The psychology of voting

The UK General Election is here! The political parties have done all they can to attract our votes. Psychology tells us that not only are they competing with each other, they also have to contend with the foibles of human nature. Many of us like to think that we vote according to sound reason, perhaps for the good of the country, our own family's best interests, or by selecting the most fair and competent candidate. In fact, there's evidence that our votes are frequently influenced by more superficial factors, from a candidate's looks to the weather on election day. Here we digest the psychology of psephology, running down the evidence for 10 factors that affect people's behaviour in the ballot box:

Candidate Appearance
It would be reassuring to think that the electorate choose who to vote for based on the candidates' track records and future policy promises. In truth, many of us are swayed simply by the way that politicians look. Consider a 2009 study that asked Swiss students to look at multiple pairs of unfamiliar French political candidates and in each case to select the one who looked most competent. Most of the time, the candidate selected by students as looking the most competent was also the one who'd had real life electoral success, the implication being that voters too had been swayed by the candidates' appearance (there's little evidence that appearance and competence actually correlate). Unsurprisingly, being attractive also helps win votes, especially in war time(in peace time, looking trustworthy is more of an advantage). Other research has shown that we're more likely to vote for male and female candidates with deeper voices. Meanwhile obesity is a disadvantage for female candidates, but may help male candidates. People ignorant about politics are more swayed by politicians' appearance, especially if the politician has had plenty of TV exposure.

Candidate Personality
Journalists are often criticised for focusing overly on politicians' personalities rather than the "real issues" – in the current election campaign, just look at the media commentary on opposition leader Ed Miliband. Psychology research suggests candidates' perceived traits are relevant, at least in the sense that they are related to the way we vote. A study from 2007 found that we tend to vote for politicians who we think have similar personalities to ourselves – for instance, prior to the 2004 US Presidential election, people who thought John Kerry shared their traits were more likely to vote for him in the election, whereas people who thought they were like George W Bush tended to vote in his favour. A similar effect has been found in the context of Italian and Spanish politics. Meanwhile, in a study published last year, students said they would be more willing to vote for politicians whom they considered to be more open-minded, friendly, and emotionally stable (the politicians' extraversion and conscientiousness were not related to the students' voting intentions). 

The Polling Station
A growing body of evidence suggests that the places we go to vote, influence the way we vote. For example, in 2008, US researchers reported that people who voted at a polling station housed in a school were more likely to back a bill proposing more funding for education; and a 2010 study found voting in a church (rather than school or other location) boosted support for a conservative candidate. Sometimes these priming effects are less predictable: a study published last year (pdf) found that voters at a polling station in a church were more likely to support the introduction of same-sex marriages: possibly the religious symbolism reminded them that the arguments against such marriages are faith-based, which only served to increase their support for the marriages. There's even evidence that an uneven flooring could affect us: in this study from 2010, people leaning to the left (because of missing wheels on a chair) were found to be more sympathetic towards left-wing political attitudes (and vice versa if a wheel was missing on the right). A similar finding was obtained more recently using a wonky Wii balance board. A somewhat related and intriguing line of research finds that many people suspect their ballot choice is not truly secret and this influences them to vote according social pressures, such as to conform with their declared affiliations.

Rain and Sunshine
Evidence from the USA (pdf), Spain and the Netherlands suggests that for each extra inch of rain fall on voting day, turnout reduces by around one per cent. Conversely, sunny weather and higher temperatures increase turn out (but not in Sweden where poor weather made no difference to turn out). There are also some more intriguing meteorological effects on voting. For instance, based on evidence that people's attitudes towards climate change are influenced by the local weather (higher temperatures increase belief in man-made global warming), the UK's Green Party might wish for a heat wave to strike at election time. Yet local sunshine was also found to increase approval ratings for US President George W Bush when he was in office, so perhaps Prime Minister Cameron would also benefit from a sunny spell. But consider too how poor weather affects people's risk aversion. A study presented in 2013 showed that people are less likely to vote for risky candidates when the weather is poor. A key feature of this General Election is said to be the rise of minor parties and untested candidates. Perhaps the major parties should start their rain dances?

