Spiral of Silence

The spiral of silence theory (Maibach et al., 2016) posits that humans are less willing to express their opinions when they believe that they are not shared by others, and this unfortunately influences public opinion.

Specifically, the perception that one’s opinion is unpopular tends to inhibit or discourage one’s expression of it, while the perception that it is popular tends to have the opposite effect. Developed by German survey and communication researcher Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann in the 1960s and 1970s, the spiral of silence theory more broadly attempts to describe collective opinion formation and societal decision making regarding issues that are controversial or morally loaded.

According to the spiral of silence theory, most people have a natural and mostly unconscious fear of social isolation that prompts them to constantly monitor the behaviour of others for signs of approval, or disapproval. People also issue their own “threats” of isolation—mostly unconsciously—through behaviour such as criticizing someone, turning away from someone, scowling at someone, laughing at someone, and so on. To avoid isolation, people tend to refrain from publicly stating their views on controversial matters when they perceive that doing so would attract criticism, scorn, laughter, or other signs of disapproval. 

Conversely, those who sense that their opinions will meet with approval tend to voice them fearlessly and at times vociferously. Indeed, speaking out in such a way tends to enhance the threat of isolation faced by supporters of the opposing position, reinforcing their sense of being alone. Thus a spiraling process begins, the dominant camp becoming ever louder and more self-confident while the other camp becomes increasingly silent.

Toe-curling mortification

Embarrassment comes from trying to control how other people perceive you.

Talk to your friends, Talk to wrong numbers, everyone!

The secret to small talk is putting yourself out there, being open, genuine, and vulnerable in your desire to connect with others. This is more important than managing every interaction perfectly.               

                "Well, if this means opening your door to those in need,

                those in pain,

                caring for them, listening to them,

                if this is practicing medicine, if this is treating a patient...

                then I am guilty as charged.

                Transference is inevitable...

                Every human being has an impact on another.

                Why don't we want that in a patient/doctor relationship?

                A doctor's mission should be not just to prevent death...

                but also to improve the quality of life.

                That's why you treat a disease, you win, you lose.

                You treat a person, I guarantee you, you win, no matter what the outcome.

                Don't let them anesthetize you. Don't let them numb you out to the miracle of life.

                Always live in awe of the glorious mechanism of the human body.

                Let that be the focus of your studies and not a quest for grades...

                which'll give you no idea what kind of doctor you will become.

                Don't wait till you're on the ward to get your humanity back.

                Start your interviewing skills. Start talking to strangers.

                Talk to your friends, Talk to wrong numbers, everyone."

~ Robin Williams, Patch Adams (1998)

Women and Leadership

Why are women chosen to lead organisations in a crisis? (The following passage is from the BPS Research Digest, 2010).

The majority of major corporations and countries are headed by men. When women are appointed to leadership positions, it tends to be when an organisation is in crisis – a phenomenon known as the glass cliff. Recent examples include: the appointment of Lynn Elsenhans as CEO of the oil company Sunoco in 2008, just after their shares had halved in value; and the election of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir as prime minister of Iceland, just after her country's economy had been crippled by the global recession (2012 update: or the appointment of Marissa Mayer as Yahoo CEO?).

Real life examples are supported by lab studies in which male and female participants show a bias for selecting female candidates to take charge of fictitious organisations in crisis. Further investigation has ruled out possible explanations for the glass cliff - it's not due to malicious sexism nor to women favouring such roles.

Now a brand new study suggests the phenomenon occurs firstly, because a crisis shifts people's stereotyped view of what makes for an ideal leader, and secondly, because men generally don't fit that stereotype. ‘…[I]t may not be so important for the glass cliff that women are stereotypically seen as possessing more of the attributes that matter in times of crisis,’ the researchers wrote, ‘but rather that men are seen as lacking these attributes …’.

