supporting the previously-suggested idea that holding unpopular political views demands more cognitive resources ("context theory"). Those with the strongest beliefs, either way red or way blue, are smarter than the wishy washy centrists too confused to stake their own ground. (All of these findings only applied to verbal intelligence. Math skills had no correlation with conservatism.) "I expected to find in some ways more of the same-old, that primarily more liberal views are linked to higher ability levels," Kemmelmeier says. "But, boy, this would be very wrong-at least as a general conclusion."

For his next study, Kemmelmeier got away from surveying elitist college kids. He used intelligence data drawn from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the 2004 state-by-state proportions of Democratic lawmakers, and voter turnout rates. States that had higher IQ's also voted more Democrats into office-but only if political involvement was high. In states with low voter turnout, high IQ was correlated with having more Republican lawmakers. What does it all mean? Theorize at will. According to Kemmelmeier, "WHY political involvement moderates the direction of the link between conservatism/liberalism is something that needs to be explored more in the future."

Neither of the studies answer whether cognitive ability influences political orientation, or vice versa, or whether a third factor influences them both. Kemmelmeier notes that the first option makes more sense than the second, given that intelligence is more dependent upon genes than is political orientation. But of course voting for an incompetent president or vice president can have the effect of making you FEEL so much smarter, if simply by comparison.

Be All That You Can Be, And Then Some

Matthew Hutson — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:22:24 -0700

I first took Ritalin in first grade. I went off it soon after but tried it again in high school and have been reliant upon it and other psychoactive medications for the last 14 years--nearly half my life. Do i feel artificial? Do I feel like I'm cheating? Do I feel like I'm not being the real me? Those aren't even questions I ask myself anymore. After much experimentation with various molecules and dosages and life situations, I've made peace with my drug dependence, and now when pondering a prescription refill or an individual pill in my hand, instead of asking which me is the real me--chemically modified or au natural--I ask which me I prefer.

Despite the popularity of caffeine and alcohol, not everyone feels the same, and new research (covered in the August issue of Psychology Today) maps out our fears regarding artificial cognitive enhancement.

Collaborators Jason Riis at NYU, Joseph Simmons at Yale, and Geoffrey Goodwin at Princeton first asked people to rate how fundamental a series of traits were to personal identity. In order of rated importance, the traits were: reflexes, rote memory, wakefulness, foreign language ability, math ability, episodic memory, concentration, music ability, absent-mindedness, self-control, creativity, emotional recovery, relaxation, social comfort, motivation, mood, self-confidence, empathy, and kindness. So people tend to think that emotional traits are more fundamental than cognitive ones.

The researchers then found that people are most reluctant to take pills that enhance the highly fundamental traits. Their most cited concern was personal authenticity. So I guess Prozac is a more compromising compound than Adderall.

When rating which types of enhancements should be banned, people instead based their decisions on concerns about competitions and fairness--morality rather than identity.

In a companion study addressing pharmaceutical marketing, people were more reluctant to take a hypothetical drug whose tagline was "Zeltor – Become More Than Who You Are" when it was purported to address fundamental traits than nonfundamental ones. But when advertised as "Zeltor – Become Who You Are"--that is, enablement instead of enhancement--they were just as comfortable chemically boosting their inner warmth as they were their latent smarts.

So, was the goal of the study to help Big Pharma figure out how get more pills into more hands? After all, Jason Riis is a professor of marketing. That, of course, is the cynical take. Riis told me: "We’re speaking to, we hope, consumer welfare groups, policy makers, and regulators in the pharmaceutical, biomedical, and health industries. These drugs and technologies are fast developing, and clearly people are seeking technologies and ways of making themselves better. There’s a demand for it, and the nature of that demand needs to be better understood before we can really make informed decisions both personally and at a society level."

Personally, I'm not quite sure if there's a mental trait I wouldn't want to enhance artificially, through drugs or neurosurgery or chip implants or whatever. I would have to see how the results felt. But I asked my PT co-editors what they would shy away from.

Jay Dixit:

What I worry about are the tradeoffs. I think there's a danger in eliminating things that feel aversive but actually have some benefit. Take stage fright. If I need to give a toast at a friend's wedding or if I'm telling a story on stage, I'm always terrified before I go on. I rehearse, I pace, I feel like I'm overflowing with anxious energy. Some people in this situation take beta blockers or drink. And that certainly helps with the anxiety. But for me, I'd rather suffer through the anxiety before going on stage, because once I'm up there, that nervous energy turns to performance energy. I don't want to be dulled and sedated when I need it most.

Emotional recovery is another one I'd be wary of, due to the benefits of post-traumatic growth.

