Originally posted on May 29, 2014. How would you like to increase your brainpower? All you need is a 9-volt battery, some mad scientists, and a heaping portion of creativity. So says a slew of recent studies using a noninvasive, neuroscientific technique called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Think of tDCS as the ultimate symphony conductor. It can pep up certain brain regions by exciting neuronal impulses. But it can also quiet a crowd of neurons by decreasing their firing rate. A 9-volt battery powers the electrodes that rest on people’s scalps, giving people a slight twinge as the equipment increases or decreases their brain activity. In one study, Air Force pilots who received frequent tDCS stimulation, compared with those who didn’t, learned more information in less time. But tDCS isn’t merely a way to learn better. It can help people cope with upsetting situations. In a pair of papers, my colleagues and I showed that stimulating a brain region that aids emotion regulation reduced rejection-related distress and aggression. To succeed, people need some combination of talent, grit, and luck. Should a personal brain zapping machine get added to the list? ... View more

Originally posted on July 10, 2014. Why don’t people vote? This question puzzles pollsters, political candidates, and people who cherish the right to choose their elected officials. To predict voter turnout, all you might need is a test tube, a willing participant, and a little saliva. So says a group of University of Nebraska-Omaha researchers, who tested the hypothesis that the stress hormone cortisol would predict voting behavior. Stress often leads people to avoid high pressure situations. If people have high cortisol levels, voting might only increase their stress. They might fear that their chosen candidate would lose the election, or that the candidate would underperform if elected. As a result, stressful souls might avoid the polls. In the study, people spit in a tube to provide a measurement of their cortisol levels. Next, the researchers collected the study participants’ actual voting behavior in six U.S. national elections. Sure enough, the most stressed out people voted about half as often as their more relaxed counterparts. To get people to vote, politicians might frame voting as a relaxing activity. “Take a break from work, relax, and make a difference in your community,” might help get even the most stressed out people to visit the polls. ... View more

Originally posted on July 22, 2014. Social support can take many forms. A helpful tweet, the annual Facebook birthday barrage of well wishes, and long conversations with friends and family can put things in perspective and reduce our stress. But, according to recent research from Renison University, Wilfrid Laurier University, and the University of Waterloo, these acts of kindness backfire when interacting with people who have low self-esteem. People with low self-esteem have social support preferences that often put them on a collision course with their friends and family. They desire information that validates their negative self-feelings. When their friends offer positive feedback, people with low self-esteem don’t accept it. This aversion to positivity causes low self-esteem spillover: Their friends begin to feel bad about themselves, too. What is the moral of the story? Find someone who has a similar self-concept as you do. Birds of a feather should often flock together. Although it might be hard to imagine wanting information that validates our negative self-feelings, it is unwise to force people to enjoy something they dislike. Knowing yourself and what you like is the first step in building a successful relationship. The next step is finding someone who shares your preferences, no matter how sunny or gloomy they might be. ... View more

Originally posted on August 28, 2014. When your friend tells you about her terrific first date, you will eventually ask the question. You might stall by inquiring about the food she ate, the jokes he told, and the outfit she wore. Eventually, you’ll ask: Is he cute? Recent research suggests that you’ll know how she arrived at her answer.  An in-depth analysis of 1,000 facial images identified three main ingredients of attractiveness: Approachability, or how friendly a person seems. A large mouth, wide nose, and curvy bottom lip were some of the strongest predictors of approachability. Youthful-attractiveness. Here, the eyes have it. To seem youthful, have large eyes. You should also avoid sporting a moustache or beard. Dominance. Looking dominant relates to having angular cheeks, large eyebrows, and slightly dark skin. These are some of the strongest predictors of each attractiveness ingredient. Of course, they don’t tell you much about people’s sense of humor, clothing style, or hobbies. For that, you’ll have to take the plunge and actually meet them. She might have large eyes and a curvy bottom lip, but would you want to date someone who never laughed at your jokes? I doubt it. Or what about an angular-cheeked, naturally tan man who always turns heads but also is profoundly dull and shallow? Maybe give him a fake phone number when he asks for yours. Attractiveness matters, especially during the initial passionate stages of a relationship. But there are many ingredients that are far more important than attractiveness when selecting a mate. Trust is key. Think about it: Would you rather date an attractive compulsive liar, or a less attractive person who always tells the truth? Self-control also fosters relationship success. Highly self-controlled people, compared with their sluggardly counterparts, are more forgiving, generous, and less aggressive. So, it’s natural to wonder whether your friend’s date is cute. You might not ask whether he has a large mouth, angular cheeks, or big eyes. But if she says, “Yes, he’s gorgeous,” you can be confident that he received an extra helping of some of these attractiveness ingredients. ... View more

