How can babies, who can’t even understand what their parents are saying, tell when a silent face switches languages? And how can you test a baby to figure this out? Whitney Weikum and her colleagues had babies sit on a parent’s lap and watch silent videos clips of 3 different women reading children’s stories. Babies saw lots of similar video clips all in the same language (English) until they stopped looking at them as much. Just like when you look away from something when you’re bored with it, so will babies.

Suddenly, the language in the videos switched: although the same 3 women were reading stories in silent videos, now they were reading them in a different language. Now French-English bilingual babies returned to looking at the videos. They noticed that the language changed, and became interested in the videos again. Since the videos were silent, the only clues they could have used were the way the women’s faces and mouths moved. So babies who can’t even talk were using these very subtle differences to tell languages apart.

Not all babies were equally good at this test, though: monolingual English-speaking 8 month-olds couldn’t tell the difference when the languages switched. But when monolingual babies were younger (4-6 months old), they could. Why is this? It seems like all babies start out with the ability to tell languages apart just from looking at people’s faces when they’re speaking. But since this skill is only really helpful for babies exposed to more than one language on a regular basis, bilingual babies use it and monolinguals loose it.

Rather than being confused by constantly switching languages at home, bilingual babies are actually quite good at telling them apart — even just from tiny differences in people’s facial expressions. When it comes to language learning, babies are very intelligent blobs.

Weikum, W., Vouloumanos, A., Navarra, J., Soto-Faraco, S., Sebastian-Galles, N., & Werker, J. (2007). Visual Language Discrimination in Infancy Science, 316 (5828), 1159-1159 DOI: 10.1126/science.1137686

But what if I told you that colds aren’t the only thing you can catch from your neighbor?   We often think of happiness as something we experience within ourselves, but it turns out that happiness is as contagious as the common cold.  And over time, we spread it to those around us.

When we look at social networks, we see clusters of happy people grouped together.  At first, there might seem to be a simple explanation for this – after all, people are more likely to hang out with people who are like them, and it would make sense that happy people would want to spend time together.  But as we track social networks over time, we see that the tendency to be happy will spread from person to person, rather than happy people simply tending to cluster together.

When we take the same methods that epidemiologists use to track illnesses, and use them to look at long-term emotions among groups of people, it becomes clear that happiness moves infectiously around a social network very much like a disease.  Happiness spreads the fastest to those whom we live in close proximity to.  Having a happy friend who lives within a mile of you increases the probability that you will be happy by a sizeable 25%, and a happy next-door neighbor increases the likelihood that you’ll be happy by 34%.  Although the effects of happiness will decay with time and distance between people, we’re still significantly affected by the happiness of people even three degrees of separation away from us (that is, the happiness of friends of friends of friends).

This effect is not limited to short-term moods.  While a friend’s cheerful greeting may put a smile on our face for a few seconds, spending time around happy people increases our tendency to be happy over time.

I could end this note with a dour, cautionary note about choosing your friends wisely, but in the spirit of spreading happiness, why not instead look at the way we affect those around us?  If our happiness can increase the happiness of even friends of friends who we haven’t actually met, then it’s worth considering what kind of emotion we are spreading around the world every day.  Unlike a bad cold, don’t cover your mouth when you smile.

References:
Fowler, J., & Christakis, N. (2008). Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study BMJ, 337 (dec04 2) DOI: 10.1136/bmj.a2338

Hill, A., Rand, D., Nowak, M., & Christakis, N. (2010). Emotions as infectious diseases in a large social network: the SISa model Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277 (1701), 3827-3835 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.1217

This is not the only significant historical event to happen on May 1. Exactly eight years ago, Bush gave his now-infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech. Sixty-six years ago, Hitler’s April 30th suicide was announced and publicized. And, of course, we are mere months away from the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

But today is significant for another reason: It is the Jewish commemorative holiday Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG’vurah, or Yom HaShoah. Known in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day.

As a Jew, I am all too familiar with the ways in which my own culture elevates the importance of collective memory (the shared memory of stories and events that are passed down within a cultural group) to a practically sacrosanct level. We must remember the Holocaust, remember when our ancestors were slaves in Egypt, remember our deceased relatives by lighting Yahrzeit candles on the anniversaries of their deaths. The imperative to ‘remember’ is essentially its own holy ritual – in fact, many aspects of mourning and remembrance are actually considered mitzvot (or ‘moral obligations’) of their own accord. This urge to commemorate is found in every culture, and it generally takes precedence over moving on and forgetting (Pennebaker & Banasik, 1997). When people identify with an ingroup, they generally tend to play up the tragic suffering of their own group while also downplaying the tragedy that their group may have inflicted on others in the past (Novick, 1999; Baumeister & Hastings, 1997). This is how people bond. This is how people heal.