Shark Attacks, Sports Results and Storms
Following a dramatic series of shark attacks in New Jersey in 1916, voters punished the incumbent President Woodrow Wilson (according to an analysis published in 2012). This is just one example of how the electorate tends to blame governing parties for unwelcome events, even if those events are beyond the politicians' control. The converse is that incumbent politicians gain from positive circumstances. For instance, a 2010 US study found that the incumbent President benefited from extra votes in districts that had enjoyed football and basketball wins in the days leading up to an election. The effects of uncontrollable events are not always predictable and may depend on how politicians are seen to respond. When Hurricane Sandy struck in the days before the 2012 Presidential Election, this apparently (pdf) increased local votes for the incumbent, President Obama. 

Daughters and Sisters
How we vote could depend on the gender of our children. That's according to a longitudinal analysis of British citizens published in 2010 – after having a daughter, people's political attitudes were more likely to swing to the left, and vice versa after having a son. The researchers think this happens because having a daughter increases awareness of issues facing women, such as pay discrimination, and increases sympathy for the typically greater desire among women for investment in public services. Note this is a contentious area: a Europe-wide study published last year failed to replicate this finding, while a US studyfound daughters increased parents' support for the (right-wing) Republican party. Of course, parents also influence their children's political persuasions: there's evidence that sons are affected by both parents, but daughters only by their mothers. The effects of parents on children's voting is both socio-cultural andgenetic. We're also influenced by our siblings, especially our elder siblings. Just as the British analysis showed daughters increase parents' left-wing sympathies, a 2011 US study found that so too does having an older sister.

Scandals
An analysis of the last UK General Election in 2010 found that voters punished candidates who'd been found out by the expenses scandal – but the effect was modest and less than expected. A study of local Spanish politics also found that voters punished politicians caught up in corruption scandals, but the extent depended on media coverage and whether charges were brought. Voters' responses to scandals tends to be highly partisan – that is, we're lenient when the transgressing politician is from the party we support (and vice versa). Timing is important: a study from last year found that scandals that break later in an election campaign may be less harmful because voters have acquired policy information by then. A drip, drip of new scandal information sustains its damaging effects. The grammar used in reports also makes a difference: the imperfect tense "was fiddling his expenses" is more damaging than "fiddled". Some commentators warn that political scandals distract us from real issues, but a 2010 study found that when a politician is caught up in a scandal, this actually improves our memory for their policies – this is consistent with an associative memory account, in which the salience of the scandal boosts our memory for other information related to the politician.

Voter Emotions
When we're feeling happy with life, we're more likely to vote for the ruling party, so says an analysis from 2014 which controlled for the influence people's economic circumstances. A lab study (and this one) found that when we're angry we pay less attention to details about candidates; when we're fearful, by contrast, we scrutinise information more carefully, arguably making us more informed voters (but see here for a critique). Israeli research (pdf) finds that living in fear of rocket attacks increases people's support for right wing parties (although note, there's evidence that terrorist attacks in Madrid increased support for the country's opposition left-wing party in the election that came days later). Meanwhile, research shows that people who are more prone to disgust (for example, they dislike sitting on a bus seat left warm by a stranger) are more likely to hold right-wing conservative views.

Political Adverts and Negative Campaigns
Political parties spend enormous amounts on advertising: this 2011 study on television ads found the effects on voting preferences to be strong, but short-lived. Ads with moody music and lighting are more effective. What about negative campaigns? In the current UK General Election Campaign, the incumbent Tory defence secretary recently made an attack on the character of the leader of the opposition and was widely criticised for doing so. This largely fits the findings from a 2010 lab study on negative campaigns – politicians who made negative statements about their opponents suffered a backlash, while the target of the attack was unaffected. It's worth noting though that based on voters' subconscious attitudes, the target of the attack did suffer a loss in standing (as did the politician making the attack). This meta-analysis from 2007 found that negative campaigns don't adversely affect voter turnout, but they do reduce trust in politics and lower public mood. A new study recently found that watching adverts that are congruent with our political beliefs makes us more likely to vote; watching an ad that clashes with our views has little effect.

"It's The Economy, Stupid" ...
... this apparently was Bill Clinton's campaign mantra back in the 90s. With the British economy showing signs of recovery, today's incumbent Tory party will be hoping that Bill Clinton was correct – that ultimately, if the economy is doing well, people will reward the ruling party. However, British research suggests that this is not the case: for example, non-Tory voters who were financially comfortable at the time of the 1997 General Election did not reward the incumbent Tory party at that time by switching allegiance (and ditto in 2001 when previously non-Labour supporters in a good financial position failed to switch to voting Labour). These results might be explained in part by most people's partisanship (and "motivated reasoning") – when things go well under our preferred party, we credit the party, but if things go well under a party we oppose, then we don't. That said, there is evidence that sudden increases in people's personal wealth does influence their voting tendencies – winning the lottery makes it more likely that people will vote Republican, says this US study (and this one), and more likely that they'll support this incumbent party, says this Spanish research. This UK paper (pdf) found that as housing prices increase (to the benefit of home owners, in terms of the wealth they have invested in their property), so too do intentions to vote for the Tory party.
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--further reading--
If you enjoyed this post, you'll love The Psychology Violent Extremism, Digested, and our other extended features.

