SCEPTIC TANK

Shortlisted for an Ockham Award 2015

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Mental Health Awareness Week - Why OCD is about more than clean hands

It’s Mental Health Awareness Week this week, and I wanted to take this opportunity and use this platform to talk about a particular mental health disorder which has found its way into the media quite a lot lately.

OCD, or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, is a clinically recognised disorder which affects around 1-2% of the population, characterised by intensely negative, repetitive thoughts. Obsessions are intrusive thoughts, which are battled with compulsions, or physical actions/rituals.  

People suffering from OCD not only have to deal with the stigma that comes from ill mental health, nor the effect OCD has on their ability to function - they also have to deal with peers, colleagues, and even friends who see OCD as a cute, quirky quality, which has no real negative impact on a person’s life and is nothing more than washing your hands or aligning your pens on your desk. At some point, you will probably have been in a conversation where a person says something along the lines of “so, I’m a bit OCD, so please can we have all the mug handles facing this way...”, and it can get pretty infuriating.

Mental health disorders are not a quirk to make light of. They have serious effects on people’s lives (did you know that the average time between OCD onset and treatment is 12 years? I wonder what makes people so embarrassed?). I believe that the best way to address disparities between groups is through education (and AWARENESS... see where I’m going with this?), so let’s talk about: the FIVE TYPES OF OCD.

1. Contamination

This is the most well-known aspect of OCD. People affected by contamination symptoms often focus on feelings of discomfort, associated with contamination, and they will wash their hands or something similar to get rid of this feeling. It is a similar process to one where you’ll wear a charity shop jumper, but not if you hear it was owned by Hitler - the negative feelings associated with touching that may feel like you’ve been contaminated and the only way to fix that is by burning the jumper. Extreme, but somewhat relateable.

2. Harm obsessions with checking compulsions

This is where you have frequent thoughts and fears around harming yourself or others, and it’s quelled with checking things. A person may need to check doors are locked or appliances, such as straighteners, are off several times daily for fear of burglary or fire. Also in this category: the intense tendency to believe that thinking about an event increases the likelihood of it happening. 

3. Pure obsessions

This type doesn’t present itself in the form of any physical compulsions. It is about unwanted, intrusive and obsessive thoughts which surround sexual, religious or violent themes. A person suffering from this type may have involuntary and strong thoughts about attacking someone. Rituals like reciting words or counting can relieve the anxiety from this. A person will avoid triggers as much as possible. 

4. Symmetry

Another one of the more public types. this refers to arranging things til they’re ‘just right’. Sometimes this need is attached to an action, e.g. ‘if my pens are straight I won’t get ill this week’ but not always. 

5. Hoarding

Recently added to the DSM 5 as a diagnosis, hoarding involves the obsessive and unstoppable collection of items which a person holds value in. This can become as extreme as a person being unable to live in their home. Hoarding often comes with intrusive thoughts and fears about losing an item which might be needed one day. Emotional attachments are also more prominent.

OCD is treated with therapy and/or antidepressants (SSRIs). Cognitive behavioural therapy is the main therapy of choice - this method identifies a person’s train of thought as irrational with an ABC method (activating negative event, or reading news about a house fire caused by straighteners; belief, or ‘if I leave my straighteners on, the house will burn down’; consequence, or in this case, intrusive anxiety about checking everything is unplugged. The idea is to turn this train around, by reacting to A with positive thoughts in B and C, ultimately replacing how a person chooses to deal with negative actions with a more proactive approach. This method is favoured, with one study citing a significant help for 75% of participants with OCD. It can take 2 years to complete.

SSRIs prevent the brain from reuptaking the ‘pleasure’ neurotransmitter serotonin, effectively giving it more to play with. This can reduce the frequency of negative thoughts, potentially reducing the risk of negative ties between events and actions. Treatment this way can take up to a year, but people can have trouble with moving off of medication. 

I’ve not posted this for fearmongering - drawing conclusions about yourself from this is tempting, but I’m not the NHS (and the NHS website isn’t as reliable as an actual doctor) so please don’t take any of this as diagnostic. I’ve just written this for awareness, and I hope to do another one on a similar subject before the week is up. 

Take care, will post again soon :) 

Support for OCD can be found at OCD Action

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A load of crystal balls and the celebs who pay £400,000 for them

I’m referring to a Daily Mail article for this post. But hear me out.

Crystal healing, though an ancient technique, is incredibly popular today as an alternative medicine, offering healing through energy points or “chakras” by acting as powerful conduits (think primary school electricity circuit diagrams) which allow positive energy to flow through the body. Doctors and scientists largely agree that crystals do not aid healing via any means other than a placebo effect. There is no scientific evidence to suggest that proper new age crystals heal a body or are any different to cheap fakes, or that chemical compositions correlate with healing of various diseases. There is also no evidence to suggest that diseases are the result of any so-called “energy flow” in the body. 