Whether it’s the US and Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine, or North and South Korea, there are plenty of ethnic, cultural, and religious groups that are stuck in escalating patterns of intergroup violence, creating this need for a collective memory of traumatic events in the first place. Hindus and Sikhs, for example, have a long and brutal history of violence against each other, particularly within India. When Hindu and Sikh students were asked to recall episodes of Hindu-Sikh violence, people on both sides were generally more likely to remember times when their own group had suffered (rather than caused the suffering), especially when they considered their religious affiliations to be particularly central to their identities. Not only that, but when presented with actual newspaper articles that described an equal number of violent acts coming from each side, people who felt strongly tied to their Hindu or Sikh identities spent more time thinking about the times when they were victimized and were more likely to say that the other side should forgive and forget, yet less likely to think that their own side should do the same. In a separate study, people who were guided towards stronger identification with their ‘ingroup’ were actually unable to remember as many times when their ingroup had caused harm to other people than those who weren’t prompted to feel the same level of ingroup identification (Sahdra & Ross, 2007).

Much like it was for the Hindus and Sikhs in this example, the impact of strong group identification on our memories of historic events can be monumental. If the outcome is group cohesion, this psychological bias makes perfect sense…but it doesn’t come without consequences. The way that we remember events shapes how we understand them and how we approach the future. On one hand, it feels right that this event fell on a day that commemorates the unimaginable suffering that results from terrorism and mass murder. But on the other, if we sit here in the wake of Bin Laden’s death and our memories are tinged by nationalism and inflated senses of group identification, it holds dangerous implications for the ways in which we will move forward.

This is not to downplay the importance of collective memory. In our hearts, we have the right idea. Our drive to memorialize is noble. There’s a reason that commemoration is an important part of every culture, and that’s because it’s the right thing to do. There is honor in forgiving, but that’s not the same thing as forgetting. The problem, however, arises when we all have to face the limitation that we can’t possibly remember everything. When the things that we choose to remember don’t help us learn the right lessons and work towards correcting the problems for tomorrow, we’ve found a problem.

When we look back on the Holocaust, we remember and honor the millions who perished. We remember their names, their families, and their stories, and there’s nothing wrong with any of this. But when we accept the responsibility of remembering the Holocaust, we are not only responsible for remembering the lives of the people who died.

We must also remember the political and economic context of Germany in the 1940s, and how the national environment facilitated the growth of Nazism and the rise of Adolf Hitler. We must remember the overwhelming power of the fundamental human motivation to believe in a fair and just world, and that sometimes the most socially downtrodden members of society are the first ones to support, defend, and justify the presence of strong order and authority (Jost et al, 2003).

We must also remember the extreme potential social power of tyrannical leaders, and how an authoritative leader effectively commanded obedience from thousands of German citizens. We must understand that when an authority figure issues a command, even people who do not consider themselves to be capable of evil might do horrendous things for the sake of conformity and obedience (Milgram, 1963).

These are all memories that should contribute to a responsible remembrance of the Holocaust. Today, on Yom HaShoah, it is our duty to recognize and do our best to understand them. And today, on the day after Bin Laden’s death, it is our duty to process and remember so much more than “Ding-dong, the witch is dead.”

In the end, while it’s tempting to think of today as a celebration, I implore you to remember much more than that. This sentiment may not be as popular as the one that encourages joyfully screaming “USA!” from the rooftops, but I’d argue that it’s far more important. When we think back on today, we cannot simply remember this one event. We must remember the past 10 years. We must remember the lives that we have taken, as well as the liberties that we have lost. We must remember the history of Afghanistan, and the political context, and the factors that contributed to the formation of Al-Qaeda. We must remember the unacceptable racial prejudice that has faced every Muslim American, and we must remember how much worse it has gotten since September 11th, 2001. We must remember the incredible sacrifices that our troops have made, both at home and abroad. And just as we remember the millions who died in the Holocaust, may we also take time today to remember the thousands upon thousands of soldiers (both American and otherwise) and Afghan civilians who have died in the past decade of warfare – and may we never forget them.

Sahdra, B., & Ross, M. (2007). Group Identification and Historical Memory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33 (3), 384-395 DOI: 10.1177/0146167206296103

Baumeister, R. F., & Hastings, S. (1997). Distortions of collective
memory: How groups flatter and deceive themselves. In J. W. Pennebaker, D. Paez, & B. Rimé (Eds.), Collective memory of political events: Social psychological perspectives, 277-293

Pennebaker, J. W., & Banasik, B. L. (1997). On the creation and
maintenance of collective memories: History as social psychology. In J. W. Pennebaker, D. Paez, & B. Rimé (Eds.), Collective memory of political events: Social psychological perspectives, 3-19

Novick, P. (1999). The holocaust in American life. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Jost, J., Pelham, B., Sheldon, O., & Ni Sullivan, B. (2003). Social inequality and the reduction of ideological dissonance on behalf of the system: evidence of enhanced system justification among the disadvantaged European Journal of Social Psychology, 33 (1), 13-36 DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.127

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral Study of obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67 (4), 371-378 DOI: 10.1037/h0040525

Our expectations for how parents’ relationships with their children should work are believed to partly develop out of our relationships with our own parents (Bowlby, 1969). Within our first year of life, we develop an emotional connection, referred to as an attachment relationship, with our parents. Differences in the quality of this connection vary based on how our parents responded to our emotions. For example, if when you were upset, your mother acknowledged your emotions and helped calm you down, you are likely to have developed a secure attachment relationship with her. Conversely, if when you were upset, your mother rejected, ignored, or inconsistently responded to your crying, you are likely to have developed an insecure attachment relationship with her (Ainsworth et al., 1978).