Susanne Bruckmüller and Nyla Branscombe first established when the glass cliff is most likely to occur. They presented 119 male and female participants with different versions of newspaper articles about an organic food company. Participants were more likely to select a fictitious female candidate to take over the company if it was described as being in crisis, and its previous three leaders had all been male. For participants who read that the previous managers had all been female, the glass cliff disappeared - they were just as likely to select a fictitious male candidate to take over the crisis stricken firm as they were to select a female.

This finding suggests the glass cliff has to do with people believing that a change from the status quo (from male leaders to a female) is what's needed in a crisis. However, this explanation breaks down because the reverse pattern wasn't found. Participants didn’t show a bias for a male candidate to take over a crisis-stricken company that had had a run of three previous female leaders.

A second study explored the role of gender and leadership stereotypes and involved 122 male and female participants reading about a supermarket chain described either as thriving or in crisis. Next the participants rated their impression of two briefly described, fictitious managerial candidates, one male, one female, using attributes previously identified as being stereotypically male (e.g. competitive) or stereotypically female (e.g. strong communication skills). Finally, the participants rated the suitability of each candidate and stated which of them they'd hire.

In a successful context, the male candidate was judged to be more suitable for the role and was more likely to be selected – a replication of the bias seen in real life. More intriguing was that a crisis context led participants to attribute fewer stereotypically female attributes to the male candidate and to judge him as less suitable for the managerial role. Meanwhile, the crisis context didn't alter the qualities attributed to the female candidate, nor the perception of her suitability. Crucially, however, she was more likely to be selected in the crisis situation - you might say almost by default, given that the male candidate was now seen as being less suitable and having fewer appropriate attributes.

‘Our findings indicate that women find themselves in precarious leadership positions not because they are singled out for them, but because men no longer seem to fit,’ Bruckmüller and Branscombe explained. ‘There is, of course, a double irony here. When women get to enjoy the spoils of leadership (a) it is not because they are seen to deserve them, but because men no longer do, and (b) this only occurs when, and because, there are fewer spoils to enjoy.’


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Bruckmüller, S. & Branscombe, N. (2010). The glass cliff: When and why women are selected as leaders in crisis contexts. British Journal of Social Psychology, 49 (3), 433-451 DOI: 10.1348/014466609X466594

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest. Visit the DIGEST BLOG https://digest.bps.org.uk/ to search past items and discover more links.

Stereotypes

A great example of in-groups versus out-groups.

In a study from 1942, Americans were asked to describe the top two features of Russians. And they described them as 'brave and hard-working'. In 1948, during / coming to the end of the Cold War, they were asked the same question. They described them as 'cruel and conceited'. The Russians didn't change, what changed was their relationship to them over the intervening years. They went from being part of a group that they were, to being part of the out-group.


~ Paul Bloom 'The Psychology of Everything'

Stop Caring What Other People Think

Please listen when I say that the shame and guilt you feel when you're trying so hard to not give a f**k. It's usually not because you are wrong to not give that f**k. I's because you're worried about what other people might think about you're decision.

And guess what?
You have no control over what other people think.

For God's sake, you have a hard enough time figuring out what you think! Believing that you have any control over what other people think - and wasting your f**ks on that pursuit - is futile. It is a recipe for failure on a grand f**king scale.

Embrace your not giving a f**k by reading more in The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k by Sarah Knight (2015). Worth a read!

Another Pint of Commotion Lotion Please...

An interesting read from Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest, titled 'My drunkenness means you did it deliberately' (2010).

With our brains gently soaked in alcohol we’re generally more sociable and relaxed – it’s a sedative after all. So why do drunk people seem so prone to aggravation and argument? One reason, say Laurent Bègue and colleagues, is that alcohol exacerbates the ‘intentionality bias‘, our natural tendency to assume that other people intended their actions. So when that guy jolts you at the bar and you’re drunk, you’re more likely to think he did it on purpose.