Originally posted on September 2, 2014. Graduation brings few guarantees. Jobs are scarce, job security is even more difficult to find, and many people earn less and receive fewer employee benefits than they anticipated. But graduation often brings at least two things: pomp and presents. When I finished graduate school, my parents bought me a dog. I knew he had basic emotions, such as happiness and fear. Now I know he also gets jealous. Finnegan, an English golden retriever, is one of my best friends. Early in my professor job, I would bring him to the office with me. He slept while I wrote papers. He even participated in some of my research studies. [Not to worry, a graduate student ran the experimental sessions. When we discussed the studies in front of Finn, I covered his ears to keep him blind to condition. ] We would take walks around campus. Students would pop in and pet him. When I left the office to teach, he would yelp a little before settling down and falling asleep. Then something happened. I got engaged. My fiancée Alice (now wife of more than six years) moved to Kentucky and started sleeping on Finnegan’s side of the bed. Suddenly, he wasn’t top dog anymore. I was happy. Finnegan wasn’t.  But then another major event occurred. We purchased another dog, Finnegan’s half-brother, and named him Atticus. We wanted Finnegan to have a playmate. Things went well. Finnegan and Atticus played and wrestled and did all of the cute things that make YouTube videos go viral. Finnegan did show a curious new behavior, however. He seemed to get jealous when I petted Atticus. Was Finnegan’s jealousy an illusion? It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking that animals can do more than they can. For examples, dogs don’t know they are dogs. They don’t have that kind of self-awareness. Dogs also don’t have strong belief systems. Sure, they might like to eat my pizza, pretzels, and shoes. But it would never occur for one dog to ask another, “Do you avoid eating meat pizza for health or ethical reasons?” They just gobble and go. According to a recent study, dog jealousy is real. The researchers tested 36 dogs. Just how might you evoke dog jealousy? Have a dog’s owner interact with a stuffed dog that barks, whines, and wags its tail. The owners also were instructed to ignore their own dogs while they played with the stuffed dog. To provide comparison conditions, owners also ignored their dogs to interact with a jack-o-lantern or a book. Boy, the dogs got jealous when their owners ignored them! The dogs acted needy and tried to “shoo the rival [dog] away.” They fixed their gaze on the interloper. They even got a little nippy. The dogs only got jealous when their owners paid attention to another dog. They didn’t mind their owners playing with the jack-o-lantern or a book. Just like my Finnegan, the dogs only started to show pangs of jealousy when they felt they were being replaced. The moral of the story is that dogs experience complex emotions. Jealousy can sour relationships. Fortunately, humans and dogs can overcome their jealousy and learn to include others in their lives. Finnegan loves Alice, and Atticus is his best friend. Finn got over his jealousy. In that way, old dogs might be able to teach us some new tricks. ... View more

Originally posted on September 25, 2014. Most of our daily lives hum along effortlessly. We automatically rise when we wake, speak when we wish to communicate, and eat when our empty bellies grumble. These behaviors helped our ancestors survive and reproduce. But we also need to size up situations and people that might threaten us. How well do we do this? In one recent investigation, researchers from Australia and the United States argued that angry faces tell a specific story that takes little effort to understand. Rather than being a simple threat signal, angry faces gives us information about people’s physical strength, which is the crucial element in determining their fighting ability. Using some cool facial morphing software, the researchers showed participants faces and then manipulated the seven primary facial muscles involved in an angry facial expression. Some faces flexed all seven angry facial muscles; others flexed fewer than seven. The more angry muscles the faces flexed, the more participants rated the person as being physically strong. The key is that participants did not need to take a course on the biology of human emotion to make their ratings. They didn’t need to know the seven facial muscles that comprise an angry facial expression. Participants automatically knew the strongest and angriest face when they saw it. So, the next time you get a twinge of terror when you see an angry face, don’t sweat it. Your mind is automatically telling you something aimed at keeping you safe and sound. ... View more

