Novelty seekers are biased to the right

Most people show a slight bias to the left-hand side of space. In other words, presented with a horizontal line and asked to identify its midway point, most of us will mark a position slightly too far to the left. Increasingly, however, research is showing that individuals vary in the side of space to which they are biased - a minority are biased to the right. What's more, our spatial bias could be tied in intriguing ways to our personality type.

Rachel Tomer used the sensitive grey scales task to test the spatial bias of 56 undergraduates. (Participants were presented with several pairs of rectangles that fade from black to white in opposite directions. Their aim was to say which rectangle in each pair contains the most black).

Tomer found the usual overall bias to the left-hand side of space, but also discovered that ten participants showed a bias to the right. Intriguingly, she found that the students with the rightward bias also tended to score higher on a measure of novelty seeking - a proclivity to look for thrills and new rewarding experiences.

This link isn't as surprising as it sounds considering research on animals shows their attentional bias is influenced by which side of their brain has the more active dopamine system (more dopamine activity in the left-hand hemisphere directs a bias to the right). Dopamine, of course, is a neurotransmitter known to be involved in pleasure and reward.

Tomer's theory is that students with a bias to the right have more dopamine activity in the left of their brain, a characteristic also underlying their novelty seeking. But why, you might fairly ask, is it greater dopamine activity specifically in the left side of the brain that is linked with novelty seeking?

The answer isn't entirely clear, but other lines of evidence also point to a link between left-sided dopamine activity and novelty seeking. For example, patients with Parkinson's disease who exhibited dopamine loss in their left hemisphere showed a reduction in their novelty seeking habits, whereas similar patients with dopamine loss in their right hemisphere showed no such behavioural change. Moreover, an earlier brain imaging study by Tomer showed that healthy individuals with more dopamine receptors in their left vs. their right hemispheres reported being more motivated by incentives.
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TOMER, R. (2008). Attentional bias as trait: Correlations with novelty seeking. Neuropsychologia, 46(7), 2064-2070. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.02.005


Has this stirred your interest? Previously in the Digest:
The link between line bisection accuracy and emotional sensitivity to art.
How spatial biases could be distorting survey results.
And how tiredness affects our spatial bias.

The Special Issue Spotter

We trawl the web for the latest psychology journal special issues so you don't have to:

Neuroscience and crime (Neurocase).

Computational modelling in cognitive neuropsychology (Cognitive Neuropsychology).

Dialogue with the body in clinical practice (Counselling Psychology Quarterly).

New developments in E-commerce (Psychology and Marketing).

Athletes benefit from being perfectionist

Sports psychologists can't agree on whether or not perfectionism is a good or bad thing. The advantages are obvious and evoke images of the athlete practising a given shot, kick or putt over and over, until rare mastery is achieved. But the proposed downside is that perfectionism breeds anxiety and self-criticism, ultimately undermining performance.

Oliver Stoll and colleagues believe part of the reason for the disagreement is that there are actually two aspects to perfectionism: one is striving for perfection, the other is having negative reactions to a less than perfect performance. Their prediction was that the striving aspect would be beneficial to sports training, while the negative reactions aspect would be harmful.

Stoll's team measured these two aspects of perfectionism among 122 sports science students before observing their performance on a novel basketball training exercise that required the students to practice scoring a basket from behind the basketball board.

Striving for perfection was measured by students' agreement with statements like "I feel the need to be perfect", while negative reactions to imperfection were measured via students' agreement with statements like "After training, I feel depressed if I have not been perfect."

To the researchers' surprise, the students who showed the most improvement over the course of the training (four series of seven attempts) were those who reported high levels of both striving for perfection and negative reactions to imperfection. They speculated that perhaps the students who strove for perfection, but who were then unconcerned by whether they achieved that perfection or not, had less motivation to do well in training than the students who reported having both forms of perfectionism.

More research is clearly needed with other sports, and in actual competition rather than a training environment, the researchers said. However, they concluded: "perfectionistic strivings may form part of a healthy pursuit of excellence and may be adaptive in situations where such strivings may give athletes an additional motivational 'boost' to do their best, and thus achieve better results and make greater progress."
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STOLL, O., LAU, A., STOEBER, J. (2008). Perfectionism and performance in a new basketball training task: Does striving for perfection enhance or undermine performance?. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 9(5), 620-629. DOI: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2007.10.001

Why psychologists are asking children to touch their toes

Psychologists in America say they have found a simple and quick way to test young children's ability to concentrate and follow instructions in class - what they call "self-regulation".