Visual illusions foster open mindedness

From sworn witness accounts of alien visitations, to deep-rooted trust in quack medical treatments, the human trait that psychologists call "naive realism" has a lot to answer for. This is people's instinctive feeling that they perceive the world how it is, encapsulated by the saying "seeing is believing." The truth, of course, is that our every perception is our brain's best guess, built not merely with the raw material of what's out in the world, but just as much with the bricks of expectation, hope and imagination.

William Hart and his colleagues at the University of Alabama propose that naive realism not only inspires false confidence in what we see, but also more generally in our beliefs and assumptions. Based on this logic, the researchers tested whether explaining to people about naive realism, and showing them the unconscious, fallible mental work that leads to their unstable perceptions, might have knock-on effects, making them more open-minded and more doubtful of their assumptions about a person's character.

Nearly 200 students took part and were split into four groups. One group read about naive realism (e.g. "visual illusions provide a glimpse of how our brain twists reality without our intent or awareness") and then they experienced several well-known, powerful visual illusions (e.g. the Spinning Wheels, shown above, the Checker Shadow, and the Spinning Dancer), with the effects explained to them. The other groups either: just had the explanation but no experience of the illusions; or completed a difficult verbal intelligence test; or read about chimpanzees.

Afterwards, whatever their group, all the participants read four vignettes about four different people. These were written to be deliberately ambiguous about the protagonist's personality, which could be interpreted, depending on the vignette, as either assertive or hostile; risky or adventurous; agreeable or a push over; introverted or snobbish. There was also a quiz on the concept of naive realism.

The key finding is that after reading about naive realism and experiencing visual illusions, the participants were less certain of their personality judgments and more open to the alternative interpretation, as compared with the participants in the other groups. The participants who only read about naive realism, but didn't experience the illusions, showed just as much knowledge about naive realism, but their certainty in their understanding of the vignettes wasn't dented, and they remained as closed to alternative interpretations as the participants in the other comparison conditions.

"In sum," the researchers said, "exposing naive realism in an experiential way seems necessary to fuel greater doubt and openness."

At the time of writing, the internet is abuzz with talk of a dress that looks different colours to different people, with numerous scientific explanations on offer. It's a bit like the main intervention condition in this study writ large – experience of an illusion, combined with explanation that shows the hidden work of unconscious processing. Might this internet meme foster greater openness in society?

Before we get carried away, more is research is needed to test the longevity of these effects, and how far they generalise. It's possible, for example, that people's core beliefs would not be affected in the same way. Nonetheless, the researchers are hopeful: "... the present effects may have implications for fostering a more tolerant, open-minded society," they concluded.

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Hart, W., Tullett, A., Shreves, W., & Fetterman, Z. (2015). Fueling doubt and openness: Experiencing the unconscious, constructed nature of perception induces uncertainty and openness to change Cognition, 137, 1-8 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.12.003

What do confident people say to themselves before they make a speech?

Before you speak to an audience, can you first talk yourself out of feeling nervous? One step towards this strategy is to find out how confident people speak to themselves in their heads (their internal "self-talk"), compared with others who are more anxious.

Xiaowei Shi and his colleagues surveyed nearly 200 students on a public speaking course. The researchers approached the students after they'd given two public presentations on the course and were soon to give their third. The students answered questions about how much they'd engaged in self-talk in the preceding days, and about how much anxiety they feel towards public speaking.

The women tended to be more nervous than the men. Once this gender influence had been accounted for, the students' frequency of various types of self-talk over the last few days explained 20 per cent of the difference in their anxiety levels. Specifically, the more confident students tended to say they'd engaged in less self-critical self-talk (e.g. chastising themselves about their poor preparations) and less self-talk related to social assessment (e.g. replaying ways people had reacted in the past), whereas they had engaged in more self-talk related to self-reinforcement (e.g. talking to themselves about how pleased they were with their own preparations).