Kaja Perina:

Well, we know that stimulants such as amphetamines and steroids stoke grandiosity and recklessness so I'd be wary of any hypothetical drug that dramatically boosts mood or self-confidence.

And at the risk of sounding Machiavellian, I might also be leery of drugs that purport to make a person kinder or more empathic, simply because people who are highly empathic are at risk of being manipulated by others, so any such drug might override natural defenses and critical judgment, not to mention healthy competitive urges. You could call it the doormat drug. Then again, of the traits on this list I'm guessing empathy and kindness would be among the toughest to stoke psychotropically, because they involve such complex social emotions.

Hara Estroff Marano:

I'm keen on some caffeine, a longstanding natural cognitive and alertness enhancer. But little else. I think it comes down to two things. There are NO traits I want to enhance artificially because:

I pretty much like the way I function without enhancers, although there are down days.

Enhancing one trait throws some things out of balance, and judgment regarding performance relating to that trait is usually one of them.

And I suppose there is a third reason. Just as I like weather changes in the wider world, I like and enjoy coping with the natural variation in personal tone and cognitive performance from day to day. I get a sense of self-mastery from that...which, of course, is the very thing the best pill can't supply.

And here's how Jason Riis answered:

Sense of humor would be one that would maybe seem a little bit strange to me to enhance. But at the same time I'm not sure. I can image there being ways of that being doable. There's something that seems kind of magical about a sense of humor, but I'm sure that psychologically if we thought about it more there would be ways of breaking it down... So I guess my straight up answer is that there’s nothing I couldn’t imagine at least in principal enhancing. But that's imagining a different world where the technologies are different and the norms are different.

What would you refuse to enhance?

Advertising is Magic

Matthew Hutson — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:17:25 -0700

It's been said that advertising is a form of sorcery. For example, the late cultural critic Raymond Williams once wrote in an essay titled "Advertising: The Magic System": "The short description of the pattern we have is magic: a highly organized and professional system of magical inducements and satisfactions, functionally very similar to magical systems in simpler societies..."

Consider the use of brand logos. These are words or symbols with little inherent meaning that have come to signify expansive and often emotion-laden concepts. Just as a witch might summon spiritual interference via pentagrams, a marketer can call forth thoughts and behaviors by wielding the visual mark of a product or corporation. Symbols bring reality into being.

Erik Davis writes in his book TechGnosis:

Our collective symbols are forged in the multiplex, our archetypes trademarked, licensed, and sold. ... A baroque arcana of logos, brand names, and corporate sigils now pepper landscapes, goods, and our costumed bodies. ... our mnemonic icons no longer mediate the animist powers of nature or the social magic of kings, but the power of corporate identity and the commodity fetish.

In the June issue of Psychology Today, we covered a paper from the Journal of Consumer Research demonstrating how the display of brands automatically affects our behavior. In the studies, exposure to the Apple logo made people more creative than exposure to an IBM logo, and the Disney logo made people more honest than the E! Entertainment logo.

In the sidebar to that story I joked about other ways to use logos in your life, including this one for increasing motivation: "Ugh, you're slogging up to your fifth-floor walk-up after a long day. Just glance down at the North Face logo on your sleeve. To the summit!" Turns out, my quip was more accurate than I knew. In the August issue of PT, I cover a paper to be published in Psychology of Sport and Exercise showing the effect of product placement on physical endurance. Only instead of North Face, it was Gatorade. When viewing the sports drink bottle (versus a water bottle), subjects construed their task as a positive challenge and held their leg in the air longer.

A study in the August issue of the Journal of Consumer Research by Tanya Chartrand et al. show further subconscious branding effects: fancy-pants brands induce big spending. Subjects saw the words "Tiffany", "Neiman Marcus," "Nordstrom," "Wall-Mart," "Kmart," or "Dollar Store" flashed on a screen for 60 milliseconds. Those who saw the first three were more likely than those who saw the second three to prefer a $6 pair of Nike socks over a $5.25 double pack of Hanes socks and a $99 Sharp microwave over a $69 Haier microwave. So carrying a bag coated with that God-awful LV pattern will endow you with an aura of prestige beyond any logical deduction process in your surveyors.

Logos can also work through channels of social cognition. As Davis writes, "Many consumers, especially young people, cling to logos like Timberland and Stussy as if they were clan totems..." And Williams writes:

When a magical pattern has become established in a society, it is capable of some real if limited success. Many people will indeed look twice at you, upgrade you, upmarket you, respond to your displayed signals, if you have made the right purchases within a system of meanings to which you are all trained. Thus the fantasy seems to be validated...