Originally posted on November 20, 2014. Have you ever seen a baby so cute you wanted to snuggle it and take a bite out of it at the same time? Ever said to a new niece or nephew, “You’re so cute, I could just eat you up?” Have you cried after a happy occasion, such as crossing the finish line of a race for which you’ve long prepared, or proposing to your girlfriend and getting a yes? Two weeks ago, I experienced these conflicting emotions when I shed several tears after finishing a 100 mile running race. These conflicting concurrent emotions help us maintain emotional balance, according to research from Yale University. An adult’s reaction to an adorable baby is to kiss them and coo at them. But an adult may also pinch, squeeze, and playfully nip at them. Knowing that most people don’t intend to actually harm babies, the researchers designed several experiments to find out why adults respond to them with aggressive behavior. In one study, participants looked at and evaluated photos of different babies, some of whom appeared more infantile than others. The participants said they wanted to care for and protect the infantile babies, but they also reported higher expressions of aggression in response to the babies. Participants were also more likely to feel overwhelmed with very strong positive feelings in response to the more infantile babies. What do these findings tell us? Being overwhelmed by positive emotion produce responses designed to bring us down to our emotional baseline. Ever in need of emotional equilibrium, people will engage in behaviors aimed at leveling off their extreme emotional reactions. So the next time you cry during a happy scene in a movie, laugh nervously, or feel compelled to take a bite out of a cute baby, remember that it is just your body’s way of maintaining emotional balance. ... View more

Originally posted on December 4, 2014. Walk down a sidewalk and someone will likely take notice. Just where do their eyes linger? You can tell a lot about whether they think you are Mr. Right—or Mr. Right Now—based on where their eyes gravitate. So says recent research conducted at the University of Chicago. Students viewed photographs of people and reported whether they caused them to experience romantic love or sexual desire. The students also wore an eyetracker, which recorded which parts of each photograph captured their attention. The idea is that romantic love causes people to try to understand what another person is thinking. Sexual desire encourages people to pay attention to objects that reflect concrete sensations and feelings. Romantic love drove people to fixate their attention on people’s faces. This makes sense. If I want to understand what someone is thinking, I should look at their face. Their facial expression might also give me a clue as to whether they return my interest. Sexual desire created a different picture. When people saw a photograph that caused them to experience sexual desire, their eyes stuck on people’s bodies. This love versus lust response operates automatically. Participants didn’t think carefully about where to position their eyes. Their eyes simply gravitated toward bodily locations that were most relevant to romantic love or sexual desire. Just how big of a difference was there between how long participants spent looking at faces when they experienced love rather than lust? A little over 400 milliseconds. That’s a tad longer than an eyeblink. But don’t let that slight difference take anything away from how cool these findings are. They show how efficiently our minds work to alert us to information that relates to our emotions and goals. By knowing this wrinkle about how the mind works, your walks may never be the same.  ... View more