In other words, the students who were more self-confident tended to be less self-focused and less self-critical in the way they spoke to themselves, and when they were self-focused, this tended to be with a positive bias.

This study assumes people are able to remember and recognise their own past self-talk, which some readers may question. Of course, it's also just as likely that anxiety triggers particular categories of self-talk, as it is that the wrong kind of self-talk fuels anxiety. Nonetheless, the researchers said their insights could help inform interventions aimed at helping people overcome fear of public speaking.

"As we know that high public-speaking-anxiety individuals engage in higher levels of self-critical and social-assessing self-talk than low anxiety individuals," Shi's team concluded, "instructors can intervene in the early phases of the speech preparation process by helping these students to attend to, recognise, and adjust the frequency and nature of their self-talk."

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Shi, X., Brinthaupt, T., & McCree, M. (2015). The relationship of self-talk frequency to communication apprehension and public speaking anxiety Personality and Individual Differences, 75, 125-129 DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2014.11.023


Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

The psychology of facebook

With over a billion users, Facebook is changing the social life of our species. Cultural commentators ponder the effects. Is it bringing us together or tearing us apart? Psychologists have responded too - Google Scholar lists more than 27,000 references with Facebook in the title. Common topics for study are links between Facebook use and personality, and whether the network alleviates or fosters loneliness. The torrent of new data is overwhelming and much of it appears contradictory. Here is the psychology of Facebook, digested:

Who uses Facebook?

Extraverts have more friends on FB
but shy people probably use it more

According to a survey of over a thousand people, "females, younger people, and those not currently in a committed relationship were the most active Facebook users". Regarding personality, a study of over 1000 Australians reported that "[FB] users tend to be more extraverted and narcissistic, but less conscientious and socially lonely, than nonusers". A study of the actual FB use of over a hundred students found that personality was a more important factor than gender and FB experience, with high scorers in neuroticism spending more time on FB. Meanwhile, extraverts were found to have more friends on the network than introverts ("the 10 per cent of our respondents scoring the highest in extraversion had, on average, 484 more friends than the 10 per cent scoring the lowest in extraversion").

Other findings add to the picture, for example: greater shyness has also been linked with more FB use. Similarly, a study from 2013 found that anxiousness (as well as alcohol and marijuana use) predicted more emotional attachment to Facebook.

There's also evidence that people use FB to connect with others with specialist interests, such as diabetes patients sharing information and experiences, and that people with autism particularly enjoy interacting via FB and other online networks.

Why do some people use Twitter and others Facebook?

High scorers in "need for cognition" prefer Twitter

Apparently most people use Facebook "to get instant communication and connection with their friends" (who knew?), but why use FB rather than Twitter? A 2014 paper suggested narcissism again is relevant, but that its influence depends on a person's age: student narcissists prefer Twitter, while more mature narcissists prefer FB. Other research has uncovered intriguing links between personality and reasons for using FB. People who said they used FB as an informational tool (rather than socialising) tended to score higher on neuroticism, sociability, extraversion and openness, but lower on conscientiousness and "need for cognition". The researchers speculated that using FB to seek and share information could be some people's way to avoid more cognitively demanding sources such as journal articles and newspaper reports. The same study also found that higher scorers in sociability, neuroticism and extraversion preferred FB, while people who scored higher in "need for cognition" preferred Twitter.

What do we give away about ourselves on Facebook?

FB seems like the perfect way to present an idealised version of yourself to the world. However an analysis of the profiles of over 200 people in Germany and the US found that they reflected their actual personalities, not their ideal selves. Consistent with this, another study found that people who are rated as more likeable in the flesh also tend to be rated as more likeable based on their Facebook page. The things you choose to "like" on FB are also revealing. Remarkably, a study out last week found that your "likes" can be analysed by a computer programme to produce a more accurate profile of your personality than the profiles produced by your friends and relatives.

If our FB profiles expose our true selves, this raises obvious privacy issues. A study in 2013 warned that employers often trawl candidates' FB pages, and that they view photos of drinking and partying as "red flags", presumably seeing them as a sign of low conscientiousness (in fact the study found photos like these were linked with high extraversion, not with low conscientiousness).

Other researchers have looked specifically at how personality is related to the kind of content people post on FB. A 2014 study reported that "higher degrees of narcissism led to deeper self-disclosures and more self-promotional content within these messages. [And] Users with higher need to belong disclosed more intimate information". Another study last year also reported that lonelier people disclose more private information, but fewer opinions.