“All this negativity!” I hear you cry. “You hate the crystals, don’t you? You’re really cottoning on to all this science, aren’t you? Lighten up, man!! All the celebs are doing it!”

Indeed, lots and lots of somewhat influential celebrities are totally on the crystal wagon, according to the Daily Mail - including Miranda Kerr, Victoria Beckham, Katy Perry, and even my beloved Adele (pictured above). Spencer Pratt has reportedly spent £400,000 in one year on the rocks (but lost faith, saying that they can’t be magic because they haven’t made him into Kim Kardashian yet). “[My comeback show] was one of the best I’ve ever done, and I had those bloody crystals in my hand” recalls Adele, adding “then the Grammys came and I lost my ***ing crystals... it was the most disastrous performance I’ve ever done”. Posh Spice has bought crystals for her whole entourage, and claims that her black obsidian crystal gives her power and strength. Katy Perry even attributes her successful love life to the rose quartz she carries, which is apparently a “love stone”.

I am considerably younger than these celebs but I very nearly just referred to them as these kids and their crazy ideas. Their ideas are not crazy (seriously) -- it is totally explainable through science. 

We, as humans, take notice of patterns.When you’re hungry, you eat, and the hunger goes away. Problem solved - you’ll remember it for next time. Basketball players often fall prey to the “hot hand fallacy”, whereby if they randomly sink a ball and then do it again they’ll immediately think they’re on fire and try to continue the streak. 

Skinner, investigating how humans make connections and superstitions, put a load of pigeons in a box and randomly gave them food from time to time. He noticed that some pigeons exhibited ritualistic behaviours before feeding them; one pigeon was noted to turn around in circles before food came. Skinner attributed this to the pigeon believing his action affected the arrival of food.

Locus of control is another factor in this -- those of us who make wishes, don’t say things in case we “jinx” it, and believe success is down to luck are said to have an external locus of control. Simply, these people don’t feel that they have control of what happens to them, so may jump on any other explanation.

Is it all in the mind, or are the chemical makeups of the crystals really effective? Chris French (from Goldsmiths, my alma mater) recently asked the most ardent crystal believers to try and distinguish between genuine and fake crystals by holding them. Surprisingly, the believers couldn’t tell the difference.

French says that the healing powers are simply a placebo effect. I believe that people don’t give the link between mental health and physical as much credit as it deserves -- my offering on this subject is that due to the fact that crystals clearly offer some kind of relaxing and happy feeling, this calms down the psyche which in turn allows the body to focus on healing elsewhere, and everything seems a lot less bleak. But what do I know. I’m basically fighting pseudoscience with pseudoscience, but it is interesting to ask where the line is blurred.

Something I always want to know is why are these alternative things always so sexy and pretty? Why are crystals healing, and why aren’t woodlice? Why was I a princess in my past life, and why was I not a toilet cleaner? Is this all just a bit of self-indulgent life-accessorising? Who knows. Who will ever know.

If you’re interested in reading more and have a lot of patience, this article is pretty interesting - written by an alleged scientist who didn’t believe in the healing powers of crystals until their boyfriend Jimmy Ohm took her to a class by a Reiki master. 

You can’t make this stuff up. 

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Conservatives and Liberals: Is Psychology to Blame?

A new study has found that differences between conservatives and liberals may be psychologically fundamental.

Evolution has always served to protect us, and this applies to social situations as much as physical ones. The Negativity Bias is a great example of this – during impression formation, or the process of meeting someone new, we might unknowingly make a list of their traits. When you then try and remember the person on another day, the good and bad traits are not summed equally – more weight is given to the negative traits, and you may have a more negative picture than when you met them. In other words, the bad things stick with you more.

The Negativity Bias serves as a channel of self-development as well as protection; of course you will remember negative features about someone if they seem dangerous, but you will also remember negative occurrences about yourself (for example, making a mistake at work) so you can ensure you can improve on this (remembering not to make the mistake again), become your ideal self and basically be the best that you can be (also evolutionary – you want to feel like the strongest of the pack).

Mark Mills of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln investigated the strengths of the Negativity Bias (NB)– between participants in political conservatives and liberals. After quizzing participants on their political preferences, researchers showed the participants 120 positive, negative and neutral photos in preparation for a memory test. After this, the same participants were shown 240 photos (that is, all the photos they’d already seen plus an even split of new photos) and asked to identify which they’d seen in the original test.