So to some degree, there is no magical thinking in believing brands have real influence. It's completely logical to recognize that brands accumulate collective associations. Still, consider two artists' absurdist take on the ultimate power of labels, as documented by Rob Walker in his new book Buying In. A fashion label produced by a pair of guys known as Andrew Andrew was just that: a label. They set up a sewing machine in a storefront in SoHo and, according to one of the Andrews, "we would sew this oversized label onto your sweater, making your shirt part of our line." The product is the same, before and after. The only difference is what it now signifies via its label and associations--a purely informational/metaphysical transformation. Walker summarizes: "People do not buy objects. They buy ideas about products." To believe that your sweater is fundamentally different, an object changed by an idea about the object: Doesn't that smack of magical thinking?

In my article about magical thinking in the April issue of PT, I mention Piaget's idea of nominal realism, the tendency to believe that names affect reality. As he wrote in his 1929 book The Child's Conception of the World, "The name is therefore in the object, not as a label attached to it but as an invisible quality of the object." And as psychologist Carl Johnson wrote in a 2000 book chapter subtitled "The Development of Metaphysical Thinking," "In the absence of any obvious, overt connection between the word and the thing, the tendency is to assume that there must be some deeper, hidden connection." The label is arbitrary. Its power is in its psychological, ethereal connections, not in any physical force. And yet it's treated as though it has real causal influence in the world.

The most famous example of a brand's influence may be the Pepsi Challenge. In taste tests, people prefer Pepsi over Coke, yet they still buy Coke more. And in a seminal neuromarketing study reported in Neuron in 2004 (pdf), neuroscientist Read Montague showed that when you tell people which brand of soft drink they're sipping, their brain activation changes significantly. But that's just the placebo effect, that's not magical thinking, right? Well... As mentioned in my MT article, psychologist Paul Rozin has demonstrated nominal realism in adults by asking subjects to take two bottles of sugar water and label one "sucrose" and one "poison." They weren't so hot to drink the one labeled "poison," despite realizing their irrationality, and I wouldn't be surprised if Coke fans would be down on drinking their favorite soda from a Pepsi bottle, even in private.

Magical thinking is all about blurring the boundaries between mind and matter, treating internal associations as if they exist out there in the world. So if you have the mental link between the red and white label and pure yumminess, and you expect, even a little bit, beyond your best reasoning, for the link to translate so that a bottle label actually makes the contents yummy, you've got some magical beliefs going on there.

In his upcoming book Buyology, marketing expert Martin Lindstrom describes how strong brands exhibit 10 pillars of religion: Let's take Apple as an example. [Disclosure: I'm an Apple shareholder.] A sense of belonging: I grew up geeking out at Mac user groups (MUGs.) A clear vision: "Think different." Power over enemies: "The power to crush the other kids." Sensory appeal: witness those elegant iPhones. Storytelling: Steve and Steve in a garage in Cali. Grandeur: visit their flagship retail store on Fifth Avenue. Evangelism: Mac fans are super fanatical. Symbols: the apple logo, see above. Mystery: Apple crucifies those responsible for leaks. Rituals: "One more thing...". I should add that they also have a high priest (see "His Holiness, Steve Jobs.")

Lindstrom's formula seems a bit superficial to me, though, and doesn't get to the heart of religion. Magical thought is really about the sacred--objects and symbols and actions distinct from others, by virtue of an essence that taps into unseen forces along the guidelines of human imagination and that can bring to bear psychic elements on physical situations. So if you believe, even subconsciously, that soda can take you to "The Coke Side of Life, or that wearing cologne from a bottle labeled Polo Sport will make you any sportier, or that an Apple tattoo, even when out of sight, can summon the creative inspiration of Jobs et al., you are under the spell of advertising.

Impossible Experiments

Matthew Hutson — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:07:51 -0700

What psychology experiment would you love to carry out if neither ethics nor practical reality stood in your way? For the August issue of Psychology Today, I asked several PT bloggers this question and printed four responses. Here's a more complete roundup of their insights.

Musical Storks
I would collect all newborn babies and randomly reassign them to new parents. I'm confident that we will confirm the 50-0-50 rule: Adult personality is roughly 50% genetic, 0% how they are raised by their parents, and 50% socialization outside the family by peers and friends. I think we will discover that within a broad range, it doesn't really matter how parents raise their children. Parents are enormously important for children, not because they raise them, but because they give them their genes.
-Satoshi Kanazawa (The Scientific Fundamentalist) is an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics.

Universal Grammar
I would entirely determine the sentences and words children are presented with during their infancy and childhood. For instance, you could entirely deprive children of examples of some linguistic constructions. You could also add numerous non-grammatical constructions. Then see whether children develop a normal linguistic competence. If so, that would be very strong evidence that we possess a dedicated cognitive mechanism to help us acquire language.
-Edouard Machery (Experiments in Philosophy) is a philosopher of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh.