You might also want to consider the friends you keep on FB - research suggests that their attractiveness (good-lookers give your rep a boost), and the statements they make about you on your wall, affect the way your own profile is perceived. Consider too how many friends you have - somewhat paradoxically, research finds that having an overabundance of friends leads to negative perceptions of your profile.

Finally, we heard about employers frowning on partying photos, but what else do you give away in your FB profile picture? It could reveal your cultural background according to a 2012 study that showed people from Taiwan were more likely to have a zoomed-out picture in which they were seen against a background context, while US users were more likely to have a close-up picture in which their face filled up more of the frame. Your FB pic might also say something about your current romantic relationship. When people feel more insecure about their partner's feelings, they make their relationship more visible in their pics.

In case you're wondering, yes, people who post more selfies probably are more narcissistic.

Is Facebook making us lonely and sad?

This is the crunch question that has probably attracted the most newspaper column inches (and books). A 2012 study took an experimental approach. One group were asked to post more updates than usual for one week - this led them to feel less lonely and more connected to their friends. Similarly, a survey of over a thousand FB users found links between use of the network and greater feelings of belonging and confidence in keeping up with friends, especially for people with low self-esteem. Another study from 2010 found that shy students who use FB feel closer to their friends (on FB) and have a greater sense of social support. A similar story is told by a 2013 paper that said feelings of FB connectedness were associated with "with lower depression and anxiety and greater satisfaction with life" and that Facebook "may act as a separate social medium ....  with a range of positive psychological outcomes." This recent report also suggested the site can help revive old relationships.

Yet there's also evidence for the negative influence of FB. A 2013 study texted people through the day, to see how they felt before and after using FB. "The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next time we text-messaged them; [and] the more they used Facebook over two-weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time," the researchers said.

Other findings are more nuanced. This study from 2010 (not specifically focused on FB) found that using the internet to connect with existing friends was associated with less loneliness, but using it to connect with strangers (i.e. people only known online) was associated with more loneliness. This survey of adults with autism found that greater use of online social networking (including FB) was associated with having more close friendships, but only offline relationships were linked with feeling less lonely.

Facebook could also be fuelling envy. In 2012 researchers found that people who'd spent more time on FB felt that other people were happier, and that life was less fair. Similarly, a study of hundreds of undergrads found that more time on FB went hand in hand with more feelings of jealousy. And a paper from last year concluded that "people feel depressed after spending a great deal of time on Facebook because they feel badly when comparing themselves to others." However, this new report (on general online social networking, not just FB) found that heavy users are not more stressed than average, but are more aware of other people's stress.

Is Facebook harming students' academic work?

This is another live issue among newspaper columnists and other social commentators. An analysis of the grades and FB use of nearly 4000 US students found that the more they used the network to socialise, the poorer their grades tended to be (of course, there could be a separate causal factor(s) underlying this association). But not all FB use is the same - the study found that using the site to collect and share information was actually associated with better grades. This survey of over 200 students also found that heavier users of FB tend to have lower academic grades, but note again that this doesn't prove a causal link. Yet another study, this one from the University of Chicago, which included more convincing longitudinal data, found no evidence for a link between FB use and poorer grades; if anything there were signs of the opposite pattern. Still more positive evidence for FB came from a recent report that suggested FB - along with other social networking tools - could have cognitive benefits for elderly people.

And finally, some miscellaneous findings

• These are the unwritten rules of Facebook, according to focus groups with students.
• Viewing your own FB profile boosts self-esteem.
• Emotions are contagious on Facebook (this is the recent study that caused controversy because users' feeds were manipulated without them knowing). 
• Surprise! Both male and female subjects are more willing to initiate friendships with opposite-sex profile owners with attractive photos.
• People publish posts on FB that they later regret for various reasons, including posting when they're in an emotional state or misunderstanding their online social circles. 
• Who needs cheap thrills or meditation? Apparently, looking at your FB account is different, physiologically speaking, from stress or relaxation. It provokes what these researchers describe appealingly as a "core flow state", characterised by positive mood and high arousal. 

That was our digest of the psychology of Facebook - please tell all your friends, on and off Facebook! Oh, and don't forget to visit the Research Digest Facebook page.
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Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

New reason why quitting smoking is so difficult

When a cigarette smoker attempts to quit, not only do they crave their usual nicotine hit, they also experience an unpleasant inability to enjoy other pleasures in life - a state known as "anhedonia".