Originally posted on February 20, 2015. This morning my wife, our one-month-old daughter, and I went to a local diner. It was a snow day, my University was closed, and we were enjoying a rare morning together. Before our food arrived, I took a sip of coffee, looked outside, and said, “I’m so happy.” The story should end there, with our tiny family devouring pancakes and running errands. But then I returned to my house, opened my email, and received some bad news. I was supposed to be miserable. Or so suggested the latest Gallup Report, “The State of American Well-Being: 2014 State Well-Being Rankings.” For the sixth straight year, my state, Kentucky, ranked 49th of 50 U.S. States. Only West Virginians have lower well-being than my fellow Kentuckians do. My first impulse was to try to make sense of all of this. Was I conning myself when I said I was happy? Can you ever really measure happiness? Let’s not fool ourselves. You can’t measure happiness the same way you can’t measure your weight in gold. But I agree with one of my favorite social psychologists, Dan Gilbert, who said, “maybe we just need to accept a bit of fuzziness and stop complaining” (Stumbling on Happiness, p. 65). So, I accepted my happiness. This is when I started to understand why I’m throwing off the statewide dish of depression. Here are the five elements of well-being (taken from the Gallup site): Purpose: liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals Social: having supportive relationships and love in your life Financial: managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security Community: liking where you live, feeling safe, and having pride in your community Physical: having good health and enough energy to get things done daily This is when I started to understand, and my heart began to sink. I max out on each ingredient. I love my daily activities, both personal and professional. I have relationships that allow me to have the diner experience I mentioned. I’m neither the richest nor the poorest person in my state, but my wife and I manage our finances so that we can feel secure and have rewarding experiences. I love where I live, and enjoy showing people our great state. I take care of myself physically, at least enough so that I can make words move across the page. All of that is annoying to read and even harder to write. But it’s true. Then why did my heart start to sink? I have a theory of mind and a concern for others. Unlike my dogs, a blowfish, or the horses I drive by on my way to work, I can simulate another person’s experience. And when I simulated how it felt to be deprived of purpose, meaningful relationships, financial security, community pride and safety, and physical health, I realized the seriousness of today’s Gallup results. We need chang e. The good news is that each well-being ingredient can be mended. To have higher well-being, people don’t need to grow a third leg or become enthralled with the taste of cod liver oil. Those things are impossible. Psychological science provides clear answers about how to improve our well-being. The biggest challenge is that the scale of change needed to buck our spot in the well-being basement could take years. Kentucky will never be Hawaii, but we can improve. Is it worth a try? I think so. ... View more

Originally posted on February 12, 2015. Did you watch all five seasons of “Breaking Bad” over a long weekend? Have you ever longed for the weekend so that you can watch episode after episode of your new favorite television show? Are you counting down until Netflix releases Season 3 of “House of Cards” later this month? You’re not alone. Binge-watching seems harmless—I’ve been known to veg out occasionally after a long week, watching hours of “The Wire”—but is it really? New research says maybe not. It turns out, loneliness and depression are linked to TV binge-watching. In a recent study, over 300 18-to-29-year-olds reported their loneliness, depression, self-regulation, and binge-watching behavior. The more depressed the survey participants were, the more they binge-watched. The depression-binge watching relationship was strongest among people who lacked self-control. Faced with the option of watching yet another episode, impulsive participants went along with the binge-watching program. These findings complement other research showing relationships between depression, loneliness, and self-regulation problems and general binging behavior. To escape from a lonely or depressed mood, people often engage in addictive behaviors. Most of us have fallen prey to the binge watching bug. It’s okay to enjoy an occasional marathon TV-watching session. But remember the science: If you’re feeling blue, try not to hide your sorrows in the “boob tube.” It’s not likely to help, and it just might make matters worse. ... View more

Originally posted on February 24, 2015. Dog research always fascinates me. You could say I have a nose for it. As humans, we spend a lot of time with our canine friends: they share our homes and steal our hearts—and sometimes the food off our plates. I’ve always loved dogs, and I couldn’t wait to get one of my own. Nearly eight years ago, I adopted Finnegan, a lovable yet slobbery Golden Retriever who regularly knocks over the trash can and cuddles with me and my wife. A year later we adopted his half-brother, Atticus, and doubled our fun. And our mischief. From across the room, both dogs seem to suspect when we’re angry or happy. All they need is a peek at our body language and facial expressions. If you have a dog, you’ve likely noticed the same thing. But did you know that dogs also can tell the difference between happy and angry faces in photographs? One study says so. A team of researchers trained dogs to discriminate between images of the same person making a happy or angry face. Twenty dogs were shown photos of faces side-by-side on a touchscreen. Half of the dogs were trained to touch images of happy faces; the other group was rewarded for choosing angry faces. The dogs needed only a little training before they could choose the angry or happy face more often than would be expected by random chance. So, not only can dogs learn to interpret their owners’ facial expressions, but they can also perceive emotions in photographed strangers. A cool wrinkle in the study was that the dogs were slow to associate an angry face with a reward. Perhaps they instinctually knew to stay away from angry people, making it hard for the dogs to think angry people were linked to anything positive? I can’t wait to see how this line of research progresses. In the meantime, I’m going to go smile at my dogs. ... View more