The researchers were expecting some kind of difference in positive and negative image memory between the two groups, but they weren’t expecting as dramatic a result as what they found. The most conservative participants remembered about 91% of negative images and 80% of positive; the most liberal remembered just 84% negative compared with 96% positive. 45% of variance between participants was accounted for by political ideology.

Most people will attribute political ideologies to social environments and upbringings, and this study should not omit this possibility. It is unreasonable to think that your head is “built” in a certain way which dictates your political stance; it is also unreasonable to say that your political stance affects your head. However, you could make a few guesses as to why the above was found.

I mentioned an “ideal self” evolutionary tactic earlier. Those with a higher negativity bias might be more keen to achieve their ideal self, and visa versa. Considering the (sometimes) higher class upbringings of conservatives, including the pressure and social status associated with these, a higher negativity bias in this group may be understandable.

At the same time, it MIGHT NOT BE! The last thing I want to do is generalise findings, especially when it comes to profiling. However, studies are good to report, and this one is great because of its relevance at the moment (#IVotedEarly).

Where do you think you stand in a negativity bias? Do you remember the good, the bad, or the ugly things the most about a person? Have I biased you to start only remembering good things? Try not to let that happen – remember, as said by co-author of this study, Kevin Smith: “if you ignore a positive stimulus you might miss lunch, but if you ignore a negative stimulus, you might BE lunch”(!)

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Genetically depressed rats given “playground” psychotherapy; recovery ensues

I love a bit of weird science, especially when it leaves you with something of an uplifting message. Animal studies are an interesting one because while they can’t be totally applicable to humans, the biological frameworks researchers find still give us a great window into understanding humans’ behaviour. 

One can argue that depression is a result of a genetic imbalance, causing low serotonin levels and thus low mood. Another argument is that depression is caused by environment or a cognitive bias which suggests that a person is simply not good enough, not liked and/or doomed to fail. A lot of people find the former more comforting, as to look at mental illness in terms of a biological disease makes it seem more socially acceptable as it resembles a more “conventional” disease like flu or a broken leg. On the other hand, one might find a biological explanation slightly more worrying as it suggests that a person is simply “born that way” and unable to change. This can be a problem especially for those who don’t  want to be taking SSRIs for the rest of their lives. 

Enter Northwestern University to save the day, having found that rats bred to be genetically depressed were curable through solely environmental factors. The genetic depression model for rats is similar to that in humans in terms of blood biomarkers. Rats bred for depression across 33 generations showed despair when placed in a water tank by just floating around the water, not showing much movement. These depressed rats were taken to a kind of rat Disneyland - a playground filled with toys to chew on and places where they could climb on and hide in - and left there for a month. This was their “psychotherapy”, and any recovery would be solely from their new environment as no medication was involved. 

After a month, the originally depressed rats were taken out of the playground and put back into a tank of water. Amazingly, this time they happily paddled around. They even showed similar behaviour to “control” rats who weren’t bred to have depression, essentially suggesting that an improved environment was a sufficient cure.  

The reason the findings here are uplifting is because it shows that even if biology is a large factor in determining depression, a person might not be stuck with it and they can also use non-biological methods to ease the syndrome. Not only that, the authors point out that humans can’t be totally genetically predisposed to depression (as was the case with the rats). In other words, it would be harder for the genetically depressed rats to cure depression with an environmental method, but even they managed. Humans with a multi-factor disposition, therefore, have even more of a chance than the rats to feel better. Furthermore, a person with depression in their family can feel reassured by this study, as it highlights nurture rather than nature as a cause of depression (thus minimising the chances of receiving the disorder genetically). 

Overall, it seems that environment has a larger impact on mental health than was once thought. The biological argument still stands, but it would seem that a change in lifestyle, rather than chemical balance, could help ease depression. 

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Alternative Alternative Medicine: Environment and Health

My travels to Norfolk are never anything other than lovely. It’s not just because of the culture, or the opportunity to see my partner’s family (and their collection of amazing cats) - it becomes something of a mental health break for me. Living between London and Brighton can take its toll on anyone after a while, and it’s only when I’m on the train and clock the flat, green Norfolk landscape when I feel like it’s time to breathe and take things at my own pace. 

My most recent trip got me thinking about how more natural environments are so good for you, even going as far as helping your physical and mental health. I don’t normally condone alternative medicines on here (namely homeopathy; faith healing; anything involving crystals) but I think it’s so important to bear environmental impact in mind, especially if you’re like me and often forget to give yourself a break. 

 I’ve chosen a couple of studies to share. The first one was by Velarde, Gry and Tveit (2007) who said that visible landscapes can affect humans in many ways, including health and wellbeing. They found that viewing photos of natural landscapes (as opposed to urban) encouraged faster recovery from physical illness, and short-term recovery from stress and/or mental fatigue, essentially exploring the healing properties from viewing nature. 