Jessica Cook and her colleagues studied over a thousand smokers enrolled on a quitting programme in the US. The participants (mostly White, 58.3 per cent were female) were placed on a range of nicotine replacement therapies or they were given placebo. The participants also kept an evening diary from five days before, to ten days after, their quit day. Here they recorded how much pleasure they'd experienced that day across three domains: social, recreation and performance/accomplishment.

The researchers found that stopping smoking was followed by an immediate spike in anhedonia - on the day of quitting, participants in the placebo condition showed a marked reduction in their experience of pleasure from various aspects of life. This quitting-related anhedonia peaked the day after quitting and showed all the hallmarks of being part of the nicotine "withdrawal syndrome". That is, levels of anhedonia tended to be correlated with other withdrawal symptoms (such as craving and poor concentration); the anhedonia faded over time; and it was eased by the administration of a nicotine therapy, such as a nicotine lozenge or patch.

Perhaps most importantly, the results showed that levels of anhedonia were correlated (negatively) with participants' subsequent success at abstinence, even after controlling for the predictive value of craving levels and negative mood. In other words, more quitting-related anhedonia was associated with less success at quitting. Greater post-quitting anhedonia also predicted increased risk of an initial lapse transforming into a full return to smoking. It seems likely that quitting-related anhedonia prompts smokers to want to resume smoking so that they can reinstate their usual ability to enjoy other pleasures in life; and once they lapse, the return of the smoker's usual experience of pleasure acts as a powerful reinforcer.

"The present study is the first, to our knowledge, to demonstrate that post-cessation pleasure in response to daily activities is a significant barrier to quitting smoking," the researchers said. They added that this could point to important new treatment strategies aimed at helping smokers get through their initial experience of anhedonia (such as "behavioural activation"), especially smokers with other mental health issues, who may use smoking to self-treat their chronic anhedonia.

The study makes a useful contribution to the field, but it does suffer some limitations, as the researchers acknowledged. This includes the reliance on the participants' rather vague reports of their daily enjoyment of activities, as well as the fact the sample was enrolled on a treatment programme and highly motivated to quit - it remains to be seen how well the findings will generalise.
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  Cook, J., Piper, M., Leventhal, A., Schlam, T., Fiore, M., & Baker, T. (2014). Anhedonia as a Component of the Tobacco Withdrawal Syndrome. Journal of Abnormal Psychology DOI: 10.1037/abn0000016

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Depression can effect our 'gut instincts'

People who are depressed often complain that they find it difficult to make decisions. A new study provides an explanation. Carina Remmers and her colleagues tested 29 patients diagnosed with major depression and 27 healthy controls and they found that the people with depression had an impaired ability to go with their gut instincts, or what we might call intuition.

Intuition is not an easy skill to measure. The researchers' approach was to present participants with triads of words (e.g. SALT DEEP FOAM) and the task was to decide in less than three and a half seconds whether the three words were linked in meaning by a fourth word (in this case the answer was "yes" and the word was SEA). Some triads were linked, others weren't.

If the participants answered that the words were linked, they were given eight more seconds to provide the linking fourth word. However, it was perfectly acceptable for them to say that they felt the words were linked, but that they didn't know how. Indeed, when this occurred, it was taken by the researchers as an instance of intuition - that is, "knowing without knowing how one knows".

There were no differences between the depressed patients and controls in the number of times they provided the correct fourth, linking word, nor in the number times they provided no response at all. This suggests both groups were equally motivated and attentive to the task. But crucially, the depressed patients scored fewer correct intuitive answers (i.e. those times they stated correctly that the words were linked, but they didn't consciously know how).

Having poorer intuition on the task was associated with scoring higher on a measure of brooding (indicated by agreement with statements like "When I am sad, I think 'Why do I have problems others don't have?'"), and in turn this association appeared to be explained by the fact that the brooding patients felt more miserable.

Remmers and her team said their study makes an important contribution - in fact, it's the first time that intuition has been studied in people with major depression. The results are also consistent with past research involving healthy people that's shown low mood encourages an analytical style of thought and inhibits a creative, more intuitive thinking style.

However, I couldn't help doubting the realism of the measure of intuition used in this study. Is a judgement about word meanings really comparable to the gut decisions people have to make in their lives about jobs and relationships?