The quality of the attachment relationship a child develops with her mother is characterized by the expectations the child develops concerning how her relationship with her mother works. For example, children who develop a secure attachment feel comfortable expressing their emotions because they expect their mother to respond to their emotions and effectively help them calm down. Conversely, children who develop an insecure attachment question whether they can express their emotions because they expect their mother to either respond harshly or inconsistently to their negative emotions (Ainsworth et al., 1978).

Although evidence has consistently shown that children’s attachment relationships inform their expectations about how their relationship with their own parent should work, only recently has evidence suggested that our expectations more broadly generalize to all children’s relationships with their parents.

To test how generalizable children’s expectations are, 1-year-olds’ were shown a video involving two circles. One circle was large and represented the parent circle and the other circle was small and represented the baby circle. Infants watched the parent circle go half way up a hill and leave the baby circle behind. The baby circle began to cry. Then, infants observed a “sensitive” parent, depicted by the parent circle returning to the infant or the “insensitive” parent, depicted by the parent circle continuing up the mountain without the infant. Researchers measured how long infants looked at video of the “sensitive” and the “insensitive” parent because looking time in this experiment indicates whether infants found the video expected or unexpected. Like adults, if infants find something unexpected, they will look longer, as if they are surprised or puzzled by what they see. Also like adults, if infants find something expected, they won’t look long at the video because they find it boring.

Which video infants looked at longer depended on the type of attachment relationship the infants developed with their own parents. Secure children, those who expect to be able to seek comfort and be soothed by their parents, looked longer at the “insensitive” parent. It’s as if the video of the parent circle leaving their child behind was completely unexpected to these infants because they rarely experienced something like that in their own relationship with their sensitive parents. However, insecure children, those who expect that they cannot rely on their parents to help soothe them, looked longer at the “sensitive” parent. In this case, these infants who have rarely experienced sensitive caregiving look longer at the sensitive parent because this type of caregiving does not fit in with the type of caregiving that they have received from their insensitive parents (Johnson et al., 2007; 2010).

Thus, infants develop expectations not only about how their own relationships with their parents should work, but also how all children’s relationships with their parents should work. Moreover, these expectations are believed stay with us overtime and even influence our intuitions about how our relationships with our own children should work. So, the next time you see a mom responding to her upset child in the mall, stop and think about whether your expectation for how the mom should respond is partly due to your relationship history with your own mom.

Sources Cited:

LIPSITT, L., & LIPTSITT, L. (1980). xviii + 391 pp., $24.95M.D.S. Ainsworth, M.C. Blehar, E. Waters and S. Wall, Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Maryland (1978). Infant Behavior and Development, 3, 409-409 DOI: 10.1016/S0163-6383(80)80048-8

Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. New York: Basic Books

Johnson SC, Dweck CS, & Chen FS (2007). Evidence for infants’ internal working models of attachment. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 18 (6), 501-2 PMID: 17576262

Johnson, S., Dweck, C., Chen, F., Stern, H., Ok, S., & Barth, M. (2010). At the Intersection of Social and Cognitive Development: Internal Working Models of Attachment in Infancy Cognitive Science, 34 (5), 807-825 DOI: 10.1111/j.1551-6709.2010.01112.x

It’s official. As of Friday morning, England has a new future queen – Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. Formerly known as Kate Middleton.

In the weeks leading up to the Royal Wedding, there seemed to be a lot of outrage. Most notably, I saw a lot of discussions revolving around the questionable morality of celebrating an institution that openly reveres inherited privilege and power.

That last critique really made me reflect – and honestly, feel a bit ashamed. It’s a very good point, and not one that I want to dismiss lightly. I was genuinely interested in following the events surrounding the Royal Wedding, but I really don’t like to think that I was celebrating institutionalized classism.

So with that criticism in mind, I’d like to revisit the idea of “inherited power.” What is it that today’s British monarchs are actually passing along to their successors? Can we really call it power?

Do British Monarchs Hold Any Power?

Before we examine whether or not Will and Kate have any real power, we first have to understand what exactly power is.

First and foremost, the general consensus in psychological research is that there are five types of power – legitimate, expert, coercive, reward, and referent. What these words mean will become more clear as I explain them, but what’s important to realize right now is that power does not look the same on every person who has it. The type of power that Barack Obama has is vastly different than the type of power that Angelina Jolie has, though anyone could argue that they are both powerful people.