Lee et al (2008) went one step further and actually put their participants into the different environments to get a more realistic interpretation of their effects. They had 12 young males visiting either forests or cities. When the participants reported back, those who’d visited the forests had significantly less cortisol (a hormone produced to tackle stress) in their saliva as well as lower blood pressure and pulse rates. The forest group also reported higher levels of comfort than those who visited the city. 

There are also studies which suggest that walks in natural landscapes do wonders for your concentration and puzzle-solving ability, which is why taking a work break by wandering round town may not be a good idea, and why people choose Sundays to go for country walks, restoring their brain for the week ahead. 

So how come this environmental impact exists? The obvious suggestion is that your brain can only process so much information, and by giving it the bright lights and loud noises of the city you’re bound to wear it out. Furthermore, it’s during stressful times when you’re more likely to jump to conclusions or make irrational decisions as your brain tries to bypass some of the work by giving you a shortcut. 

All in all, living in a stressful environment isn’t fun for anyone. No matter how busy you find yourself - and no matter how much you love it - take an hour or a day each week to focus on natural landscapes. It might not solve any problem going, but your body and mind will thank you for it. 

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What do you think about Richard Cairns now that he's changed the uniform policy in Brighton College to allow transgender people to wear either the male or female uniforms, depending on their dysphoria?

Having had a long discussion with my partner about single vs mixed sex schools, combined with his new decision, I think that I may have got the wrong end of the stick and he's a nice guy. I still think what he said was questionable and wasn't put in the best light. Thanks for asking!

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7 Things You Didn’t Know About Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon which marries a person’s senses together, resulting in something of a crossover. Basically, someone may smell something and “see” a colour associated with the smell, whereas you or I (provided you’re not a synesthete either) would simply smell and see nothing. 

In A Level Psychology, my teacher told us that her favourite branch of Psychology was cognitive simply because of this phenomenon, so in honour of her (I couldn’t reach her during uni when I was struggling to remember a useful story she told us, and I can’t reach her now), here are 14 facts (the term is used loosely - “titbits” would be more appropriate) about Synesthesia. 

1. Roman numerals are colourless

Number-colour synesthesia is a common form of the phenomenon in which a person may see the number 5 in green, 8 in red, for example. Give them a V or a VIII, however, and they’ll see no colour.  The same is found in clusters of dots representing numbers (5 dots, 8 dots, etc). This is discussed in terms of grapheme, rather than concept, being the trigger of colour perception. But could it be because numbers are simply more recognisable and therefore easier to connect TO the concept? It’s a bit of an exhausting question and requires a lot of thought, and considering my current frowny-face at just THINKING about thinking about it I don’t think it’d be best for me to mull it over right now.. Discussion is welcome!

2. There are checks in place to make sure synesthetes (people who experience synesthesia) aren’t faking it

Look, I get it, some people really believe they’re the star of the dramatic screenplay which is their life, and every now and then they’ll blurt out a story that makes you go “really, Kevin? Another averted bear attack? In the rain? With your bare hands?”. Even with the large amount of these kinds of people in the world, it’s almost certain that synesthetes don’t fall into that group. 

The images of 5s and 2s above are used in a test to assess someone’s level of synesthesia, and test takers are given the simple instruction of “finding” the 2s among the 5s. People experiencing number-colour synesthesia consistently find this task easier because they simply have to look for the colours that they associate with the numbers. It’s pretty hard for a faker to keep faking under these conditions, hence a pretty solid ground for synesthetes’ genuine experiences. 

3. You can be born with it, or it can be “given” to you.

“Developmental” synesthesia is when you’ve always had it, and “acquired” synesthesia is when you get it later on in life. Don’t get too excited, though - the latter can be a result of head trauma or incident; not worth deliberately trying just for an extra sensory ability. 

4. Celebrities’ synesthesia could be to do with their creativity and success, but maybe not

Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, John Mayer and Stevie Wonder all had/have sound-colour synesthesia. A direct link between creativity (namely, flexibility and novel thoughts) and synesthesia has not been found, but it’s suggested that people with synesthesia are able to form meaningful associations between different stimuli, resulting in high levels of creativity. 

5. You can (CAUTIOUSLY) take a test to see where you measure up on the synesthesia scale.

The Synesthesia Battery has an online test you can take to determine whether or not you’re a synesthete. I wouldn’t take the results too seriously, though - remember that nothing is for certain based on online tests. Also, if you do take the test, ANSWER HONESTLY. Don’t be trying to impress our friend Kevin from earlier with fake answers to look special. You’ll be wasting your time, the website’s time, and everyone else’s time when you tell them about your fake abilities. Other than that, have fun!! (P.S., those are my results above. However, I may dispute these results, as you’ll see in the next paragraph...)