The 64-Thousand Dollar Question
What I'd really like to do is an experiment with massively high (monetary) stakes. I've done some research on gambles and financial risk taking, usually with payouts of a few dollars. However, this isn't ideal. People might make different decisions about high- and low-stakes financial risks. And they might make different decisions about real vs. hypothetical gambles. So, what I modestly request is a billion dollars, so I can offer a 1,000 people million-dollar payouts. That should appease my curiosity.
-Dan Goldstein (Decisions, Decisions) is a psychologist at London Business School.

Spitting Image
I thought it would be revealing to identify identical twins reared apart, obtain photographs of their children before the children met, and get preference ratings from the children in each family. Specifically, "half-siblings" would be shown an array of photographs including their cousin and several age- and sex-matched individuals. They would be asked to rate these individuals along such dimensions as attractiveness and desirability. We tend to be attracted to people with whom we share similarities. Would these "half-siblings" be socially attracted to one another as playmates or companions, over and
beyond what they feel toward their ordinary friends?
-Nancy Segal (Twofold) studies the psychology of twins at California State University, Fullerton.

Another Man's Shoes
As a philosopher, I'm acutely aware of being trapped within my own subjective experience. So I would construct a machine that would allow me to take the perspective of my subjects, to experience reality as they do. Then I'd gather a group of people I can least relate to-a serial killer who eats his victims, a Yankees fan, a passionate Hillary Clinton supporter, someone who thought the movie Crash was brilliant, Kim Jung Il -hook them up to the machine and learn what it's like to see the world through their eyes.
-Tamler Sommers (Experiments in Philosophy) is a philosopher at the University of Minnesota, Morris.

Enter the Matrx
I would create an "experience machine" that gave people the illusion that they were living a vibrant and exciting life. If you entered the machine, you would have the feeling that you were a successful rock star (or whatever your dream job might be), with tons of adoring fans, a loving family, and a challenging and rewarding career. But none of those things would actually be happening. Philosophers have long wondered whether people care only about their own feelings of happiness or whether they truly do want to be accomplishing something meaningful in their lives. If we could offer people the choice to go into this machine, we would at last have a good way of figuring out what the answer really was.
-Joshua Knobe (Experiments in Philosophy) is a philosopher at UNC

For Better or Worse
I'd like to take couples who are living together and randomly assign half of them to marry and the others to stay unmarried. Then we could really know something about the implications of co-habitation vs. marriage. More outrageously, take people who are not in a serious romantic relationship, and assign half of them, at random, to marry. Single people are randomly assigned to a spouse who is chosen at random, or to a spouse who fits their description of their perfect partner, or to stay single. Who do you think would end up the happiest a decade later? Same for divorce. If married parents are already at each other's throats, is it better for the children if they divorce, or stay together? Randomly assign half of them to divorce, and half to stay together; then we'll see. Now take married couples who say they are happy and are not considering divorce. Randomly assign half of them to divorce! Now who will be happier ten years hence?
-Bella DePaulo (Living Single) is a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Making Arrangements
Clearly, Eli and I are not sufficiently diabolical. Even without ethical restrictions on our research, we couldn't come up with anything even approaching the cruelty of MTV's X Effect. This reality gem has confirmed such counterintuitive romantic principles as (a) put two exes in a room overnight and they might wonder if there is still some chemistry and (b) watching your boyfriend or girlfriend hook up with his or her ex is upsetting. First, we'd divide the United States into three countries. One country would have the current marriage system, which maximizes autonomy: You know yourself best, so you are free to choose your own partner. In the second country, social scientists will assign you to your marriage partner based on their empirically validated algorithm. In the third country, you are paired with your marriage partner randomly. So now the question: Which country would have the lowest divorce rate? The greatest marital satisfaction? The lowest rate of intimate partner violence? Country #3 might not be as bad as people think: Spend enough time in someone's presence, and interesting things can happen. Even MTV knows that.
-Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick (The Attractionologists) are social psychologists at Northwestern University

The Mannequin Within Us All
And here's my impossible experiment: What happens when you lock someone in a room with a mannequin for a month? Back in 1997 I tried this with my mom and my mannequin (Mandy), with a little help from a local science teacher and my friend Glen. It ended in disaster:

UPDATE: I'd forgotten about this, but the British Psychological Society's Research Digest blog once did a similar roundup, in which several researchers answered "What's the most important psychology experiment that's never been done?" Many of their suggestions are impossible or unethical. Check it out.

His Holiness, Steve Jobs

Matthew Hutson — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:33:41 -0700

We fetishize objects that have been touched or owned by famous people. Look at the stratospheric prices celebrity memorabilia fetch at auction. Has this form of idol-worship been programmed into us by Western culture?