Originally posted on April 9, 2015. Many people call laughter the best medicine, but did you know that it can also help you make new friends? It doesn’t surprise me at all. Some of my best friendships have had their roots in belly laughs. Sharing a laugh makes people more likely to open up to each other, according to a recent study. Laughter increases our willingness to share something personal, without even realizing that’s why we’re doing it. Allowing someone to truly know us—perhaps sharing our most embarrassing moment, or talking about a personal goal or fear—is crucial in building and growing relationships. To test their theories about laughter and self-disclosure, researchers gathered 112 students who did not know each other. They split them into groups and then showed each group a 10-minute “mood induction” video, one of which featured a standup comedian. (The other two were a golf instruction video and an excerpt from a nature show.) Researchers measured how much the students laughed and their other emotional states. The students also wrote a message to another participant to help them get acquainted. The results: Group members who laughed together while watching the comedian shared much more intimate information than those who did not watch the comedy routine. That’s probably because laughter triggers the release of endorphins, which play a role in forming social bonds. Try it out next time you’re in a social situation with strangers or mere acquaintances. If they’re a bit aloof, get them laughing. You’ll be surprised at how a little laughter can defrost even the toughest audience. Kevin Kozcicki/Getty Images ... View more

Originally posted on April 8, 2014. An editorial in yesterday’s New York Times questioned the nearly $1 billion the U.S. Transportation and Security Administration has invested in training and employing officers to identify high-risk airline passengers. In 2011 and 2012, T.S.A. behavior-detection officers at 49 airports “designated passengers for additional screening on 61,000 occasions.” The number successfully detected and arrested for suspected terrorism? Zero. But then again, the number of plane-destroying terrorists they failed to detect was also, I infer, zero. (Wonkish note:  A research psychologist might say the T.S.A. has made no Type II errors.) Regardless, psychological science studies of intuitive lie detection, as the Times’ John Tierney noted in an earlier article, suggest that this has not been a wise billion-dollar investment. Despite our brain’s emotion-detecting skill, we find it difficult to detect deceiving expressions. Charles Bond and Bella DePaulo reviewed 206 studies of people discerning truth from lies. The bottom line: People were just 54 percent accurate—barely better than a coin toss. I have replicated this in classroom demonstrations—by having some students either tell a true or a made-up story from their lives. When seeking to identify the liars, my students have always been vastly more confident than correct. Moreover, contrary to claims that some experts can spot lies, research indicates that few—save perhaps police professionals in high-stakes situations—beat chance. The behavioral differences between liars and truth-tellers are just too minute for most people to detect. Before spending a billion dollars on any safety measure, risk experts advise doing a cost-benefit analysis. As I reported in Intuition: Its Powers and Perils, some people were outraged when the Clinton administration did not require General Motors to replace ill-designed fuel tanks on older model pickup trucks. The decision spared General Motors some $500 million, in exchange for which it contributed $51 million to traffic safety programs. “GM bought off the government for a pittance,” said some safety advocates, “at the expense of thirty more people expected to die in fiery explosions.” Actually, argued the Department of Transportation, after additional time for litigation there would only have been enough of the old trucks left to claim 6 to 9 more lives. Take that $500 million ($70 million per life)—or the $1 billion more recently spent on behavior detection—and apply it to screening children for preventable diseases (or more vigorous anti-smoking education programs or hunger relief) and one would likely save many more lives. By doing such cost-benefit analyses, say the risk experts, governments could simultaneously save us billions of dollars and thousands of lives. Ergo, when considering how to spend money to spare injuries and save lives, critical thinkers seek not to be overly swayed by rare, dreaded catastrophes. The smart humanitarian says: “Show me the numbers.”  Big hearts can cohabit with cool heads. ... View more