6. There are many types of synesthesia - including one that may make someone think they’re psychic!

*guilty* - I’ve mostly talked about number-colour and sound-colour so far, as is often the case when synesthesia gets brought up. However, synesthesia can manifest itself in many ways. 

Something that I’ve only learned while researching for this post is that misophonia falls into the synesthesia brackets. Misophonia is an irrational negative reaction to certain sounds, essentially an auditory-emotional form of synesthesia. I get it with freezers - if I hear any frosty drawers or crunchy ice, my throat tenses up and I start to feel nausea. You may get the same experience when hearing a blackboard, chewing sounds and so on. 

Mirror-touch synesthesia is where it really gets interesting, though - this is when a person may see someone being touched and feel the touch in the same area on their own person. People with this condition are understandably found to have higher levels of empathy than those without, but you may be forgiven for thinking you have levels of ESP if you’re having such experiences.

7. Synesthesia has, of course, inspired artists to demonstrate what they see. 

Google “art by synesthetes” and you’ll be inundated with thought-provoking pieces illustrating the unique visions of certain artists. 

Melissa McCracken has released a set of paintings apparently depicting what she sees when she hears certain songs. Above is what she says she sees when listening to Life On Mars by David Bowie. The authenticity of these paintings’ representation level is hard to gauge, however, and you can’t help but wonder if the aesthetics have been adjusted to please the eye while fitting the interesting background. Still quite fun to have a look. 

So there you go. Hopefully you enjoyed these snippets of info about synesthesia. Do have a go with the test, and let me know if you think you experience any of the experiences mentioned above!!

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Seriously, the amount of misleading poll results I come across in everyday life is nothing short of infuriating.

Not just this, but daytime TV “research proof” claims also drive me mental (”a glass of wine a day will help you see better at night! An aspirin a day will improve your sense of humour! A line of sand a day increases your chances of a lottery win!”). 

Remember that there is always research behind such claims - often not investigating or reporting what the claim says - and research is far from perfect. 

[sceptic-tank]

No more self harm chic: Topshop removes golden scar tattoos from shelves

Social media feeds are peppered with an overwhelming sense of victory today, as many of us celebrate Topshop’s decision to cease sales of their temporary golden tattoos which have been under fire for resembling “self harm scars”.

Lucas Shelemy, creator of the now victorious petition, argued that “Topshop should not be normalising self harm or presenting it as a fashion trend”. Shelemy also pointed out that the “scars”, which largely resemble those of self harm, are distressing to those who have experienced self harm. I might add that it’s incredibly offensive to make light of such a debilitating and painful symptom by presenting such symbols in a glamorous light. Nonetheless, the tattoos flew off the virtual shelves, with “out of stock” notices appearing on the product’s webpage. 

Reports on this story fail to mention the apparent cultural appropriation that comes with this product - that is, through the medium of the Native American woman on the packaging. 

In this sense, Freedom (the “third party brand” which supplies jewellery, accessories etc to Topshop) are also making light of the challenges Native Americans had to face, creating a costume out of a culture which is still going strong. 

Topshop have clarified that Lucie Davis, a jewellery design student from Central Saint Martins, collaborated with Freedom in this range and aimed to highlight and celebrate imperfections in a world where flaws are mocked and airbrushing thrives. However, Nadia Mendoza of the Self Esteem Team points out that this product is unsuccessful in its mission by belittling and glamorising self harm. “You wouldn’t see tattoos of pickled livers saying ‘flaws worth binge drinking for’,” she says, “with 1 in 4  suffering a mental health problem, there is no doubt we need to be addressing the issue, but not via transfer stickers. I feel we're only one step away from a self-harm emoji.”. 

As a strong believer in ousting mental health stigma (and someone who is sickened by any sort of illness being used as a fashion statement), this news has surely cheered me up and it’s encouraging to see so many people talking about mental health and realising what is and isn’t ok. It’s surprising that more people didn’t mention the cultural side of how offensive this product was, but it definitely goes to show that mental health has its place in the news, and people are incredibly successful in getting their voices heard when they want to. 

This is a blog about psychology, so I’ve focused mainly on the mental health side of why this story is important, but we still have such a long way to go in terms of respect for other cultures too. However, if this petition’s success is anything to go by (3538 and victory in a few days, anyone?) we know that speaking out, getting involved, and most importantly getting the message across to the people in power CAN sometimes work! With that in mind, if there’s anything you think is wrong - anything you can’t believe is real and happening in your world - go ahead and make a stand. You never know what you might change!