Two further questions that also remain outstanding are whether an impairment in intuitive thinking is a symptom or cause of depression; and is this intuition deficit specific to depression or will it be found in patients with other mental health problems?

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Remmers C, Topolinski S, Dietrich DE, & Michalak J (2014). Impaired intuition in patients with major depressive disorder. The British journal of clinical psychology / the British Psychological Society PMID: 25307321

New research- effects of digital devices

There's a brilliant study that came out two weeks ago," Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield said at a recent event promoting her new book, "... they took away all [the pre-teens'] digital devices for five days and sent them to summer camp ... and tested their interpersonal skills, and guess what, even within five days they'd changed."

Greenfield highlighted this study in the context of her dire warnings about the harmful psychological effects of modern screen- and internet-based technologies. She is clearly tapping into a wider societal anxiety around how much time we now spend online and plugged in. But the Baroness' critics argue that her pronouncements are vague, sensationalised and evidence-lite. The fact she mentioned this specific new study provides a rare opportunity to examine what she considers to be strong evidence backing her claims. Let's take a look.

The research team led by Yalda Uhls studied two groups of pupils at a state school in Southern California. Both had an average age of 11 years and said they usually spent an average of 4.5 hours a day texting, watching TV and video-gaming. One group of 51 children was sent on a five-day outdoor education camp 70 miles outside of California. Mobile devices, computers and TVs were banned. The children lived together in cabins, went on hikes, and worked as a team to build emergency shelters. The other group of 54 children attended five days of school as usual.

On Monday at the beginning of the week, both groups completed two psychological tests. The first required that they identify the emotions displayed by photographs of actors' faces. The second involved identifying the emotions displayed by characters in short video clips of social scenes, in which the sound was switched off. At the end of the week, on Friday, both groups completed the tests again.

Uhls and her colleagues highlight the fact that the summer camp group improved more on the face test over the course of the week, as compared with the school group. The summer camp group also showed improvement on the video test, whereas the school group showed no such improvement (the camp scores rose from 26 per cent correct to 31 per cent; the school group flatlined at 28 per cent). The researchers' conclusion: "This study provides evidence that, in five days of being limited to in-person interaction without access to screen-based or media device for communication, preteens improved on measures of nonverbal emotion understanding, significantly more than the control group."

Unfortunately there are a number of acute problems with this study, which make this conclusion insupportable. Above all, the experiences of the two groups of children varied in so many different ways, other than the fact that one group was banned from screen technologies, that it is impossible to know what factors may have led to any group differences.

It's also notable that the summer camp group performed worse at the two tests at the start of the week as compared with the school group. For example, they began with an average of 14 errors on the face task whereas the school group made an average of just 9. Perhaps the camp kids were distracted because they were excited or anxious about the week ahead. We don't know because the researchers didn't measure any other psychological factors such as mood or motivation. By the end of the week, the two groups registered a similar number of errors on the face task. In other words, the technology-free summer camp kids didn't end the week with super interpersonal skills, they'd merely caught up with their screen-addled school colleagues.

We can also speculate about why the school kids didn't show improvement on the video task, whereas the summer campers did. Perhaps, after a long school week, the children at school were tired out. The campers, by contrast, may well have been on a high after their week in the wilderness with friends. Technology might have had nothing to do with it.

Other problems with the study are more generic, but just as serious. The children were not randomised to the two conditions. There's no mention that the people administering the emotional tests were blinded to which children were allocated to which condition, nor to the aims of the study, which introduces the risk they might have inadvertently influenced the results.

In fairness, Uhls and her team admit to many of these shortcomings in their paper, but it doesn't stop them from interpreting their results in line with their prior beliefs about the likely harmful effects of digital technologies, which they outline at the start of their paper. They couch their findings firmly in the wider context of technology fears, and they hope their paper will be "a call to action for research that thoroughly and systematically examines the effects of digital media on children's social development."

Is it easy to understand why Baroness Professor Greenfield was pleased with this study. I will leave you to judge whether she was right to label it "brilliant", and whether the results do anything to support her arguments about the adverse effects of digital technology on developing minds.
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Uhls, Y., Michikyan, M., Morris, J., Garcia, D., Small, G., Zgourou, E., & Greenfield, P. (2014). Five days at outdoor education camp without screens improves preteen skills with nonverbal emotion cues Computers in Human Behavior, 39, 387-392 DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2014.05.036