Self-regulation is said to reflect a combination of attention, inhibition and memory skills. It's a useful attribute to measure because it strongly predicts how well young children will do when they start school.

The new "Head-to-Toes" Task requires that children listen to ten instructions, delivered in random order, telling them to either touch their head or their toes. Points are scored for following the instructions correctly.

Other available measures of self-regulation, such as the Tower of London task, are more time consuming and tend to require special equipment.

Claire Ponitz and colleagues administered the new 'Head-to-Toes" Task several times over two years to 445 children aged between three and six years, based at two sites in Michigan and Oregon.

The researchers said their task showed high reliability and validity. In other words, the same child tested twice, with only a short gap between tests, tended to achieve the same score. Scores on the test also correlated with teachers' reports of the children's self-regulation skills.

The strongest influence on children's scores was their age, with older children finding the task easier. There were differences in performance levels between the two testing sites, but these disappeared once the background of the children in the two sites was taken into account - for example based on their parents' level of education.

The researchers concluded that although older children found the task too easy for it to be a useful measure (in its current form), for the younger children, the "Head-to-Toes" Task could serve as a simple and easy-to-administer measure of self-regulation, thus helping identify those children who are likely to have difficulties when they start formal schooling.
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CAMERONPONITZ, C., MCCLELLAND, M., JEWKES, A., CONNOR, C., FARRIS, C., MORRISON, F. (2008). Touch your toes! Developing a direct measure of behavioral regulation in early childhood. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 23(2), 141-158. DOI: 10.1016/j.ecresq.2007.01.004

Shifts in perception

If you're in or around London tomorrow evening, Friday (18 July), why not check out this Wellcome Collection event, featuring talks, activities and performances all about our perception of the world? It's free and runs from 18.30 to 22.00.

The official spiel: "An event for the inquisitive - join us to celebrate the extraordinary ways we perceive the world around us. Performances and activities throughout Wellcome Collection will explore how science allows us to appreciate far more than what first meets the eye."

Link to Shifts in Perception at the Wellcome Collection.

Extras

Eye-catching studies that didn't make the final cut:

Scanning the brains of anorexia patients while they view their own bodies and other people's. Their neural activity is regular when they look at other people's bodies, but unusual when they look at their own.

Schizophrenia is associated with poor facial recognition. Patients with the illness were far worse at spotting faces hidden among neutral pictures than were control participants.

Studying muscled men who think they are small.

Adults with ADHD may be particularly vulnerable to suggestion in police interrogations.

Tattoos, body piercings and self-harm - is there a link?

Some people say cutting their skin brings them relief from emotional pain - an act usually referred to as self-harm. Others enjoy having their body pierced with metal and their skin inscribed with permanent ink. Is there a link between these acts? According to the German psychologists Aglaja Stirn and Andreas Hinz, in some cases there might well be.

The researchers collaborated with the body modification magazine Taetowiermagazin, recruiting 432 of their readers to complete a comprehensive questionnaire about their tattooing and piercing practices and motives.

One hundred and nineteen of the participants admitted to cutting themselves in childhood. That's 27 per cent of the sample - a much higher proportion than is found among the general population of Germany: 0.75 per cent.

Compared with the readers who said they had never self-harmed, those who had were more likely to report "bad things" having happened in their lives, and to say they had previously had a bad relationship with their own body.

Moreover, the self-harmers reported that they often had their skin tattooed or body pierced to help overcome a negative experience, or simply to experience physical pain. Another clue that self-harm and piercing/tattooing might, in some cases, be linked, derives from the fact that many of the self-harmers said they had ceased cutting themselves after obtaining their first piercing or tattoo.

Stirn and Hinz concluded that most people who partake in body modification clearly do not do it because they have any psychological problems. "However," they continued, "because body modifications have become so common and accessible, they are also used with probably increasing frequency as a convenient means to either realise psychopathological inclinations, such as self-injury, or to overcome psychological traumas."
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Stirn, A., Hinz, A. (2008). Tattoos, body piercings, and self-injury: Is there a connection? Investigations on a core group of participants practicing body modification. Psychotherapy Research, 18(3), 326-333. DOI: 10.1080/10503300701506938

Link to related Digest item.
Link to related research.
Link to BPS leaflet on self-harm.

A nation of shoppers who feel empty inside...