Prizing objects purely for their provenance is actually a form of magical thinking called essentialism--the idea that a physical artifact contains some nonphysical essence. And it's highly natural. Last year I wrote in PT about a study by Paul Bloom and Bruce Hood showing essentialism in 3-year-olds. Kids want their blanky, not a perfect clone of their blanky. In that PT article, Susan Gelman says essentialism "explains why we prefer authentic things, including autographs, original works of art, and Britney Spears' chewed gum."

Now Bloom and Gelman point out a salient demonstration of essentialism in a non-Western culture. In a forthcoming issue of Trends in Cognitive Science, they describe the selection of the current (14th) Dalai Lama, based on published eyewitness accounts.

Several men visited the 2-year-old boy in his remote village, toting items that had belonged to the 13th Dalai Lama as well as items that looked similar or identical: two black rosaries, two yellow rosaries, two canes, three quilts. In all cases, the boy picked up the one owned by 13. Finally they offered him two drums, a plain one and a fancier one bound to distract him (kids like shiny things.) Picture Indiana Jones selecting the simple Grail from among blingier imposters in the misnamed Last Crusade. From a 1941 account:

Without any hesitation, he picked up the [authentic] drum. Holding it in his right hand, he played it with a big smile on his face; moving around so that his eyes could look at each of us from close up. Thus, the boy demonstrated his occult powers, which were capable of revealing the most secret phenomena.

The selection committee obviously believed in the power of essences. Bloom and Gelman conclude: "We take this as evidence of the ubiquity, naturalness, and importance of psychological essentialism."

Two weeks ago Apple's CEO Steve Jobs gave a big conference presentation. His gaunt appearance raised concerns in the industry about the return of his pancreatic cancer. It was pure speculation, but it did remind me of Jobs' iconic status at Apple and their lack of a publicly named successor. Who in the world could fill his New Balances? Well, I propose that any potential replacement--Fortune listed eleven of them today--be offered two iPhones, two mock turtlenecks, two pairs of rimless glasses, etc. If the candidate can successfully select the ones personally blessed by big Job-o, you've found your man. Or 2-year-old, as the case may be.

(Previously: The role of essentialism in artistic authenticity.)

Why Do Women Have Erotic Rape Fantasies?

Matthew Hutson — Wed, 28 May 2008 23:21:18 -0700

A recent analysis of 20 studies over the last 30 years indicates that between 31% and 57% of women have rape fantasies, and these fantasies are frequent or preferred in 9% to 17% of women. Considering that many people are ashamed to report rape fantasies, these stats are most likely lowball figures.

In my personal experience, most women really appreciate subtle to moderate domination in the bedroom--a little forceful restraint, a little pain--as long as they feel safe. I had one girlfriend who wanted me to call her a slut, but that was pushing my boundaries. Though I didn't mind calling her naughty, etc., for expressing pleasure at whatever I was doing to her. The whole "you shouldn't like this but I know you do" routine. She explained that sexuality was taboo in her household growing up. So pretending that she was being corrupted by someone else freed her to go along with the illicit activities and indulge in her repressed desires. Not all of our play followed this narrative, but when it did, the temperature rose.

Research into rape fantasies hasn't been particularly well publicized. Many people don't want to acknowledge that women have them, for fear that the news will incite or excuse real rape: "See? Women want it after all!" But I follow the Kinsey line that it's better to study the disturbing parts of human sexuality than to keep them in the dark.

So do Joseph Critella and Jenny Bivona, the researchers at the University of North Texas who published the meta-analysis mentioned above in the Journal of Sex Research in January. They combined 20 studies and a whole field of theory to evaluate eight potential explanations for women's rape fantasies. Some of the explanations overlap with each other, and others mutually contradict. Here's a summary:

•Masochism - The idea that women desire suffering. Women who engage in masochistic sex are more likely to have rape fantasies, but the great majority of women with rape fantasies do not want real rape. According, masochism may only apply to a small group of women.

•Sexual Blame Avoidance - (See my ex, above.) Women are socialized to not seek out sex lest they be considered tramps, but if they're having sex against their will they can avoid guilt. Studies comparing sexual repression to rape fantasies are mixed and overall don't support the explanation, but they may have been using wrong metrics; sexually repressed women have fewer fantasies overall but they might have a higher ratio of rape fantasies. In any case, this theory would only apply to some women.

•Openness to Sexual Experience - In some ways this is the opposite of the last one, and it doesn't explain rape fantasies so much as it describes the type of person to have them. If you're sexually open, you entertain a greater variety of fantasies. As one study described rape fantasy among these women, it's "just one more expression of a generally open, positive, unrestrictive, and relatively guilt-free expression of one's sexuality."