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Hohohohoho

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Religiously Integrated Therapy “At Least As Effective” As Conventional Therapy, Study Finds

Recently, I talked about how religion and having belief in an overseer gives us a certain level of comfort, leading us even to pose in submissive or “not worthy” ways in order to feel the comfort’s full effects. It’s not surprising, then, that researchers have found a noteworthy effect when integrating religious belief into treatment for depression. 

Dr Harold Koenig has found that cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) which incorporates the patient’s beliefs is “at least as effective” as standard CBT - meaning it could be even more effective than the standard - in treating patients with depression and chronic illness.

Conventional CBT focuses on identifying which parts of the patient’s thought processes cause them to engage in unfavourable behaviour (for example, the patient recalls a time when a person ignored them, leading the patient to feel unloved; the doctor suggests a different reason for the incident, for example suggesting that the person simply didn’t hear the patient; the patient is encouraged to remember this possibility next time the negative event occurs).

132 patients, all reporting religion/spirituality as being “at least somewhat important” to themselves, were randomly assigned to trials of religious or non-religious CBT. Religious CBT would explicitly use the client’s religious beliefs to identify and replace unhelpful thoughts and behaviours; conventional CBT focused on more broad issues such as forgiveness, engagement in social activities, and gratefulness. After 10 therapy sessions on the phone, both groups produced similar improvement in depression scores.

Highly religious patients showed much greater improvement in their depression scores after religious CBT, compared to highly religious patients after conventional CBT. As the authors mention, many people with serious illnesses resulting in depression strongly rely on their faith to cope, so it makes sense that mixing an unfamiliar external measure (CBT) with a much-loved familiar measure (religion) could create some kind of “supertreatment”. 

Koenig reports negative attitudes from religious people towards psychological treatment, possibly due to the belief in God’s choice and plan for the individual. However, this mix of psychology and religion seems to fuse the best of both worlds together, resulting in a comforting and familiar treatment for depression. 

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Hi all! 

My graduation was on Wednesday the 11th of September and I got to share it with two of the main inspirations of my Psychology degree - Chris French and Elizabeth Loftus.

Chris French studies the psychology of paranormal beliefs, cognition and emotion, has appeared on TV debates and the Guardian, and was my thesis supervisor. 

Elizabeth Loftus is a psychologist I’ve studied since I was 16, specialising in studies of memory - particularly false memories. The day we graduated was also the day she received an honorary doctorate, and we all felt HUGELY emotional to be sharing such a special day with her. 

Now that I’ve graduated and my education is on hold, it’s more important than ever for me to keep this blog up. I can’t stand to miss out on psychology news and knowledge, and I especially don’t want to stop sharing the knowledge with you!! In this “spirit” (ha-ha) I’m going to be trawling science news sites, twitter feeds, magazines etc to keep myself up-to-date and this blog fresh. I’m also really keen to get a bigger readership (maybe in time for next year’s Ockham awards?) and I think more content is the way to go. 

Thanks for visiting again! I hope to dazzle you with some studies and theories soon. N x

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Awe increases belief in the supernatural, study finds

When I’m on long journeys, I can’t help but admire the sky, and nothing beats seeing the early evenings’ crepuscular rays, also known as “God rays”. The  way the sunlight bursts through the rigidity of the clouds can bring immense  feelings of elation and promise (most likely thanks to association from every clichéd film in the world) - a sense of a newfound “can-do” attitude. Inspiration flows, the threat of rain is minimised, and the surrounding scenery lights up, almost as if being blessed.

It’s no surprise, then, that these rays have been attributed to God. Other natural wonders (Grand Canyon, Aurora Borealis) have similar effects - probably because we realise just how small we are, how incredible nature is, and how something so divine must have an equally divine cause. 

Piercarlo Valdesolo and Jesse Graham of Claremount McKenna College and the University of Southern California (2012) devised a study looking at the link between awe and supernatural belief, and pretty much found that awe leads to stronger belief in “non-human entity” plans. 

Half of their participants watched awe-inspiring scenes from Planet Earth (BBC), and the other half watched standard clips of news interviews. When asked, the “awe” group reported higher belief in God and supernatural control than the “news” group. 

A further study found that people who watched the awe-inspiring clips became “increasingly intolerant of uncertainty”. We know that uncertainty often leads us to invest in supernatural phenomena, and this finding could explain the kind of itching feeling to search for answers proportional to the event. The researchers note that even phenomena we know to be results of natural causes were still explained in terms supernatural causes, potentially to match the “jaw-dropping” features some phenomena hold. 