Legitimate Power

Legitimate power arises from filling a role that gives you socially sanctioned power over other people. Barack Obama has legitimate power because he is the leader of the United States. The catch, however, is that this type of power generally goes away when the title isn’t applicable anymore. If your boss is fired, you no longer have to do what s/he says. Once Obama is no longer the president, he won’t be the one who decides whether or not we go to war.

Back when the UK had an absolute monarchy and the sovereign reigned supreme (say, when Queen Mary I issued the Heresy Acts and executed Protestants all over England), the British monarchs had legitimate power. However, if Queen Elizabeth II woke up tomorrow and wanted to declare Philip Treacy hats illegal, she’d be out of luck. The monarchs no longer hold legitimate power in the United Kingdom.

Expert Power

The best way to understand expert power is that you get it by convincing others that you know your stuff. When you are a top doctor, lawyer, or general know-it-all, you have power over others because they trust and respect your opinions. If my grandmother told me I had some random disease, I’d laugh and walk away. If the famous (though fictional) diagnostician House MD from the Fox TV show House diagnosed me, I would believe him and feel concerned.

Do the monarchs have expert power? What would they be experts on? When people respect and pay attention to the British monarchy in general, is it because the monarchs are perceived to be ‘experts’ on leadership and government? Not really. They do not have expert power.

Coercive Power

Now here’s where things get tricky.

Coercive power is what someone has when they rely on threats and punishments to get others to do things they don’t really want to do. Tyrants have coercive power. Angry mothers threatening their kids with no dessert have coercive power.

Historically, the British monarchy has had this in spades – just a few paragraphs ago I wrote about Queen Mary I (depicted in this portrait) threatening Protestants with execution. The British monarchy has even had a good deal of coercive power in more recent history, threatening Edward VIII that he had to abdicate the throne if he wanted to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson in 1936, and (many would argue) coercing Prince Charles into marrying the late Princess Diana rather than allowing him to marry the divorcee Camilla Parker-Bowles in 1981.

But if anything, the coercive power in those situations was power that the monarchy had over…its own members. Not British citizens. And in any case, it seems the monarchy has figured out that coercive power does not typically bode well for its wielders. Prince Charles was permitted to marry Camilla Parker-Bowles (now the Duchess of Cornwall) in 2005, and Prince William was gleefully allowed to wed Kate Middleton this past week – with no serious opposition from the monarchy regarding her ‘common’ genealogy or the fact that she’d had other boyfriends. Especially since the tragic death of Princess Diana in 1997, the monarchy has generally let go of the “threats, punishment, and coercion” tactic.

So even though this appears to be one of the last strongholds to go, the monarchy definitely does not rely on coercive power anymore. In fact, Will and Kate’s very engagement and wedding seems to prove that when it comes to threats and punishment, the monarchy’s moved on to greener pastures.

Reward Power

Reward power and coercive power might be thought of as two different sides of the same coin. Reward power also depends on what the powerful person can bestow upon the powerless – but this time, those things are more like raises, promotions, or compliments. Your boss has  reward power if he can get you to do things with the promise of a future reward (like the title of ‘Assistant [to the] Regional Manager.’)

Does the modern British monarchy have reward power? Not quite. Unless the ‘reward’ is an opulent wedding every 30 years, there isn’t much that modern UK monarchs can ‘promise’ Brits that would compellingly persuade them to do their bidding.

Referent Power

People with referent power don’t necessarily have any concrete influence over others at all – at least not due to titles like ‘president’ or ‘CEO.’ Rather, referent power is what we might also call ‘celebrity’ – people with referent power are revered and mimicked because they’re in the public eye and other people admire them. Angelina Jolie has referent power because when she adopts a Namibian baby, other people suddenly think it might be a good idea to adopt a Namibian baby. Jennifer Aniston has referent power because when she cut her hair for a TV show, thousands of women went to their salons and asked for the exact same style.

Based on how people have been commenting (and E! News Reporting) on the royals, the modern-day British monarchy does seem to have power – referent power. Essentially, the power that the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (i.e. ‘Will and Kate’) have over British citizens is more similar to celebrities than political leaders like David Cameron.

But Their Power Is ‘Inherited’ – Isn’t This A Bad Message?

Yes, members of the royal family only have referent power because they are born (or marry) into it. But it’s hard to argue that having parents with referent power doesn’t give anyone their own leg up on the referent power scale. After all, I don’t know many 5-year olds without famous parents who are regarded as fashion icons like Tom-Cruise-and-Katie-Holmes offspring Suri Cruise.

In fact, there’s always been quite a lot about power that’s inherited – but it doesn’t just happen in the United Kingdom. Despite the allure of ‘upward mobility’ and the idea that anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, the amount of money that you can expect to make as an adult relates pretty strongly to the amount of money that your parents earned (Charles & Hurst, 2003; Norton & Ariely, 2011). It’s also hard to deny that certain families are given a ‘leg up’ when it comes to societal & political influence, even without an official monarchy.

Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, the last name that you inherit matters – being a “Bush” or a “Kennedy” will take you far in politics.

Finally, referent power is very similar to another concept – social status. Although power and status are technically different things, people with high levels of status became that way (by definition) because they were respected, admired, and well-liked by others – much like people with referent power. Typically, people achieve high levels of status by being extroverted and emotionally stable (Anderson et al., 2001), as well as knowing how to monitor and adjust their social behavior (Flynn et al., 2006). Achieving social status by having the right combination of personality traits doesn’t seem like nepotism or inherited privilege – but isn’t it? After all, all three of these traits are substantially heritable, meaning people inherit genes that determine how extroverted, emotionally stable, or good at self-monitoring they are from their biological parents. Some studies even show that within the population, as much as 50% of people’s individual differences in extroversion or emotional stability are genetic and inherited (Jang et al., 1996). Even when power isn’t inherited through official titles, we’re far from being born on a completely equal playing field.

“If I’m a king, where’s my power? Can I form a government, can I levy a tax, declare a war?

No, and yet I’m the seat of all authority, why? Because the nation believes that when I speak, I speak for them.”

- King Charles VI, The King’s Speech

Colin Firth said it best as King Charles VI in The King’s Speech: The modern-day British royalty certainly has power, but it can’t really be called ‘legitimate’ anymore. Their power revolves around status, respect, and fame – more like David Beckham than David Cameron. Furthermore, if we’re going to criticize the Royal Family for nepotism, we might benefit from turning the lens back around on ourselves and re-examining the ways in which we all inherit things that make us more or less likely to wield power and status.

So let’s raise a glass to the newlywed royals, because it’s OK to enjoy the spectacle. After all, it’s just a little harmless celebrity.

French, J., & Raven, B.H. (1959). The bases of social power. Studies of Social Power. Cartwright, D. (ed.) Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research.

Fragale, A.R., Overbeck, J.R., & Neale, M.A. (2011). Resources versus respect: Social judgments based on targets’ power and status positions Journal of Experimental Social Psychology : 10.1016/j.jesp.2011.03.006

Charles, K., & Hurst, E. (2003). The Correlation of Wealth across Generations Journal of Political Economy, 111 (6), 1155-1182 DOI: 10.1086/378526

Norton, M.I, & Ariely, D. (2011). Building a better America – One wealth quintile at a time. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 9-12 : 10.1177/1745691610393524

Anderson, C., John, O., Keltner, D., & Kring, A. (2001). Who attains social status? Effects of personality and physical attractiveness in social groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81 (1), 116-132 DOI: 10.1037//0022-3514.81.1.116

Jang KL, Livesley WJ, & Vernon PA (1996). Heritability of the big five personality dimensions and their facets: a twin study. Journal of personality, 64 (3), 577-91 PMID: 8776880

Flynn FJ, Reagans RE, Amanatullah ET, & Ames DR (2006). Helping one’s way to the top: self-monitors achieve status by helping others and knowing who helps whom. Journal of personality and social psychology, 91 (6), 1123-37 PMID: 17144769

To show that consuming chocolate does cause depression, researchers would need to do more than show that the two are correlated.  They would also need to: 1) show which comes first (since the cause should precede the effect), and 2) carefully rule out lots of alternative explanations for the association (such as the hormone account described above).  The ideal way to meet ALL of these conditions is to conduct a true experiment – this allows the researchers to carefully control who gets the exposed to what, in order to isolate the precise effects of this exposure.  In this case, psychologists could get a bunch of people and randomly divide them into two groups – one group would be fed chocolate everyday, and the other would get some appropriate comparison (such as candy that doesn’t have chocolate in it).  Then, after an appropriate amount of time has passed, the reseachers could check to see how depressed the people in both groups are.  Two elements of this proposed study are critical.  First, it’s important that the groups are picked at random – this ensures that the people in the two groups are not different to begin with, before they start the experiment.   Second, it’s important to have some sort of comparison condition – this helps the researchers rule out other possible explanation for the findings (for example, that it’s really sugar consumption that leads to depression, not chocolate consumption per se).

Like many, Joey (from Friends) assumes that correlation equals causation

But if there were really good reason to think that eating chocolate causes people to become depressed, would this study be ethical?  Probably not.  And while this is just intended to be a fun and simple example, the truth is that there are lots of these sorts of scenarios in psychology, in particular research on psychological disorders.  In other words, we can’t in good conscience expose people to potentially damaging conditions, like physical abuse or emotional trauma, just to see how these factors influence mental health – so most of the research that is done on these topics just looks at correlations.  As a result, it takes a lot of time (and some creativity) to accurately hone in on the causes of mental health problems.

