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.

What do you really make of gossipers?

We all do it, know people who do it and know people who don't have time for it. Gossiping is an integral part of peer groups, talking about the girl who wears too much make-up, the boy who sleeps around or the annoying habits of your boss/work colleague. Gossiping can be harmless and is fairly natural within peer relationships. However, as ever there is a degree of gossiping that people may find too much and Sally Farley's study 2011 actually showed that gossipers are perceived as unlikeable and as lacking social influence. She asked students (mostly female) to imagine someone they knew who liked to talk about others a lot and to rate that person for likability and social influence (amongst other things). Prolific gossipers were found to be less liked than non-gossipers and less socially powerful than non-gossipers.

This finding contradicted previous findings that people actually enjoy gossipers company. Farley suggested that it may be that having gossipy friends serves a purpose of learning information about others but we tend to keep them at arms length.    

Information found from Farley,S. (2011). Is gossip power? The inverse relationships between gossip, power and likability. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41 (5), 574-579 DOI

Why do we blush when we get embarrassed?

Blushing is a physical reaction to embarrassment, and it involves the face, skin, neck, ears and chest reddening in colour. Blushing is involuntary and uncontrollable. An awareness of blushing actually makes it worse. It is quite ironic that blushing draws attention to us at a time we really don't want the attention. It is a peculiar expression and one can be embarrassed and not blush or blush and not be embarrassed.

A current theory is that blushing links to self-consciousness and how we imagine we are coming across to others. Moreover, we blush if our behaviour, comments or appearance cause undesired social attention. The four main reasons for blushing include;

• violating social norms
• openness to scrutiny from peers
• praise and positive attention
• accusations of blushing

Blushing is a cue to others that we know we have broken social norms or our behaviour/appearance is unacceptable and we acknowledge it and want to correct it. In a way it's a tangible apology.

So long and short is that you may as well just accept you will blush many a time in your lifetimes and as there is nothing you can do to prevent it - you should adopt a great skill - to be able to laugh at yourself and not dwell on the embarrassment.

Information obtained from The Psychologist magazine, volume 23

How meaningful are dreams?

Dreaming occurs during a state of unconsciousness and is a widely researched area of psychology. Most of the research focuses on dream content, what does it mean? Is it important?

Sleep is split into 5 broad stages which make up one cycle. It usually takes about 90minutes to complete a sleep cycle- so depending on how many hours sleep a night you get the amount of sleep cycles completed will vary. The first 2 stages of sleep are called "light sleep", stages 3 and 4 are "deep sleep" and the 5th stage is called REM sleep ( Rapid Eye Movement sleep). If you actually watch people sleep (very weird) you are able to see when they are in the REM stage of sleep as you can see the eye balls moving under the eyelids. During REM sleep your muscles are also paralysed. A theory as to why, centres on the fact that if people acted out their dreams it could cause them or others physical damage.

It is believed that dreaming occurs during the REM stage of sleep, so once every sleep cycle. The amount of time a person spends in REM sleep is thought to increase throughout the night. So it could start as 5 minutes in the REM stage and end with 40 minutes. This implies that we have maybe 5/6 or 7 dreams a night depending on the amount of sleep you get. Many people don't recall dreams the next morning and find it difficult to believe they have had 4/5 dreams overnight. It is much more likely that you will remember a dream if you wake during the REM stage of sleep or are acutely aware during the lighter stages of sleep.

Clearly dreams are incredibly important as people who are sleep deprived enter REM sleep much quicker than people who have adequate sleep, demonstrating the importance of REM sleep on cognitive functioning. So are dreams just meaningless babble or is their content important? One theory is that dreaming provides an opportunity for connections to be made across memories which haven't been connected throughout the day. Another theory is that dreaming provides an outlet for the days/weeks/months sometimes years worth of irrelevant information that needs to be cleared from the brain. Our brain is bombarded with input regrading people, environments, events and dreaming can provide a way of sifting the unnecessary bits out. Freud was a big believer in examining dream content as he posed it provides an insight into our unconscious as our conscious is unable to inhibit or censor the content of dreams.

An interesting fact is that the most common emotion felt in dreams is Joy, followed by anger, followed by fear.

Information obtained from The Psychologist magazine, volume 22

How reliable is Eye Witness Testimony? London Dungeon study.

It has been theorised that when people witness crimes (especially violent and serious crimes), or are a victim of crime, the anxiety they feel at the time impacts their ability to accurately recall and recognise details of the crime or perpetrator when asked retrospectively.  This obviously has huge implications for the criminal justice system given that witness/victim testimony and recognition play a huge role in identifying perpetrators and describing criminal events.

Valentine & Mescot tested this theory at the London Dungeons. There is a stage in the Dungeon experience where visitors walk through a passage and a man in a hooded robe with scars on his face jumps out at them at the same time a skeleton and a ghost appear. Valentine & Mescot asked visitors to complete a questionnaire at the end of the experience rating their anxiety levels during the experience. They also were asked to identify the man in the hooded robe out of 8 possible men wearing similar (but not identical) costumes. It is important to note that the visitors were unaware throughout the experience that they would be asked to identify the man at the end. It was discovered that the visitors who reported feeling the most anxious in the Dungeons were significantly less accurate at identifying the correct man in the hooded robe.  This emphasises how difficult it can be for a victim or witness to identify a criminal and demonstrates the caution necessary to be taken when relying solely on witness/victim testimony.


This information was derived from The Psychologist magazine, volume 21.