 

Bègue’s team recruited 92 men (aged 20 to 46) to take part in what they were told was a taste-testing study. They were given three glasses to taste, each containing a cocktail of grapefruit and grenadine cordial, mint and lemon concentrate. For half the participants, the drinks also contained alcohol – approximately the same amount found in five to six shots of vodka. To control for expectancy effects, half the participants with the alcoholic drinks and half the non-alcohol participants were told the drinks were alcoholic. Next, the participants spent 20 to 30 minutes on filler tasks, in keeping with the cover story that this was a taste-test study, and to allow the alcohol to kick-in. Finally and most importantly, the participants read 50 sentences about various actions (e.g. ‘He deleted the email’) and gave their verdict on whether the actions were intentional or not.

 

The intoxicated and sober men alike said that obviously intentionally actions (e.g. ‘she looked for her keys’) were intentional, and that blatantly unintentional actions (e.g. ‘she caught a cold’) were unintentional. But crucially, when it came to more ambiguous actions, like the email deletion example, the intoxicated men were significantly more likely (43 per cent) than the sober men (36 per cent) to say the action was intentional. Whether participants were told they’d had alcohol or not made no difference.

 

Why should alcohol have this effect? Bègue’s team think that it takes cognitive effort and control to overcome the intentionality bias, especially so as to take in all the information necessary to consider alternative explanations. Alcohol’s well-known disinhibitory and myopic (the ‘narrowing of attention’) effects would clearly undermine these faculties.

 

‘In summary,’ the researchers concluded, ‘alcohol magnifies the intentionality bias. Napoleon said, “There is no such thing as accident.” Our findings suggest that drunk people are more likely to believe Napoleon’s statement than are sober people.’

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Begue, L., Bushman, B., Giancola, P., Subra, B., and Rosset, E. (2010). “There Is No Such Thing as an Accident,” Especially When People Are Drunk. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36 (10), 1301-1304 DOI: 10.1177/0146167210383044

Twitter Psychology

Does social networking already function like a game?

 

Twitter is a massively multiplayer online game in which you choose an interesting avatar and then role play a persona loosely based on your own - attempting to accrue followers by repeatedly pressing lettered buttons to form interesting sentences.

 

It could be viewed as a game; as it's about small achievements adding up to bigger ones.

 

''Gameification'' means applying the mechanics of videogames to real life. Now often this boils down to incentivising people to perform the same action over and over again. Each time Mario head-butts a block, he gets a coin; when he gets one hundred coins he gets an extra life.

 

And these perpetual little pats on the head compel you to bash those blocks for hours!



@Koopa is now following you

Celebrities goad one another by enquiring about how many followers the other has on Twitter, adding substance to their self-worth bank account. And yet this isn't too dissimilar to when we were kids and enquired with our mates about how many 'points' you got or what their high scores on a certain game was.

 

By supplying a constant stream of fun-sized rewards, social networking has by accident ''gameified'' whole aspects of our lives. Every second another little gold coin (or follower) for you to collect; more followers, more retweets, compelling you to interact over and over again.

 

 

These are basically games we don't even realise we're playing.

 

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Charlie Brooker ~ How Video Games Changed the World

Psychology and Film: A short list of some recommended depictions.

"You know what your problem is, it's that you haven't seen enough movies - all of life's riddles are answered in the movies" (Steve Martin)

Shame - Sex Addiction; Michael Fassbender style.

The Basketball Diaries - Heroin Addiction. A young Di Caprio is more interested in skin popping than shooting hoops. 

 

Awakenings- Catatonia. Based on real events, a tragic and heartfelt story with Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. From Oliver Sachs' book of the same name.

 

Lars and the Real Girl - Loneliness, Shyness, and Social Ineptitude. When you think it's time enough for the family to meet your sex doll. She's a great listener!

 

Owning Mahowny - Gambling Addiction. The late Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a Canadian Banker with all the cash he needs. Based on a real-life incident: Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce clerk Brian Molony, who embezzled over $10 million from his employers in just 18 months to support his gambling habit.

 

The Butterfly Effect - The Butterfly Effect! The idea, used in chaos theory, whereby a small change at one place in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere, e.g., a butterfly flapping its wings in Rio de Janeiro might change the weather in Chicago.