•Desirabilty - Many women like to believe that they're so attractive that men cannot resist the urge to overtake them. The evidence for this theory is suggestive but not yet conclusive. I did cover a study in Psychology Today last year indicating that women with attachment anxiety (neediness) have more sexual fantasies featuring submission.

•Male Rape Culture - Some have argued that women have been conditioned to buy into men's fantasies of domination. But the prevalence of rape fantasies has not changed much in recent decades, even as gender roles have.

•Biological Predisposition to Surrender - In many mammalian species, the male must pursue and subdue the female in order to mate. Women may be programmed to surrender to the successful dominant male. Just like many other theories in evolutionary psychology, this one makes sense but has not been tested empirically. (Writer Tracie Egan hints at this explanation in her essay entitled "One Rape Please (To Go)" about hiring a male prostitute to play-rape her (which I recently saw her read live): "...as a girl, my equipment can be trickier to manage, therefore I need to be a boss in the bedroom to ensure I get worked the right way. [But] it gets really tiresome always being the one in charge...")

•Sympathetic Activation - The sympathetic nervous system becomes engaged in times of stress or danger, activating a fight or flight response marked by increased heart rate, respiration, pupil dilation, and genital arousal. Just like on a roller coaster, fear and excitement go hand in hand.

•Adversary Transformation - In one survey of romance novels (which tend to be written by and for women), the lead female character was raped in 54%. The male heroes are usually rugged warrior types and these books may illustrate a desire to "conquer the heart of the rapist" and tame him for marriage.

•Reaction to Trauma - This one is not mentioned in the paper, but Brett Kahr, a psychoanalyst who has conducted the largest survey of sexual fantasies ever, argues that most masturbatory fantasies are attempts to transform early difficult experiences into pleasure. So those who have been sexually abused may try to master their trauma by taming those experiences.

I asked Kahr whether it's unhealthy to entertain rape fantasies. "At one level, they pose little problem because they represent a highly normative part of female sexual fantasy," he said; many women have them, and most of these woman easily distinguish between reality and fantasy. But in some cases it may recapitulate forgotten abuse that hasn't been processed properly, or it may reflect masochistic tendencies. A woman should see a professional if she's troubled by her fantasies. Julie Shulman, a clinical psychology professor at Alliant International University who has studied rape fantasies [pdf] also told me "the sexual and emotional health of such engagement can differ greatly," and would like to see more research on the topic.

Should women share their rape fantasies with their partners? "Obviously, a loving, committed, sympathetic man would respond delicately and sensitively to such news," Kahr said, "but a more sadistic partner (with conscious or unconscious sadism towards a woman)" might use the information more destructively. "One must proceed cautiously."

I asked my friend Rachel Kramer Bussel, an editor at Penthouse who has written about rape fantasies for the Village Voice, whether she thought it was unhealthy to act them out with men. She said it's not unhealthy per se: "At the end of the day, the woman has control over it, and it can be hot to give yourself over completely to someone within that context knowing that you can trust them."

Rachel added that "it's probably a tricky fantasy for men, as that is something that's inculcated into them not to do." I covered a study supporting such inhibition in the April issue of Psychology Today; it showed that men are slower to recognize words associated with dominance (coerce, fierce, etc.) if they've been primed with sex-related words (climax, oral, etc.) Pretending to rape someone, Rachel says, is "a lot of responsibility to assume, and if you're dealing with a woman who does have a history of sexual abuse in her past, it's extra thorny."

UPDATE 6/13/08:
Paul Joannides, author of the wonderful Guide To Getting It On, raises a couple of good points in a post on his own blog. First, in most rape fantasies, the guy is a hunk, and the woman isn't terrified or disgusted. If the rape in these fantasies is nothing like real rape, is it still rape? The authors of the paper I reviewed address this issue. They note the difference between erotic and aversive rape fantasies, the second type involving ugly, violent rapists and not much arousal. Most rape fantasies, as Joannides correctly notes, fit the first category. But there are constants. The authors write: "rape fantasies contain three key elements: force, sex, and nonconsent." They go on: "Certainly, in actual rapes minimal resistance and female sexual arousal do sometimes occur... and their occurrence would not render the encounter a seduction rather than a rape."

Second, Joannides writes that the woman with the fantasy is in control "because she's the one scripting the scenario," so consent is implied by definition. Here's how the authors address this apparent contradiction: "individuals exert control over the contents of their own fantasies, [but] these activities are against the will of her self-character in the fantasy." So whether, as Joannides argues, "'erotic rape fantasy' is a contradiction in terms" depends on how one conceives of the relationship between one's self and one's fantasy-self. As you may recall, Kurt Cobain addressed this prickly epistemological paradox in the 1990s with one of his songs: "Rape Me."