Why the science lesson?  It’s not uncommon for findings from research on psychological disorders (and other topics of this sort) to get some attention in the popular media.  And when this happens, the media sometimes gives their audience the false impression that the results DO tell us what is causing what.  In some of these cases the mistake is pretty explicit – that is, the report actually uses the word cause (“a new study shows that eating chocolate causes depression”), or similar wording (“a new study shows that eating chocolate leads to depression”).  Here is an example – even though the study discussed in this article doesn’t definitely show that dietary factors can cause depression, words like “influence”, “protective”, and “effect” are peppered throughout.  When this happens, it’s a problem.  But from my experience it doesn’t happen that often, especially when it comes to reputable media sources.    A more common problem, at least in my perception, is that these reports often include implicit messages that are misleading in the same sort of way.  For example, a report may end by say “be careful about eating too much chocolate”, or worse, “so if you’re depressed, cut back on the chocolate” – in both of these cases, there is a clear (but implicit) message that eating chocolate causes depression.  Here is an example of this sort – again, the study discussed in this article doesn’t really show for certain that sitting for long periods of time causes people to have fatal heart attacks, and even though the author mentions (in passing) that we don’t know for sure why they’re related, he still rails on and on about how dangerous it is to sit for long periods of time.  If sitting doesn’t really lead to heart problems, this warning could prove to be totally misguided.

So what can the popular media do to avoid these potential pitfalls when reporting on findings from correlational research?  Three suggestions…

1. Make sure to avoid using the word “cause”, as well as others words or phrases that are essentially synonymous (like “leads to” or “affects”).  In fact, it can never hurt to explicitly point out that the study only shows a correlation, and that we do NOT know what is causing what.
2. Don’t just tell the audience what the researchers found – give them a sense of what the researchers actually did.  I realize that the media usually shies away from this because they want to keep their stories brief, and they are concerned that the audience won’t understand the technical details anyway.  These are both reasonable concerns, but I think that its generally feasible to provide some of the most important details in a quick and digestible way – it just takes some work.
3. Avoid the temptation to discuss grandiose implications that are purely speculative.  While proposing these sorts of ideas can make the story more interesting, the audience may not be able to separate these speculations from what the researchers  actually found.  While researchers sometimes make these same sorts of speculations when they discuss their findings, their motivation is (usually) to stimulate more research.  But the people learning about a research finding from the popular media generally aren’t going to be the ones pioneering future research on that topic, right?

Of course, consumers can also take the initiative to scrutinize the reports they hear or read in the popular media about these very issues.  On the same note, if you see a commercial or read an op-ed piece about how we should bring back pirates to stop global warming, don’t listen.  That said, I don’t want to give the impression that all popular media reports about correlational research are misleading – some do get it right (here is a good example about the association between chocolate consumption and depression).   And while these sorts of reports may feel a bit less engaging, I would argue that the tradeoff is worth it.

A campaign to end global warming…

Sources cited:

Rose, N., Koperski, S., & Golomb, B. (2010). Mood Food: Chocolate and Depressive Symptoms in a Cross-sectional Analysis Archives of Internal Medicine, 170 (8), 699-703 DOI: 10.1001/archinternmed.2010.78

Sánchez-Villegas, Almudena, Verberne, Lisa, De Irala, Jokin, Ruíz-Canela, Miguel, Toledo, Estefanía, Serra-Majem, Lluis, & Martínez-González, Miguel Angel (2011). Dietary fat intake and the risk of depression: the SUN project. PLoS ONE, 26, 1-7 : 10.1371/journal.pone.0016268

KATZMARZYK, P., CHURCH, T., CRAIG, C., & BOUCHARD, C. (2009). Sitting Time and Mortality from All Causes, Cardiovascular Disease, and Cancer Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 41 (5), 998-1005 DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e3181930355

Now ask yourself: What do you know about this creature?

You probably came up with at least a couple facts: it’s a kind of reptile, it’s huge, it went extinct millions of years ago. And you’re right, because this is the newly discovered dinosaur “Brontomerus” (apparently, it had frighteningly powerful thighs). Unless you follow this kind of archaeology news, you probably hadn’t ever seen this creature before — and yet you were able to figure out some of its properties. Because you recognized the picture as belonging to the group or “category” of dinosaurs, you could use your knowledge of dinosaurs in general to predict things about the one in the picture. Using categories like this, to make intelligent guesses about something new, is crucial to human survival. (If you see a huge cat that kind of looks like a lion, you know not to get too close to it). How do we form these kinds of categories in the first place?

We seem to have this evolutionarily adaptive grouping skill very early in life. If you show 4 month-old babies lots of cat pictures, and then show them a picture of a dog, they will look at the dog for a long time — longer than they would look at a new cat picture (Quinn, Eimas & Rosenkrantz, 1993). Babies pick up on the similarity between all the cats they’ve seen, so when they suddenly see a dog, it’s is more different and interesting to look at than another cat.