Memento - Short-Term Memory Loss. Guy Pearce has anterograde amnesia and is unable to store recent memories.

 

Melancholia - Melancholia! Lars Von Trier's take on the mental downfall of one woman (with the end of the world not helping).
 

Project Nim- A great look at the intelligence of our closest animal relative. The chimp also knew one term: 'Ooohh Ooo, Ah Ah', meaning; 'this bath's too hot.' 

Take Shelter - Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) starts to believe that he is in the early stages of developing paranoid schizophrenia. His mother was diagnosed with the illness at a similar age and he is fearful of suffering the same fate. The plot explores the boundaries between delusions and reality.

 

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold - Product Placement and Advertising in TV and films;  directed by Morgan Spurlock, the guy who brought you 'Super Size Me'.
 

The Bridge - Suicide. A tragic look at how the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco has become an infamous place to take one's life.

 

Girl, Interrupted - Mental Institutions. Based on the true story of Susanna Kaysen in the 1960s.

 

The Machinist - An Insomniac doubting his own sanity. The producers of the film claim that Christian Bale dropped from about 173 pounds in weight down to about 110 pounds to make the film. His 63-pound weight loss is said to be a record for any actor for a movie role. He regained the weight in time for his role in Batman Begins (2005). A must see.

 

American Beauty - A film about suffocating conformity to social roles, and how people sometimes need to break free of them.
 

Castaway - Survival, Loneliness, Social Isolation; and a ball more loyal than most friends. WILSON!!!!

Helen - Major Depressive Disorder. A powerful depiction of woman going through the throes of Clinical Depression.

Monster- Psychopathy. Based on the life of Aileen Wuornos. It earned Charlize Theron an Academy Award for best Actress; it could have got one for the similarity alone (right). 

 

Changeling - Capgras Syndrome: A disorder in which a person holds a delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family member has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor.

 

Catfish - The internet and online personas. Great documentary style film showing just how false the online world can be. It can also shed light on the often predatory world of online behaviour.

 

Hotel Rwanda - Prejudice and discrimination. The film is also relevant to the discussion of pro-social and altruistic behaviours. It was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 77th Academy Awards, with Don Cheadle also being nominated for Best Actor.

 

Crash - An incredibly powerful and sophisticated 2004 Paul Haggis film about cultural diversity.

 

Devil's Advocate - Persuasion and attitude change. ''Vanity, definitely my favourite sin.''

 

The Savages - Dementia and family conflict amongst others. Starring Laura Linney and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.

 

< Me, Myself & Irene - Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID); previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder.

or Fight Club (right) if you fancy less laughs.

Boyhood - Growing up and the elusive experience of youth. Amazingly it was shot just over 39 days spanning 12 years.

 

12 Angry Men - An incredibly powerful portrayal of social influence and decision-making processes within a jury. It's in black and white, but things aren't as black and white as they may seem. Puns...

Fatal Attraction - Erotomania. The top grossing movie of 1987. Nominated for several Academy Awards; the movie was the cause of much discussion around the topic of marital infidelity.

Bully - Bullying. A 2011 documentary; the film follows the lives of five students in U.S. schools who face bullying on a daily basis.

127 Hours - Resilience. Produced by Danny Boyle; a true story based on mountain climber Aron Ralston.

Racism and Prejudice; the list here is endless, but notable mentions go to American History X, A Time to Kill , Gran Torino , and This is England.

 

Antichrist - Delusions, Sadomasochism, Depression, Femininity and the rest. To be honest, this one is completely out there; make of it what you will. Directed by Lars von Trier, some have dubbed it a grotesque masterpiece. I thought it was top class; even though I didn't get my head around it.

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"It's funny how the colours of the real world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen."
                                                                                                                                   ~ Anthony Burgess

The Porcelaine Throne

I don't know why either?

But if you think that's bad it could be worse. In 1976, Middlemist and colleagues carried out an experiment in which they measured the time to onset and the duration of urination of men in toilets at a college. The ''purpose'' of the research was to study the effect of personal space on a measure of physiological arousal (urination times).