The Greatest Magic Trick Ever, Part II: The Great Selfini

Matthew Hutson — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:31:46 -0700

In a recent post I argued that free will is an illusion. Even if I convinced you, why does the illusion still work?

First, I have to admit I'm not the only one to frame the illusion of free will as a magic trick. In working on my feature about magical thinking, I used a paper titled "Everyday Magical Powers: The Role of Apparent Mental Causation in the Overestimation of Personal Influence" [pdf] co-authored by Daniel Wegner, who is also the author of the 2002 book The Illusion of Conscious Will. The paper brings together research on three related areas: apparent mental causation, the illusion of control, and the introspection illusion. People believe A causes B if A happened before B, A is consistent with B, and there's no other obvious cause of B. Further, A is especially salient if A is one of your own thoughts or intentions. And people like believing A controls B if they themselves happen to be A, because we're happier when we're in control of things. So the experimenters convinced subjects that the subjects used their own thoughts to place voodoo hexes on people or affect the outcome of the Super Bowl. (Where A = prayer and B = TD!) Just another day in the lab.

With Wegner dabbling in the area of magical thinking, I saw where he was going, and sure enough, he followed through (though I take no responsibility.) In the just-published book Are We Free?, Wegner contributed a chapter titled "Self is Magic" [pdf], in which he writes:

Our actions are an astonishing realm of events that bend to our desires when so much of the world does not. Perhaps this is why each person views self with awe--The Great Selfini amazes and delights! We are enchanted by the operation of our minds and bodies into believing that we are "uncaused causes," the origins of our own behavior.

Aha, The Great Selfini. He's so great that we're still fooled by his tricks even after peeking behind the curtain. Usually explanations are deadly to perceptions of magic. Experiments show they can even drain some of the power out of perceptions of evil (to understand is to forgive) and feelings of love (let me count the ways... is that all there are?) But free will is different.

"I'm a case in point," Wegner writes. "I've devoted years of my life to the study of conscious will... If the illusion could be dispelled by explanation, I should be some kind of robot by now..." One potential reason for its persistence is that we place more weight on consistency between cause and effect (say, between intention and pursuant action) than on the exclusivity of the potential cause (something else may have caused the action but screw that.) There's also great personal and social value in assuming responsibility for our behavior.

In another article in the April issue of PT ("Giving Up the Ghost") I ask what would happen if we gave up on the ghost in the machine. "Would society fall apart? Would we lose motivation, abandon morality, and dance like robots?" (Wegner makes the same joke in his chapter: "Yes it’s true, when I'm on the dance floor I may look a bit robotic to some..." Great minds, or low-hanging fruit?) I cover the recent study [pdf] by Kathleen Vohs and Jonathan Schooler showing that when people read an essay saying free will is an illusion they're more likely to cheat. But Wegner and I both temper our concern for the safety of society with the realization that the illusion is here to stay. For example, in my article I mention work by Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols [pdf] on the emotional appeal of moral attribution. (Even in a deterministic universe, we want to hate the guy who torches his house and family to run off with the secretary.)

I don't mention the other reason I've been saying for years that belief in free will is necessary and unavoidable: Without it, we would go crazy. Try giving it up. I will decide not to believe in free will. Wait, how did I just decide that? Crap, how did I decide to ask that? Oh no, how did I just ask THAT? Etc. Short circuit, dance party over.

(But not for this guy:)

Read This Post for Good Luck. Seriously.

Matthew Hutson — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:50:57 -0700

The fact that you're reading this may say something about your superstition (or about your friends; see below.)

By viewing the picture on the right, you will receive good luck... but only if you send a link to this post to 20 people (or link to it from your own website.) Otherwise, bad things will happen. I'm so sorry to have ambushed you like this. I'm only passing along what was given to me. Actually, what I received was an email, with that image accompanied by the following information:

The President of Argentina received this picture and called it 'junk mail', 8 days later his son died. A man received this picture and immediately sent out copies...his surprise was winning the lottery. Alberto Martinez received this picture, gave it to his secretary to make copies but they forgot to distribute: she lost her job and he lost his family. This picture is miraculous and sacred, don't forget to forward this within 13 days to at least 20 people, ignoring the one who has mailed you. Do Not Forget to forward and you will receive a huge surprise!!

My friend appended the missive with "Don't want to tempt fate...sorry."