A fascinating twist to this story is that babies are much better at noticing these kinds of categories when they hear language. A recent experiment by Ferry, Hespos and Waxman showed 4 month-olds pictures of dinosaurs. Half of the babies heard someone call the dinosaur by a made-up name (“Look at the toma. Do you see the toma?”). After seeing just 8 dinosaurs, these babies looked longer at a picture of a fish than at a picture of a new dinosaur. But if babies heard beeping instead of human language while seeing the dinosaur pictures, they didn’t look longer at the fish, as if they didn’t notice the similarity between all the dinosaurs they had just seen. Only the babies that heard language were able to pick up on the dinosaur category.

Why does this happen? When a person uses a new word like “toma” while showing a bunch of pictures, this suggests that they’re referring to a new category in those pictures. But if you’ve spent any time around a 4 month-old, you should be scratching your head right now. Babies this young don’t seem to understand language at all. They don’t even realize that “Look” and “toma” are separate words, much less realize that “toma” is a new word and could be referring to the category “dinosaur”. In fact, it seems like hearing anything that sounds like language will get very small babies to notice categories better — it doesn’t even have to be human language. Recent experiments similar to the one with dinosaurs find that babies who hear monkey calls are also better at picking up on categories. It’s as though any human-like noise sends a signal to very little babies to “pay attention!” — and specifically, to pay attention in a way that makes them notice how things can be grouped together in meaningful ways.

Why and how this happens in such young children is still a big mystery in psychology. But at least now we know that it doesn’t really matter what we say to our babies. If you feel silly enough to hoot like a monkey, no worries — your baby will still be learning something.

Ferry, A., Hespos, S., & Waxman, S. (2010, November). Tuning the Link Between Words and Categories: Primate Vocalizations Facilitate Object Categorization in 3-Month-Old, But Not 12-Month-Old Infants. Poster presented at Boston University Child Language Development Conference, Boston, MA.

Ferry, A., Hespos, S., & Waxman, S. (2010). Categorization in 3- and 4-Month-Old Infants: An Advantage of Words Over Tones Child Development, 81 (2), 472-479 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01408.x

Quinn, P., Eimas, P., & Rosenkrantz, S. (1993). Evidence for representations of perceptually similar natural categories by 3-month-old and 4-month-old infants Perception, 22 (4), 463-475 DOI: 10.1068/p220463

Much of the U.S. public believes that having a child during mid to late teen years increases medical risk for both mother and child. Policy makers encourage this idea by citing increased risks for low birth weight, perinatal and infant mortality, impaired cognitive development and pregnancy induced hypertension as medical risks associated with adolescent pregnancy. Yet when controlling for economic indicators and social support, females over the age of 14 and their children do not experience increased medical risk compared to a 25 year old woman and any children born to her.

Policy makers and social economists also promote the idea that teen pregnancy and motherhood negatively impacts education and economic outcomes of teenage mothers. The argument goes that young mothers face lower education, higher unemployment and lower income compared to women who delay pregnancy until mid twenties or later. This belief underpinned the Bush administrations abstinence only education policy. By propagating teen pregnancy/motherhood as the cause of high school dropout and low economic attainment, abstinence only education provided a seemingly logical solution. If teenage girls do not have sex they cannot get pregnant therefore avoiding negative outcomes associated with pregnancy. The fact that teenagers will not abstain from sex just because you tell them to is just one of the errors in the Bush administrations reasoning. Studies used to support this argument do not compare outcomes of poor young mothers to women of the same economic background that delay first pregnancy. The fact is that many young women vulnerable to becoming teen mothers already find themselves disenfranchised from the formal education, social and employment systems. Some adolescents who go on to become teen mothers drop out of school long before their first pregnancy. Looking at the educational and economic outcomes of poor adolescent mothers compared to poor women who delay first pregnancy suggests that early motherhood does not put women and their children at any greater risk for long term poverty than if they delayed pregnancy. A high risk for limited education attainment, limited employment and poverty equally impacts young women growing up in poor communities regardless of whether they have children as teenagers or during later adulthood.

Adolescent pregnancy by itself is not the problem. Rather, conditions that provide young women with few opportunities to assert themselves economically and socially are problematic. The discussion on teen motherhood and interventions targeted towards teen mothers needs to reflect the economic and social inequalities that a majority of young mothers face. Teen pregnancy and motherhood does not drive poverty. Poverty and the limited opportunities do impact teen pregnancy rates and socio-medical outcomes for mother and child.

Cherrington, J. (2005). Politicizing dominant discursive constructions about teenage pregnancy: re-locating the subject as social Health:, 9 (1), 89-111 DOI: 10.1177/1363459305048100

Scally, G. (2002). Too much too young? Teenage pregnancy is a public health, not a clinical, problem International Journal of Epidemiology, 31 (3), 554-555 DOI: 10.1093/ije/31.3.554

Today non-Hispanic Whites make up approximately 90% of all mental healthcare providers in the United States, while racial and ethnic minorities are projected to make up 40% of the U.S. population by 2025 (Annapolis Coalition Report, 2007). Understanding what facilitates a strong therapeutic alliance between White therapists and clients of color, as well as what impedes this relationship can increase the amount and effectiveness of mental health services for underserved racial and ethnic minorities. Having a strong belief that racism and discrimination does not exist in the United States can have a negative impact on establishing a strong therapeutic alliance between a White mental health provider and a racial/ethnic minority client.