 

The students were observed while alone or with a confederate of the experimenter, who stood at the next stall or at a more distant stall in the restroom. The presence and closeness of the confederate did have the effect of delaying urination and shortening the duration of urination. The situation is one that men experience on a regular basis, however one can question whether the invasion of privacy was justified.

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Whether you squat in an alley or sittin' on a porcelain throne, don't really change the moment, now do it?
                                                                                                                                                       ~ Omar, The Wire

The Chameleon Effect

According to authors Chartrand and Bargh ,"The chameleon effect refers to nonconscious mimicry of the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one's interaction partners, such that one's behavior passively and unintentionally changes to match that of others in one's current social environment." (Journal Of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999).

 
How many times have you yawned after viewing another person do it? Or noticed your tone of voice depended on the company you were in. What about meeting up with people from where you used to grow up and now realising that your homeland accent has suddenly started coming out of your mouth...

 

The chameleon effect can happen naturally and frequently because we feel a rapport with people who mimic our moves. Most of us do it automatically to varying degrees, we mimic the people around us all the time without even realizing it.

 

In one study of the chameleon effect, Chartrand and Bargh found that students who rated high on empathy were more likely to imitate others. "Those who pay more attention mimic more," says Chartrand.

 

We also mimic the facial expressions of other people. This is so hardwired that one-month old infants have been shown to smile, stick out their tongues, and open their mouths when they see someone else doing the same (Meltzoff & Moore, 1977).

Unintentional mimicry and imitation functions as a social cohesive. The chameleon effect actually becomes a warm response that facilitates social interactions. Mirroring a persons language shows that you understand your conversation partner, and that you are an empathetic listener.

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''When you are in the company of lunatics, behave like a lunatic. When you are in the company of intelligentsias, speak with brilliance...that is how a chameleon behaves, the territory changes it, and it adapts to the changes.''
                                                                                                                    ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Suicide and Ireland

Figures from the Central Statistics Office show that the number of suicides registered in Ireland fell by 6% last year. The CSO's yearly summary shows 475 suicides were registered in 2013, compared to 507 in 2012. The CSO statistics show several counties recording rates of suicide well above the national average of 10.3 per 100,000 population. Males accounted for over 83% of all suicide deaths last year. The number of registered suicides in the 15-24 age group fell by 23% last year, however Ireland still has the fourth highest suicide rate in that age group in the European Union (RTE, 2014).

Women are likely to attempt suicide about three times more often than men, but men are, on average, three times more likely to actually kill themselves. These differences may be due to (1) a higher incidence of depression in women and (2) men's choice of more violent and lethal methods, such as shooting themselves or jumping off buildings. The suicide rate for both men and women is higher among those who have been divorced or widowed. Women's suicides are more likely to be triggered, although not certain to be triggered by any means, by failures in love relationships, whereas career failure more often prompts men's suicides (Shneidman, 1976). Further, a history of sexual or physical abuse significantly increases the likelihood of later suicide attempts (Garnefski & Arends, 1998).

Is suicide contagious?

Most people react to hearing the news of a suicide with sadness and curiosity. Some people react by attempting suicide themselves, often by the same method they have just heard about. Gould (1990) reported an increase in suicides during a 9-day period after widespread publicity about a suicide. Clusters of suicides (several people copying one person) seem to predominate among teenagers, with as many as 5% of all teenage suicides reflecting an imitation (Gould, 1990; Gould, Greenberg, Velting, & Shaffer, 2003). Suicide prevention charity Console has called for a real-time register of suicide data to be kept. It said it could then "act on timely and accurate statistics to put measures in place to prevent such phenomena as suicide clustering or contagion".