Judging by the "sorry," she knew she was doing something many people would find annoying but felt compelled to do it anyway. But should people really be upset at her? Any more than if she had sent out a random piece of spam that wasted 10 seconds of our lives? It's a weird situation, because if we are upset, we want to blame her, but we should really blame ourselves. She's not forcing my hand and making me spam 20 of my friends. Neither is she forcing me to stress out about NOT spamming 20 of my friends. If I were to be upset I should really be upset at my own silly superstitious suspicions.

Or not. I'm programmed to be superstitious. (See my recent article on magical thinking.) People have evolved to do things that don't make much sense JUST IN CASE they work, as long as the cost of doing them (crossing our fingers, spamming our friends) is much smaller than the potential upside (avoiding death, receiving a huge surprise!!). So I can't be too angry at myself. And I'm allowed to be a little angry at my friend for selfishly putting a burden on 20 other people instead of bearing it herself. She's like a potentially infected zombie who breaks out of the quarantine zone to put a whole new population at risk.

Now, if you're mad at me, you've got good company in the Yankees fans who want the head of Gino Castignoli, the construction worker who buried a David Ortiz Red Sox jersey in the cement of the new Yankee Stadium, "forcing" other workers to jackhammer it out when he spread word of his deed. The Yankees even approached the DA about legal action against Castignoli, who retained his own attorney. Here's the thing. If he'd left a random shirt in there, no one would have cared: There's no compromise to the structural integrity of the building. He didn't force anyone to do any extra work, or to feel cursed for leaving the jersey in place. So can he actually be charged purely on the basis of other people's superstitions? Is there legal precedent?

In one sense, that's totally crazy. Separation of church and state, etc. But then, let's view it in the context of hate speech, which is illegal in many countries. If I call you a bad name, I'm not forcing you to be hurt. I'm not throwing sticks and stones. Speech is just arbitrary words that humans attach meaning to. But it's hard, or impossible, to avoid reacting negatively. In some ways, hate speech has all the power of a magical spell. Additionally, courts often use judicial alchemy to convert emotional damages into monetary settlements, and what is breaking the heart of an innocent (if misguided--GO SOX!) young Yankees fan if not emotionally damaging?

So hate me all you want. I've now hexed you AND wasted several minutes of your life. Just don't forget about poor Alberto Martinez and his secretary, and, for your own good, forward this post.

The Greatest Magic Trick Ever, Part I

Matthew Hutson — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:40:26 -0700

There's one magic trick we are fooled by consistently, every day. It's so convincing that most people don't even believe it's a trick, and even those who do are STILL fooled by it. What is it?

It's the illusion of free will.

Yes, free will is an illusion. But wait, every time you consciously decide to lift your arm, it happens. And you can also choose not to lift your arm, and it doesn't happen. That's evidence of real control over your behavior, right? Well, not exactly. Evidence suggest that your brain makes these kinds of decisions without you ("you" being your consciousness), and then informs you of it later. You're just along for the ride, pretending that you're calling the shots.

The first startling evidence of this phenomenon came in the 1980s when Benjamin Libet asked people to press a button at a time of their choosing, and to note the exact moment they chose to press it. Meanwhile measurements of electrical activity in their brains indicated that their brains actually set their fingers in motion a full third to half a second before the subjects had any conscious awareness of what they were about to do. More recent fMRI work published last week in Nature Neuroscience shows that the brain makes up its mind whether to press a button with the left or right hand up to 7 seconds before you're aware of your decision. The machine knows what you're doing before you do.

(About 7 years ago I wrote a treatment for a movie screenplay that incorporated this concept. My Matrix-like fighting skills were based not on incredible reflexes but on anticipation. Through some fuzzy quantum entanglement scheme I could consciously read my adversaries' neural activity before they could and would, say, put my arm up to block a punch before it was even thrown. The movie was to be called Godspeed.)

If you think about it, the idea that your thoughts can lift your arm is just as crazy as telekinesis, the idea that your thoughts than lift that lamp over there. Oh, but your brain is physically connected to your arm through nerves. Sorry, that doesn't explain much. Neurons are made of matter too, so what translates the nonphysical mindstuff of your psyche to the physical substance of your neurons? How is such causality from one realm to another ultimately implemented? It's still mind over matter, pure magic.

In one sense, the idea that mind can causally influence matter is no crazier than the idea that matter gives rise to mind, and there is good evidence for the latter. That is, I am not denying the existence of consciousness--really, it's the only thing in the supposed universe for which I personally have any direct evidence at all--and of course doing stuff to the brain does stuff to the mind. But, while we can't fully exclude the possibility that mind affects matter--that, say, we have free will and can control our behavior with it--no research has ever provided even a shred of evidence to prove it.

In my next post I'll tell you why you still believe.

UPDATE: Here it is. I already know that you will click on it.