Someone who proscribes to the idea that racism and discrimination does not exist in the U.S. might believe that if an individual does not gain admissions into a university they must not deserve to go. It would not matter if the rejected student only had access to very poor secondary schools and did not have help with homework growing up because parents only spoke Spanish. The person who denies the existence of racism and discrimination would argue that the rejected student competed on an equal playing field with a student that went to an elite private school, or very good public school, had access to tutors and help from mom and dad with school work. Now if that same rejected student sought out counseling for symptoms of depression and low-self worth surrounding the university rejection from a White counselor who does not believe that racism and discrimination exist in the United States a serious problem will arise. This therapist would not acknowledge and validate the client’s belief that he/she had not had equal opportunities. The client in turn would likely not feel understood by the therapist and have difficulty establishing trust. In situations like this one, where the therapist does not empathize and validate the client’s perspective, clients typically drop out of treatment prematurely and report low satisfaction with the therapeutic experience.
This problem is not irresolvable. Many training programs do not integrate exploration of attitudes regarding race, class and personal bias/discrimination into curriculum. If future therapists had to examine and confront their views regarding racism and discrimination early on in their training, and reflect on evidence about how such attitudes impact the development of the therapeutic alliance and client outcomes, training programs might generate practitioners more in tune with the realities and perspectives of minority clients. Initiatives to make training programs more accessible to non-White populations and increase diversity within the mental health field can provide a long term solution to facilitating dialogue about techniques to best establish trust and understanding between therapists and clients from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Gushue, G., & Constantine, M. (2007). Color-blind racial attitudes and white racial identity attitudes in psychology trainees. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 38 (3), 321-328 DOI: 10.1037/0735-7028.38.3.321

Neville H, Spanierman L, & Doan BT (2006). Exploring the association between color-blind racial ideology and multicultural counseling competencies. Cultural diversity & ethnic minority psychology, 12 (2), 275-90 PMID: 16719577

Spring
Egg
Basket
Jellybean
April
Hunt
Ham
Sunday
Chocolate
Peeps
Bonnet

If you had to memorize this list for a test, you’d actually do a pretty good job.  Why?  Well, you wouldn’t have to remember each word individually—you could just remember the overall gist of Easter.  Simply remembering the gist would help you generate the words since you’d already know that the words go together.

We often remember things by relying on the overall gist of an event—for example, instead of storing every detail about our last birthday, we tend to remember abstract things like “I had a fun party” or “I was in a grumpy mood because I felt old.”  This strategy allows us to remember more things about an event, but there’s one major drawback: by storing memories based on gist, we actually change how we remember the event.  This happens because we are biased to remember things that are consistent with our overall summary of the event.  So if we remember the birthday party was “super fun” overall, we’ll exaggerate how we remember the details—the average chocolate cake is now “insanely good”, and the 10 friends who were there becomes a “huge crowd.”  One of the factors that could contribute to this distortion is time; as you forget the details of an event, there’s more room for gist to change how you remember things.  But you would remember the details of an event immediately afterward, right?

As it turns out, gist changes the way we remember an event after just one second.  In a recent study, Brady & Alvarez (2011) asked participants to remember the sizes of red and blue circles that varied in size.  Sometimes, the blue circles were larger on average than the red circles, and sometimes the red ones were larger.  After studying the red and blue circles briefly (but ignoring the green ones), the participants waited one second and were then tested on their memory for the size of one of the circles.

A single, black circle appeared at one of the colored circles’ locations, and participants had to resize this circle to match the circle that had previously occupied that location (the bottom left location in the displays above).  When the circle at the tested location had been viewed amongst the larger circles (as depicted in the right display), participants remembered the test circle as being bigger than it actually was.  But when the same circle had been seen in the context of smaller circles (see left display), participants remembered the test circle as being smaller.

Thus, even our short-term memory depends on the overall gist of an event, not just the individual pieces.  Like long-term memory, this strategy could allow us to store more details about an event in the short-term.  But it also means that our short-term memories are subject to the same distortions as long-term memory.  This isn’t a big deal if we’re just studying circles—but what if we have to pick out a perpetrator from a lineup?  We may not be able to maintain a precise image of the real perpetrator if our short-term memory is contaminated by other people in the lineup.

And lest you think that the participants in the study were just bad at remembering things in general, go ahead and test yourself on the Easter word list.  How many words did you remember?

More importantly, was this guy on your list?

Brady TF, & Alvarez GA (2011). Hierarchical encoding in visual working memory: ensemble statistics bias memory for individual items. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 22 (3), 384-92 PMID: 21296808