Conspiracy theories are often explained in terms of proportionality - a “big” event needing a “big” explanation, for example JFK’s murder caused by a large conspiracy rather than a lone gunman - and the awe/supernatural link seems to follow the same mechanism. 

All in all, it seems that any event which appears bigger than us is quickly explained in terms of a superhuman phenomenon - potentially as a result of our evolutionary need to constantly search for a leader. The study mentioned here was done in 2012, but the researchers discuss future studies investigating certain postures involved in religious practice “such as kneeling, bowing and gazing up” - in prayer, for example. The researchers propose a link between submissive body postures and higher susceptibility to awe - I have a feeling they’ll find one. 

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This Website Reveals Prejudices You Didn’t Know You Had

A group at Harvard have devised a test to collect data on implicit prejudices while teaching us a little bit about ourselves and how prejudices work.

Project Implicit is a non-profit organisation run by social psychology scientists where you can take an Implicit Association Test, a word-association game which tests your prejudices held at an unconscious level - in other words, prejudices you hold without realising.  

The game starts with notably straightforward word games, for example matching races to negative and positive words. The crucial thing (in this example at least) is that at the easy start of the game, positive words are associated with difference races. Test takers are asked to match positive words with [perceived] "good” races, and negative words with "bad” races. Depending on the participant’s background or location, this part of the test is easy - our brains have a much nicer time with matching items rather than conflicting items, so this portion seems smooth. The decisions are made quickly, so that the candidate allows their unconscious thoughts to come through, with no deliberate interference that might be used in everyday situations.

The hard part of the test is when the “good” groups are to be associated with the “bad” words, and visa versa. The incongruency of this task takes a lot out of the brain and this part takes a while longer as a result. Finally, the first part and second part are merged together to create a mixed part, where the pairs will either match or not. Your result of implicit prejudice is calculated as a result of how long you took, and how many mistakes you make. 

It’s an eye-opening game and I really suggest you play (you’ll be helping the researchers by doing so!), but BE WARNED: don’t take your score personally. You may well find out you implicitly associate women with home  and men with work, or black people with negative things and white people with positive. Even if this may be, the test is more of a study on your society rather than you. From the moment you’re born, you’re learning the right and wrongs in the world, and previous generations (with less liberal ideologies - again, not their fault) were there to teach you, maybe without realising. This is why consciousness stops these prejudices from showing - your active thoughts override the passive ones which appear automatically, replacing them with how you feel. So, while the results may be eye-opening and appear put you in a bad light, remind yourself of what you consciously and currently think, and remember the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness. 

Have a go at the tests - try a few different ones! All of your information is kept totally private. 

Another pareidolia post coming up :)

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In case you didn't know, Sceptic Tank is also on Twitter @sceptictankblog!!

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Has Curiosity found proof of life on Mars? No, probably not.

You’ve really got to hand it to Curiosity - single-handedly exploring Mars since August, 2012, the rover has already been accredited to discoveries such as faces, traffic lights, a ball and even a “huge penis” (admittedly drawn by the rover itself, but I couldn’t not include it). More recently, the bot has photographed what conspiracy theorists are calling evidence of intelligent design.

YouTube user Paranormal Crucible describes the structure, as seen in the above photo, as having a “near-perfect pyramid design”, going on to suggest that the stone is either the top of a pyramid, the rest of which being buried under the martian surface, or a “marker stone”, which were used to guide travellers in deserted regions on Earth. 

The comments on the video offer a great window into the logic behind this thinking. “Use your head,” one commenter argues, “it’s virtually impossible for a naturally occurring structure to have such symmetry and fractal lines - it doesn’t take a PhD to know that”.  

I currently have way more tabs open than I’m comfortable with, all with various examples of crisp, beautiful, naturally-occurring formations, but I’ll just share two. 

The Giant’s Causeway was named as the fourth greatest natural wonder in the United Kingdom, as voted for by Radio Times readers. The gorgeous pillars were formed about 50 to 60 million years ago as a result of molten basalt, intruding through chalk beds, eventually cooling down and contracting into pillars. Legend had it that such structures were built by a giant, hence the name. 

Pyrite, also known as Fool’s Gold, is an iron sulphide which often forms cuboid-shaped crystals. The structures look far too perfect to have simply occurred with no intervention from intelligent life, but the various features can be explained as results of phenomena such as penetration twinning (a very risky google search) and their structural make up. 

And the psychology behind seeing a pyramid on Mars? Again, we come back to my favourite phenomenon of Pareidolia - an evolutionary tactic developed in humans to quickly recognise patterns in vague images. As for the conspiracy theorists themselves, their willingness to jump on the structure as being evidence of aliens could be the result of a confirmation bias, whereby a person  quickly endorses events that agree with their theory, and disputes those that don’t.