Why would anyone want to copy a suicide? First, suicides are often romanticized in the media: An attractive young person under unbearable pressure commits suicide and becomes a martyr to friends and peers by getting even with the (adult) world for creating such a difficult situation. Also, media accounts often describe in detail the methods used in the suicide, thereby providing a guide to potential victims. Little is reported about the paralysis, brain damage, and other tragic consequences of the incomplete or failed suicide or about how suicide is almost always associated with a severe psychological disorder. More important, even less is said about the futility of this method of solving problems (Gould, 1990, 2001; O’Carroll, 1990).

To prevent these tragedies, mental health professionals must intervene immediately in schools and other locations with people who might be depressed or otherwise vulnerable to the contagion of suicide. But it isn’t clear that suicide is ''contagious'' in the infectious disease sense. Rather, the stress of a friend’s suicide or some other major stress may affect several individuals who are vulnerable because of existing psychological disorders (Durand & Barlow, 2013).
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''The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness'' ~ Abraham Maslow

Hedgehog's Dilemma

The hedgehog's dilemma, or sometimes the porcupine dilemma, is an analogy about the challenges of human intimacy. It describes a situation in which a group of hedgehogs all seek to become close to one another in order to share heat during cold weather. They must remain apart, however, as they cannot avoid hurting one another with their sharp spines. Though they all share the intention of a close reciprocal relationship, this may not occur, for reasons they cannot avoid.

 

From 'Studies in Pessimism' (Schopenhauer, p. 142);

''A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter; but, as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again, when just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by remaining at a little distance from one another.

 

In the same way the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature. The moderate distance which they at last discover to be the only tolerable condition of intercourse, is the code of politeness and fine manners; and those who transgress it are roughly told - in the English phrase - to keep their distance. By this arrangement the mutual need of warmth is only very moderately satisfied; but then people do not get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people nor get pricked himself.''

                            

Both Schopenhauer and Freud have used this situation to describe what they feel is the state of individuals in relation to others in society. The hedgehog's dilemma suggests that despite goodwill, human intimacy cannot occur without substantial mutual harm, and what results is cautious behaviour and weak relationships.

 

The dilemma is also used to justify or explain introversion and isolationism. The concept originates from Arthur Schopenhauer's 'Parerga and Paralipomena'. It then entered the realm of psychology after the tale was discovered and adopted by Freud in 1921.

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Sometimes love can be a spiky situation.

Prejudice is a stinky cologne

''What's most interesting is that we are often disgusted by other people. We have laboratory research that explores the relationship between feelings of disgust and feelings towards out-groups.

 

People differ in how sensitive they are to disgust. It turns out that where you stand with regard to disgust correlates with your feelings about out-groups. It correlates with your feelings about immigrants, sexual minorities, race etc. The more easily disgusted you are, the more aversion you find to these others.

We also know this experimentally. We know that by making people be disgusted, we can make them meaner.

We brought people into the lab at Cornell University and we asked them all sorts of questions regarding their feelings towards different out-groups and different policies. What do you think of African-Americans? What do you think of gay men? What do you think of social-welfare? etc.

 

Half the people just filled out the form and went home. The other half of the subjects went into the room, got the same survey. But before they entered the room, we sprayed the room with a 'fart-spray'. And it would make them meaner! Not towards everything, but it would make them particularly meaner towards out-groups''.

- Paul Bloom & David Pizarro, Cornell University.

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Racism is something you learn, not something you're born with.

Michelangelo Phenomenon

''Wait, I said IDEAL-self !!'



This is a pattern of relationship interdependence, in which close partners influence each other's dispositions, values, and behavioural patterns in such a manner as to bring both people closer to their ideal-selves. It suggests that close partners 'sculpt' one another's selves, shaping one another's skills and traits and promoting versus inhibiting one another's goal pursuits.

The concept was introduced by the US psychologist Stephen Michael Drigotas and several collaborators in an article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1999, reporting the results of four experiments designed to elucidate the phenomenon.

Unsurprisingly, it is named after the Italian sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 - 1564) who is said to have conceived of some sculptures as a process of bringing out figures already hidden in stone - by chipping away at the excess.

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''I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free''   ~ Michelangelo