Gorillas in our midst!

Watch this and i will comment on the video next week.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

Why we secretly love a sad film!

We all secretly ( male or female) love to curl up on a winters night with a bottle of wine and chocolate and watch a tearjerker. The Notebook, A little bit of heaven, Love actually, my father my hero - there are many more sad films  that researchers have discovered we actually enjoy watching. Researchers at Ohio State Univeristy reported their study online in March in Communication Research. They asked over 400 undergraduates to view a segment of Atonement (a sad film) and asked them to fill out questionnaires measuring their happiness before and after watching the segment. The researchers found that the participants felt happier after watching the film ( which contradicted their initial hypothesis). They investigated further, and found that the participants felt happier after the film beacuse they had reflected on their own relationships and thought about how much their loved ones enhanced thier life. The participants were effectively 'counting their blessings' following watching a sad film. So next time you feel low becasue of stress at work or a friend has annoyed you, get watching a sad film and putting your life into perspective.

Multiple Personality disorder

Dissociative Identity Disorder or as it is more commonly known- Multiple Personality Disorder, is a severe mental illness that is relatively uncommon. We all daydream from time to time (a process called dissociating) but people who suffer with MPD have a severe form of dissociation which is more like a self-hypnotic state. This state produces a lack of connection in a persons thoughts, memories, feelings, actions or sense of identity. 

People with MPD usually adopt >2 distinct identities or personlaity states. These 'alter' identities have their own age, sex, race, postures, ways of talking and can sometimes be animals.  Switching is the process of revealing different personalities and it can take minutes, days or weeks. Ususally MPD has developed as a coping mechanism and is related to severe and repetitive trauma in childhood and by dissocaiting at the time of trauma people don't associate it with their conscious self.  This leads to further dissocations and MPD.

Evidence has shown links to a part of the brain called the Orbitalfrontal cortex and research is ongoing into the neurodevelopmental mechanism responsible for the development of multiple representations of self.

It is a truely fascinating condition to explore yet a debilitating one to live with.

Why we hit back at the person who bumps into us on the dance floor after 2 white wines!

We all know people whose personlalities and tendencies change considerably when intoxicated with alcohol. Whilst there is a clear indication that this is due to people's inhibitions being suppressed when drunk there has been quite alot of research into specifics of behaviour change when drunk.

The classic is people who have had copius jager bombs starting fights with people who spill drinks on them or bump into them on the dance floor. Research into this has discovered that alcohol exacerbated our 'intentionality bias' - our natural tendecy to assume that others intended their actions. Therefore when that guy spills his drink on you- he meant to do it to really annoy you. Begue et al explained that in sober daily life it takes cognitive effort and control to overcome this intentionality bias and to consider alternative explanations. For example - when your peer at work deletes an important email one has to control the instinct to think he intended to do so. His hand may have slipped when pressing delete- he may have not read the title properly or been busy thinking of other things. Alcohol's well know disinhibitory effect clearly undermines this and allows the intentionality bias to dominate.

So next time you pop out for a few cheeky pint makes sure to take post-it notes in your wallet/purse saying HE/SHE DIDN'T MEAN IT! This does obviously imply that you are able to read and have not lost your wallet and purse.

Information taken from BPS Research digest.

If you commit a crime- try to get a hearing after lunch!!

Given that judges are employed to be fair and just across cases and hearings- the following research is rather worrying.

Researchers at Ben Gurion University in Israel and Columbia University examined decisions made by judges who ruled on convicts' parole requests. It was found that judges granted 65% of requests they heard at the beginning of the day's sessions and almost none at the end. Right after a snack break, approavls jumped back to 65% again.  Now it could be that as is the same with any professional that has to make repeated decisions throughout the day- they suffered from mental fatigue or could it be that when judges are hungry they are more strict??  Does a judge who eats porridge and banana for breakfast grant more requests for parole and a judge who has a coffee and an apple deny more?