Originally posted on May 8, 2014. Knowing that people don't wear their hearts on their sleeves, psychologists have longed for a "pipeline to the heart."  One strategy, developed nearly a half century ago by Edward Jones and Harold Sigall, created a “bogus pipeline.” Researchers would convince people that a machine could use their physiological responses to measure their private attitudes.  Then they would ask them to predict the machine's reading, thus revealing attitudes which often were less socially desirable than their verbalized attitudes.  More recently, psychologists have devised clever strategies for revealing “implicit attitudes,” by using reaction times to assess automatic associations between attitude objects and evaluative words. (In contrast to consciously held “explicit attitudes,” implicit attitudes are like unconscious habits.) A new working paper (abstract; PDF) by Katherine Coffman and fellow economists demonstrates a third strategy for getting people to reveal sensitive information—the “Item Count Technique” (ICT). One group was given four simple statements, such as “I spent a lot of time playing video games as a kid,” and then was asked how many of the four statements “apply to you.”  A second group was given the same four statements plus a fifth:  “I consider myself to be heterosexual,” and then was asked how many of the five statements “apply to you.” Although no individual is asked to reveal which specific statements are true of them, a comparison of the two groups’ answers reveals—for the sampled population—the percent agreeing with the fifth statement. Thus, without revealing anyone’s sexual orientation, the ICT aggregate data showed a 65 percent higher rate of non-heterosexual identity than was self-reported among people who were asked straight-out: “Do you consider yourself to be heterosexual?”   But then let’s not discount public surveys.  Nate Silver’s digest of presidential polling data correctly predicted not only the 2012 U.S. national presidential outcome, but also the outcome in all 50 U.S. states.  Specific, explicit attitudes can predict behavior. ... View more

Originally posted on June 17, 2014 Is religion toxic to human flourishing . . . or is it supportive of human happiness, health, and helpfulness? Let’s make this empirical: Is religious engagement associated with humans living well, or with misery, ill-health, premature death, crime, divorce, teen pregnancy, and the like? The answer differs dramatically by whether we compare places (such as more versus less religious countries or states) or individuals. For starters, I manually harvested data from a Gallup World Poll, and found a striking negative correlation across 152 countries between national religiosity and national well-being: Then I harvested General Social Survey data from the U.S. and found—as many other researchers in many other countries have found (though especially in more religious countries) a positive correlation between religiosity and happiness across individuals. For additional striking examples of the religious engagement paradox—associating religious engagement with life expectancy, smoking, arrest rate, teen pregnancy, and more (across states versus across individuals)—see here. Princeton economist Angus Deaton and psychologist Arthur Stone have recently been struck by the same paradox. They ask (here), “Why might there be this sharp contradiction between religious people being happy and healthy, and religious places being anything but?” Before answering that question—and wondering whether the more important story is told at the aggregate or individual level—consider a parallel paradox, which we might call “the politics of wealth paradox.” Question: Are rich Americans more likely to vote Republican or Democrat? When we compare states (thanks to Chance News) we can see that low income predicts Republican preferences. Folks in wealthy states are more likely to vote Democratic!  So, being rich inclines one to liberalism? Not so fast: comparing individuals, we see the opposite (and more expected) result—high income folks vote more Republican. These are the sorts of findings that excite behavioral science sleuths. Surely there must be some confounding variables. With religiosity, one such variable is income—which is lower in highly religious countries and states. Controlling for status factors such as income (as Louis Tay did for our article with Ed Diener) and the negative correlation between religiosity and well-being disappears, and even reverses to slightly positive. Likewise, low income states differ from high income states in many ways, including social values that also predict voting. Ergo, my hunch is that, in both the religious and political realms, the most important story is found at the level of the individual. Nevertheless, there are practical uses for these data. If you’re wanting to make religious engagement look bad, use the aggregate, macro-level data. If you want to make religious engagement look good, use the individual data. ... View more