Bloggingheads.tv have filmed another illuminating psychology-related discussion (see player below), this time featuring moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt and libertarian political analyst Will Wilkinson.



Haidt believes that our moral response to a situation is akin to an aesthetic reaction - it happens in the blink of an eye, and it's only after the gut reaction that we attempt to rationalise our feelings.

Underlying our moral responses are five foundations, which are calibrated at different levels depending on our cultural background. The first two, Harm/Care and and Fairness/Reciprocity, are universal, tend to correlate with each other, and are especially valued by liberals. The remaining three also tend to correlate with each other, but are less universal, tending to be valued more by conservative types. These are Ingroup loyalty, Authority/Respect and Purity/Sanctity.

Haidt is not a moral absolutist: he doesn't think there is some external moral truth that existed before man, and will exist afterwards. Neither is he a moral rationalist: he doesn't think reason is the epitome of morality. This usually leaves only relativism - the idea that any given moral code is as good as the next, but Haidt isn't that either. Instead, he says there is a fourth way. There is a moral truth that emerges out of cultural and social circumstances, in the same way that the value of gold is not an inherent property of the metal, but emerges from market processes. Haidt says that appreciating this can help us to be more tolerant and understanding of other cultures.

Today it is morally right that men and women are perceived as equal, he says as an example, but go back in history and there were legitimate reasons driven by a need to divide labour that led the sexes to be viewed unequally, because that was what was seen to work best in that time.

For a successful society, Haidt believes, you need a balance between the five moral foundations - a blend of the liberal and conservative sensibilities. The danger with liberals, he says, is that they would likely choose to set the Authority, Ingroup, and Purity levels to zero, because they associate these values with racism and segregation. And yet, it is order, tradition, and a sense of community and belonging which Haidt believes makes people happy. Without these and you end up with a "nation of shoppers who feel empty inside".

Haidt's discussant Will Wilkinson, himself a libertarian, isn't convinced: "I think meaning is overrated," he says.

There's plenty more in the clip above, including why religion is correlated with happiness within nations, and yet the world's happiest nations are secular. Great stuff Blogginheads.tv - Keep it up!
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Want to know more about this area?
Link to recent Prospect magazine article on the emerging moral psychology (open access).
Link to Jonathan Haidt's landmark paper on the new synthesis in moral psychology (open access).

Finding your way back from the toilet in the dark, and other lessons...

The nation's psychology teachers had a noticeable spring in their step last week after cognitive neuroscientist and Mind Hacks author Dr Tom Stafford of the University of Sheffield showed them the power of interactive demonstration. The Research Digest was lucky enough to be in the audience.

Moments into the keynote talk, the teachers and I found ourselves blinded by darkness. As our eyes adjusted, we were told to cover one eye with our hands before the lights were raised again. A little wait for our open eyes to become light-adjusted and then the lights re-dimmed. What would happen to our vision this time? The answer depends on whether adaptation to light levels occurs centrally, in the brain, or locally in each eye. The audience tested this, looking through each eye one at a time and discovering the strange experience of having one eye adapted to the light and one to the dark, thus showing that light adaptation occurs locally. Both eyes open led to a strange, grey, grainy, effect. “Whoever said psychology isn't useful is wrong,” Stafford said. “You now have the perfect strategy for visiting the toilet in the night and finding your way back to your bed in the dark.”

Light adaptation may well occur locally, but what about adaptation to motion? A huge video of a waterfall filled the screen. After a minute staring at the cascading water, the video was stopped and the audience experienced the well-known illusion of the water appearing to flow upwards. But what if the flowing water was watched with just one eye (with the other covered), with the paused video then observed through the previously covered eye? The illusion was still experienced, thus showing that in this case, adaptation to motion had occurred centrally, in the brain.

Here we were, an audience of several hundred, asking questions and finding answers about the organisation of the human brain, all from the comfort of our seats. “The wisdom of psychology,” Stafford said, “is as a way of finding things out and generating facts. Everyone can take part.”

“I'm now going to rewire your brains,” Stafford continued, “by fostering your expectations.” Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven began to fill the lecture room. Then a verse was played backwards (courtesy of Jeff Milner). Could we hear any words in the backward version? None. But then Stafford told us the hidden lyrics: “Oh here's to my Sweet Satan...”. The backward track was played again, and there the words were, bold, impossible to ignore. Visit the site and see for yourself. “Hours of fun or moral panic, depending on your perspective,” Stafford said.