Information taked from The American Mind magazine, Volume 22

winning and losing- the psychology behind competitive team sport and business

Since when is losing the way to win team games?

Berger & Pope conducted some interesting research on 18,000 NBA basketball games. Unsuprisingly, they found that the further ahead a team was at half time-the more likely they were to win the game and vice versa for teams losing at half time. However, quite suprisingly- teams that were behind by one point at halftime were more likely to win the game than teams ahead by one point at half time. It has been suggested that this is not due to inpirational half time talks or coaches f**ing and blinding in the changing rooms, instead the sheer psychological influence of being behind another team by a whisker drives motivation.

Berger & Pope also tested this using 2 participants and asking them to compete against each other by pressing two keys on a keyboard as fast as possible. They gave the participants false performance feedback after 30 seconds - either that their score was just ahead or just behind the other participants. They then had another 30 seconds to compete in the same trial. The participants who were told their score was just behind the other particpant increased their tapping efforts significantly more than participants told there score was slightly ahead. Self-efficacy clearly has an impact in this task. Self-efficacy being how much one believes in themselves and their ability. Berger & Pope found that participants that were just behind halfway through the keyboard task and had high self efficacy (belief in self to change the outcome) were significantly more likely to win the overall task.

This has implications not only for sport but also in the workplace. In sport, i think it is near on impossible for a team to try to plan for a one point loss at half time to try to get an overall win - but coaches could provide confidence boosts for their team members increasing their self efficacy incase this eventuality does occur.
In today's society business team managers are encouraged to provide positive feedback to team members but this research suggests people should be given feedback about how they are performing in relation to a slightly better performer in order to increase their individual performance.

Information taken from The BPS Research digest.

Fed up of unproductive meetings at work? A psychological cure?

Meetings make up a large proportion of most employees work day and yet most employees find meeting tedious, boring and frustrating. The dutch actually have a word for this Vergaderziekte- or meeting sickness. Some people have posed that meetings are arranged for people to exert and demonstrate their power and are generally poor with bad leadership, no real agenda, poorly defined goals and lots of people putting forward their ideas or objections for self-validation. However, well organised meetings can be inspirational, productive and valuable.   How can psychological theory and research improve meeting structure and outcome?

1. Research has found that there is simply too many meetings in a work day and that this has negative effects on the individual. Luong & Rogelberg 2005 found that meetings are generally perceived as a "hassle or interruption"  and there was a strong correlation between levels of tiredness, perceived workload and the number of meetings attended. However, people who are less goal-oreinted in their work actually find meetings desirable.
2. Keep meetings short-don't waste time.  People often book meetings for an hour as it's an easy round about time slot but an hour is rarely needed. It has been suggested to use a special office TIM clock, that works out the money spent during the meeting. You enter the amount of people in the meeting, the average hourly wage of each of the attendees and the TIM clock works out the cost of your meeting.
3. A good meeting will have clear well-defined goals and a rational allocation of time to each goal.
4. Use meetings to get involved and speak up. It is your responsibility to get engaged and not fall asleep, doodle on your pad or go on the internet. You'll get so much more out of meetings if you force yourself to get engaged.
5. Change it up- all meetings don't have to be sat down. Sit down meetings have been shown to last longer than stand up meetings whilst decision making is similar across both. Food, lighting and temperature are also important factors to take into consideration.
6. Meet socially prior to the formal meeting by organising either dinner/drinks for attendees - this has been shown to improve meeting effectiveness.
7. Ask for feedback from other meeting attendees when things have been trialled or changed. Listen to it and work on it.
8. Research by Kohn & Smith 2010 found that group brainstorming may actually impede creativity as people become unconsciously fixated on others ideas and therefore suggest ideas similar to peers. To foster creative diversity it may be better to set people to working alone. However, a follow up study by Kohn et al in 2011 found that collaborative group work does have a role to play when combining individual ideas already developed to form new creative concepts.

Information taken from The Psychologist magazine, volume 24.