Personally, I love aliens, and I got so excited when I read the line “proof of intelligent life”, but this just looks like a really nice rock amongst other rocks. It could easily have been formed due to wind erosion, combined with collisions with the surrounding rocks. I’m not a geologist and I’m definitely not a chemist, but I don’t need a PhD to know that the world is a vast and complicated place, Mother Nature is crazy, and these formations can happen naturally. 

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False Memories: A Beginners’ Guide

Last week, I was very lucky to nab a free ticket to the Searching for Satan event - a psychology conference based around the false memory phenomenon -  hosted at Goldsmiths by the British Humanist Association and the Centre for Inquiry UK. Kevin Felstead, one of the speakers, and his father very generously sponsored 8 Gold Psychology students to attend, and I was grateful and ~blessed~ to be able to get one.

I really thought the event would be filled with fellow psychology enthusiasts and Loftus fans, but was suprised to find myself in the company of hecklers, interrupting the lectures of well-respected academics. After tweeting about the event, I went to work and turned my phone on to find a plethora of messages from people who simply don’t believe in false memories.

Of course, people are allowed to believe whatever they will. However, it seemed clear to me that the majority of the challengers didn’t even show a basic understanding of what false memories are or how they could possibly be implanted. Even more worryingly, I found that many people believed that the entire notion of a false memory is an invented syndrome, even a conspiracy to cover up the “truth” of horrific incidents such as child sexual abuse and satanic cults.

So now I feel it’s my duty to make it clear exactly what false memories are, how they’ve been tested, and what it can mean for us, so join me on a solo q&a as I try and explain false memories in the best way I can.

1. What? What’s a false memory?

A false memory is a “fabricated or distorted recollection of an event that did not actually happen” (h/t psychology.about.com). In other words, it’s a memory or story that you have in your head which is either totally made up or  inaccurate. This can happen from missing vital information, or being fed contaminant information after the event.

2. But I see everything, man...

Oh, do you? DO YOU? Have a go at this little test below.

Even if something is right there, you’ll seldom encode (store and thus remember) it if you never put any effort into looking for it. We like to think we’re masters of observation when we notice a boom mic or continuity error in a film, but we’re very likely faced with hundreds of these every day which we never notice.

3. If memories can be false how are you even sure you’re writing this/a student/not a man?

The phenomenon of false memory is often manifested in recalling events from your long term memory, such as childhood. It’s not whether you can be sure of what’s happening at each moment - it’s whether or not an event you’re sure happened actually did. N.B. I thought this was clear but the trolling seemed to focus on questions like this, so I thought I’d better cover it to be sure.

4. How could your memory be changed?

In all sorts of ways. People tend to think that their memory is like a video recorder, and once the stories are in there, they’re in and unchangeable. In reality, our memory is incredibly fallible. One of the main ways your memory can be changed is through what’s called the misinformation effect. This can occur from reading news stories or seeing images from a report, and later reporting it as your own memory. Another way could be from somebody leading your memory in some way, through a leading question or asking if you saw a non-existent event. Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, a controversial healing technique, has been criticised for using leading questions and narratives to produce false memories in their patients. A person could go in to a session feeling depressed, and come out having “remembered” sexual abuse as a child which they must have been repressing.

5. This sounds a bit zany and made-up, is there any evidence?

There is so, so much evidence supporting the fallibilitly of memories, and it took up most of my 5 year psychology education. A couple of examples: Loftus was able to increase a person’s speed report on a car accident according to whether she used “smashed” or “bumped” in questioning; people told they got sick from eating a certain ice cream when younger will avoid eating it in the future; when asked if they did, people will say they saw Bugs Bunny at DisneyWorld, although he isn’t a Disney character; people often report watching footage of Princess Diana’s death, although no such footage exists. I’m planning on going into more detail in separate posts, but this (won’t let me hyperlink: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/remembering_dangerously/) is a fantastic article written by Loftus covering all sorts of matters.

6. Studies are one thing.. when does this actually happen in life?

Take Ronald Cotton, falsely convicted by a rape victim even after being 100% sure he was the same guy. Take the satanic abuse claims that are announced after therapy, but never before. In fact, take the many, many cases on the Innocence Project (http://www.innocenceproject.org/) as examples of false imprisonment due to eyewitness error partnered with the vast amount of exonerations due to evidence other than memories being more capable of finding the right guy.

This may have been a bit of a vague post. For my psychology friends, none of this will have been new, but for those of us who deny any existence of false memories, I’d hope that this offers a basic understanding. I’ll be posting more about this stuff when I’m less ill, or when I ~~remember to~~.