Once the expectations for what to hear are in place, they can't be undone. You can't unhear the devilish lyrics once you know about them. This is a powerful demonstration of how our perceptual experiences are based not just on what is served up by our senses, but also on what our brains bring to the table.

“Examples like these teach us that we all have access to the raw materials of psychology,” Stafford said, “but that we can't necessarily trust them. Yet with sceptical enquiry and careful investigation, we can find out how the brain works.”

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Dr Tom Stafford was speaking at the annual conference of the Association for the Teaching of Psychology at Lincoln in the UK.

Link to Tom's guest contribution to the Digest (an introduction to psychophysics).

Today's youth have inflated egos

The youth of today - they seem so fearless, so pleased with themselves, don't they? If that's the perception, there are at least two possible explanations. Perhaps today's youngsters really are more egotistical. Alternatively, maybe levels of youthful narcissism haven't changed, it's just that, for any given era, the older folk will always think young people are full of themselves.

In what they describe as "the most comprehensive examination to date" of this issue, American researchers, led by Jean Twenge at San Diego State University, have tested these two possible explanations by trawling published and unpublished data on self-reported undergraduate narcissism, dating from the late 1970s to the present day.

The researchers focused only on studies that collected data using the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which requires respondents to choose between 40 forced-choice alternatives, such as: "I can live my life anyway I want to" vs. "People can't always live their lives in terms of what they want". The search uncovered 85 samples, involving 16,475 university students.

The data showed today's youth really are more egotistical than in previous eras. Levels of self-reported narcissism were found to have risen year on year from the late 70's to today, with the effect that two thirds of contemporary students scored above the narcissistic average for students tested in the years 1979-1985.

Twenge's team said their finding was consistent with other research showing generational increases in self-esteem, extraversion and assertiveness. Narcissism has its benefits in terms of self belief and confidence, the researchers said, but also comes with costs, tending to be associated with risky decision-making, aggression and addiction.

A limitation of the research, as acknowledged by the researchers, is that only data from undergraduates was analysed (and only in America). It's possible that the narcissism of all age groups, not just young people, has increased over recent decades.
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Twenge, J.M., Konrath, S., Foster, J.D., Keith Campbell, W., Bushman, B.J. (2008). Egos Inflating Over Time: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Journal of Personality, 76(4), 875-902. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00507.x

Musical ability - is it all just practice?

When marvelling at the world's great talents, whether in music, sport or literature, it's easy to conclude that these characters are simply born gifted. But that's unfair. Take a closer look and you'll see these people practice. A lot. In fact, the Swedish expertise expert Anders Ericsson has argued that the difference between an average and an elite musician is entirely down to practice, nothing else. Put the time in and you could be Mozart too, so the logic goes.

Is Ericsson right? Joanne Ruthsatz at Oberlin College and colleagues tested the intelligence, musical ability and practice habits of 178 high school band members and 83 elite conservatory music members.

Results were mixed. Among the high-school band members, musical achievement was predicted by practice, but also by general intelligence and musical aptitude (in terms of tone and rhythm perception skills). Moreover, all three of these factors were higher among the elite conservatory members, thus suggesting that musical achievement rests on a mixture of hard work and inherent talent.

However, among just the elite conservatory musicians, it was practice habits alone that differentiated the very highest achievers from the less successful. This suggests that once a certain amount of innate talent is in place, only practice makes the difference to the ultimate degree of success obtained. Unfortunately the limitations of the study mean we can't know for sure if this is correct. The researchers cautioned that the elite conservatory members all had extremely high intelligence and musical aptitude by virtue of their having gained a conservatory place, meaning there was very little variation in these factors between individuals.

Practice can be the crucial mediating factor in the acquisition of expert performance, the researchers concluded, 'but only after the group in question has been selected for general intelligence and musical ability. Thus we are forced to conclude that not everyone can be Mozart, even if they start young and practice intensively.'
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RUTHSATZ, J., DETTERMAN, D., GRISCOM, W., CIRULLO, B. (2008). Becoming an expert in the musical domain: It takes more than just practice. Intelligence, 36(4), 330-338. DOI: 10.1016/j.intell.2007.08.003

The Special Issue Spotter

We trawl the web for the latest psychology journal special issues so you don't have to:

Neuroimaging and early Alzheimer's Disease (Neuropsychologia).

Client experiences of psychotherapy (Psychotherapy Research).

What is the parietal lobe contribution to human memory? (Neuropsychologia).

Cross-cultural analysis of quality of life and mental health (Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy).