We all like to think that we have good memories for events and that if we were to be witness to a crime or incident that we would be able to recall in detail the events of the day. However our memories are not that reliable at all.  This has implications on many levels, but especially in the courtroom and with the police.

For example:

“Some researchers in Bologna demonstrate the spectacular hopelessness of memory. One morning in 1980, a bomb exploded in Bologna station: 85 people died, and the clock stopped ominously showing 10.25, the time of the explosion. This image became a famous symbol for the event, but the clock was repaired soon after, and worked perfectly for the next 16 years. When it broke again in 1996, it was decided to leave the clock showing 10.25 permanently, as a memorial. The researchers asked 180 people familiar with the station, or working there, with an average age of 55, about the clock: 173 knew it was stopped, and 160 said it always had been, ever since 1980. What’s more, 127 claimed they had always seen it stuck on 10.25, ever since the explosion, including – fairly excellently – all 21 railway employees. In a similar study published last year, 40% of 150 UK participants claimed to remember seeing closed circuit television footage of the moment of the explosion on the bus in Tavistock Square on July 7th 2005. No such footage exists”. [From Bad Science via Folens Psychology Blog]

A further example this can be seen here in this video where students at a US University are part of a staged theft. Watch and see how accurate they are and how our perception of an event can be molded so easily be events following an incident.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Loftus & Palmer have put forward the Reconstructive Hypothesis which suggests that our memory is a combination of both things that happen at an event but also can be distorted by events after – either other memories and events or more malicious leading questions during interegation.

They found that events following an incident can have a dramatic effect on a persons memory of that event.  As we saw in the video above one of the student’s memories of the offender was distroted by something as simple as the teacher saying that he had a ‘funny nose’.

How can we ever rely on courtroom testimony if this is the case? Can we really trust memories or are they too fallible?

Tags: Cognitive, courtroom, crime, loftus and palmer, memory, video

At this very moment in time there are 82,813 people in prisons in the UK (weekly updates of prison UK populations) whereas in February 2004 there were only 69,122. We are punishing more-and-more people every year with prison but is it effective (a topic for another post) and does it only punish those who were at fault?

In the first known study of its kind, University of Michigan researchers found that people with a family member or friend in prison or jail suffer worse physical and mental health and more stress and depressive symptoms than those without a loved one behind bars. Moreover, these symptoms worsen the closer the relationship to the person who was locked up

According to the study, those who knew someone in prison had 40 percent more days where poor physical health interfered with their usual activities, including work, and 54 percent more days where poor mental or emotional health interfered with these activities.

Should this be a consideration when deciding on a suitable punishment for an offender?

Many people believe that all offenders should be punished. Some believe individuals can change and can be responsive to rehabilitative interventions, either within prison or the community others feel that prisons should be more strict than they currently are (or at least seem to be if you believe the media).

There are many motivations behind punishments, some negative, so to reinforce the concept that the individual has done wrong, some supportive to help rehabilitate the offender.

Many would consdier these factors when thinking about the punishment of going to prison but it seems that we have ignored those that could be at risk in society – those related to offenders who are sent to prison.

Talking about the study into the effects of prison on ‘loved ones’ the research states: “Our study demonstrates that incarceration is not only enormously expensive economically, it also has public health costs and these should be taken into consideration. In the last 30 years or so, we have seen a more and more punitive system, one where judges no longer have discretion for sentencing.”

Moving toward a rehabilitation model may benefit both the offending individuals and society – but should we?

Kruger, D.J., & De Loney, E. H. (in press). The association of incarceration with community health and racial health disparities. Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action.

Tags: crime, prison, punishment

We all know the power of role models and I have written about the effect of role modes on behaviour many times before: from the moving ‘Children See, Children Do‘ campaign to talking about the effectiveness of the pictures of death and destruction that now adorn our fag packets.

All these ideas are supported by Bandura and his Social Learning Theory which proposes that children especially learn their behaviours through the observation and imitation of role models.  Bandura demonstrated this in his 1961 research where he exposed children to aggressive role models who acted violently (both physical and verbal violence) towards an inflatable bobo-doll.

He found that children who were passive witnesses to this violent act were more likely to imitate this behaviour when given the chance.  There are many criticisms of this study but if the conclusions are right then there are implications for us all as role models.

Recent research (Albers, 2008) has been investigating the effect of parental smoking behaviour in homes on the likelihood of their children starting up the habit.  They found that parents who enforce no-smoking rules at home are less likely to have teens who experiment with cigarettes. This basic intervention implementing a household smoking ban has the potential to promote anti-smoking norms and to prevent adolescent smoking.

Albers and colleagues interviewed 2,217 Massachusetts adolescents ages 12 to 17, and followed them for four years. They discovered that teens living in households that did not ban smoking were more likely to report smoking as socially acceptable, compared to teens whose parents banned smoking.

Teens whose parents allowed smoking at home also tended to believe that a higher percentage of adults in their town smoked, compared to teens with household bans. [From Medical News Toady]

This suggests then that the behaviours in homes can have a massive effect on behaviours. As these bans send a strong message to teens that it’s not okay to smoke, and in the face of so many other external factors that may influence teens to smoke peers, advertising a home smoking policy is one thing that parents can control to some extent.

It would be naive to assume that parents smoking in the home is the only factor that influences smoking behaviour is children but it is one more thing that parents can be aware of and another piece of evidence supporting Bandura’s Social Learning Theroy.

Tags: addiction, Bandura, core studies, developmental, health, health promotion, SLT, smoking

If you’ve ever seen the Channel 4 comedy Teachers then you might understand why the GTCE is considering implimenting a ‘role model’ code.  But is this really needed or necessary?  Yes, role models are influential, especially in the earlier years of childrens’ development, but shouldn’t they be allowed a private life?

Teachers are  set to get a ‘role model’ code outlining what behaviour is seen as ‘acceptable’ both in and out of school.  We could face losing our status if we get drunk and into arguments while out socialising, or do not get help for drink or drug problems if a draft GTCE code it approved. 

Obviously, as we know from Behaviourist theories like Social Learning Theory (SLT) that children are impressionable and will, if given the right environment and resinforcement immitate behaviours which they see ‘role models’ doing; but are we taking this ‘code of conduct’ too far? 

Some of the comments from the BBC News website highlight this:

“Teachers are human beings. Their private lives should not be the subject of scrutiny by anybody”

“Isn’t the principle of teachers as role models common sense? If a teacher falls too far short of this, they are probably better suited to a different career. It’s insulting that teachers are told something so basic, after all their more advanced training and experience. Wouldn’t the government’s budget be better spent dealing with real educational issues, rather than formalising and drafting policies for common sense?”

What are your thoughts on this?  Should teachers have a ‘code of conduct’ that dictates what behaviours are seen as appropriate or should it be left to individual teachers to understand the important role they play in childrens’ lives?

Tags: behaviourism, news commentary, SLT, teaching

Recently we have looked at the impressive progression in the ability of fMRI scanners to record brain activity in ‘real time’ but are we over interpreting these results?  Over the last decade-or-two more-and-more researchers have been turning to fMRI scanners to open the ‘black box’ which is the brain. These scanners measure brain activity by measuring the amount of oxygen in the different parts of specific cortical or sub-cortical areas (this is a very simplistic view of the technology).

However, there is a storm brewing about the validity of these scanners and questions being raised about the short-sightedness of using fMRI scanners to ‘pin-point’ specific areas within the brain when localising functions; asking the question are we oversimplifying the location of functions in the brain by doing this? 

[fMRI] scanners, they say, excel at measuring certain types of brain activity, but are also effectively blind when it comes to the detection of more subtle aspects of cognition. As a result, the pictures that seem so precise are often deeply skewed snapshots of mental activity. [Boston Globe via Frontal Cortex]

Could we then be basing some of the conclusions from studies that utilize fMRI (such as Maguire) on distorted data and can we really be confident in localising complex functions within the brain to just one location?

These critics stress the interconnectivity of the brain, noting that virtually every thought and feeling emerges from the crosstalk of different areas spread across the cortex. If fMRI is a window into the soul, these scientists say, then the glass is very, very dirty! 

I think it’s important to note that fMRI is one of (if not the) best imaging technique that we have at the moment and the data that it provides is invaluable to both the medical and psychological research teams that utilize it.  We just need to be aware of it’s limitations, well, actually the limitations of any brain scanning technique, in trying to pinpoint specific functions in our magnificently complex brain.

Tags: brain scanning, core studies, Maguire, Physiological, Research

Could it soon really be possible to look inside the brain in ‘real time’. Over the last three decades we have made leaps-and-bounds in developing non-invasive processes to scan brains; PET, MRI, fMRI etc. These scanning techniques have allowed psychologists an insight into the processes of the brain during specific tasks or just to investigate the size, location and use of particular brain structures, but the time needed to process the vast amount of information that is collected has meant that there’s no ‘real time’ option of seeing exactly what is happening, there-and then.

However, neuroscientist and inventor Christopher deCharms demonstrates a new way to use fMRI to show brain activity – thoughts, emotions, pain – while it is happening. In other words, you can actually see how you feel.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Is it possible that in the future we may be able to ‘control’ how we feel; the pain that we perceive. It seems that it through a similar process used by biofeedback techniques today could be employed using these new brain scanning techniques.

In my mind this is an incredible advancement in this technology. Not only can we see into the brain but we don’t have to wait for computers to process the data – we can see it real time. If we can get feedback on our mental process then we can perhaps learn to control our brain on a whole new level. For example, perhaps it is possible to learn to suppress pain altogether on command?

What are your thoughts?

Tags: brain scanning, pain, pain measurement, Physiological, Research

As we’ve evolved, the human stress response has saved our lives. Today, we turn on the same life-saving physical reaction to cope with intense, ongoing stressors – and we can’t seem to turn it off. “Stress: Portrait of a Killer” reveals just how dangerous prolonged exposure to stress can be.

Is stress a saviour, tyrant or plague? This, along with many other questions are raised in a recent KPBS television programmme called ‘Stress: Portrait of a Killer’.

The video starts by looking at how it may be possible to make comparisons between wild baboons and humans and their stress responses. In the video it is argued that humans have a specific problem with stress: we don’t know how to turn it off. In the wild the stress response is designed to help in times of crisis – running for ones life – getting away from the thing that’s going to eat you.

In our lives we have the same physiological responses to that idiot in the car in front who can’t drive or the fact that we’ve lost out keys once more. The goal in life isn’t to get rid of stress but to get the right types of stress. In some cases we will pay good money to be stressed – think of theme parks and horror movies.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The video is well worth a watch and gives an excellent overview of stress research and thinking currently in psychology and clinical trials.  More importantly, it reflects on how stress is a ’secret killer’ in out society and how this can negatively affect many peoples lives. 

Along with the programme there’s a great website to accompay the show: killerstress.stanford.edu.

Thanks to Contemporary Mottled Sheep for letting me know about the show. 

Tags: A2, health, stress, video, websites

I’m often bullied into watching episodes of Grey’s Anatomy (honest – it was just on!) and occasionally I understand what McDreamy might be saying about hemispherectomies and neural-pathways; but I didn’t realise that Grey’s is raising awareness of health issues throughout the globe.  Well done Dr. Grey and cast.

According to a recent article on the CBS News site a Grey’s Anatomy episode with embedded messages about HIV awareness shifted viewers attitudes about HIV especially attitudes surrounding mothers with HIV and the chances of their baby contracting the disease.

“Health educators slipped a message about HIV-positive mothers into a story line in the popular TV show Grey’s Anatomy. Then they tested whether viewers got that message.”

Three surveys were conducted: one before the episode aired, one shortly after and a follow-up 6 weeks after.  One of the questions asked in the survey was in relation to the probability of contracting HIV from a mother who had the disease.

“As far as you know, if a woman who is HIV positive becomes pregnant and receives the proper treatment, what is the chance that she will give birth to a healthy baby, not infected with HIV?”

Before the show aired only 15% of people questioned got the correct answer (more than a 90% chance), soon after the show this went up dramatically to 61% and at the six-week follow-up 45% got the question correct.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The author of the research, Victoria Rideout, suggests that while watching television we absorb information.

“For better or worse, viewers do absorb the health information they see on TV, so it’s important for these shows to get it right … This study shows the enormous potential for entertainment television to serve as a health educator.”

This obviously raises many questions as far as health promotion goes.  Firstly, that the medium of television, and more importantly entertainment programmes can be very powerful in getting positive messages and health awareness out to the viewers.

However, this power has to be used carfully – if viewers believe that the information they are ‘absorbing’ from medical entertainment programmes are accurate (as almost 60% of viewers do) we need to ensure that there’s no false or misleading information in these programmes.  A real double-edged sword.

Tags: A2, adverts, health, health promotion, prevention, Research

Graphic pictures of diseased lungs, rotting teeth and throat cancer will be placed on cigarette packets from next week to show the health dangers of smoking.

As of next week cigarette packets will no longer have the ‘Smoking Kills’ or ‘Smoking harms you and those around you’ messages on their side but a much stronger image: diseased lungs, rotting teeth and throat cancer.  These are just some of the images that will soon appear on your favouriate brand to get the message of the dangers of smoking across to all. 

The messages are obviously there to get the health message across to smokers and there’s a lot of psychology behind them.  But, have the cigarette manufacturers and government gone too far this time?  

Yerks-Dodson would have us believe that there’s an optimum level of arousal that will ensure the best effect or best performance on a task.  The messages that currently adorn our cigerette packets have been around since 2003 and almost wash over smokers now, they have habituated to the messages they provide. 

The have even become the but of jokes (man: “I just make sure that I get the ’causes low birth weight’”) or even a whole new set of ‘cover-’em-up’ stickers.  Maybe it is time that we have some more shocking messages to inform the smoker of the potential (actual?) dangers of smoking. 

Even with the amount of money being spent by the NHS on it’s quit smoking campaigns, not being able to smoke in pubs and bars and many companies not allowing smoking on site over 10 million people still smoke in the UK and it’s estimated that over half of them will die early as a result. 

Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, said: “I welcome the introduction of picture warnings on tobacco product packaging, which show smokers the grim reality of the effects smoking can have on their health. This will help to maintain the momentum of the increasing number of people who have given up smoking following England going smoke free in 2007.

“Written health warnings have encouraged many smokers to stop smoking. These new stark picture warnings emphasise the harsh health realities of continuing to smoke. I hope they will make many more think hard about giving up, and get the help they need to stop smoking for good.” 

Have we gone too far? How do you explain to your child what those pictures are on the side of your fag packet… and it’s always going to be fun going to the news agents now to be faced with a wall of death, cancer and suffering as you pay for your morning paper. 

And for those readers who do smoke, a little light-hearted relief from the legend that was Bill Hicks… 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tags: A2, addiction, adverts, health, health promotion, news commentary, smoking

In these days of interactive games, brain training, and other make ‘yourself better’ programs Mind Habits brings something to the table that is supported by research and looks at stress, self-esteem and confidence in a fun and practical way.

Worrying about your next date or the big presentation to your boss? Feeling low? Instead of running to the closest book-store to find a trendy self-help book, get MindHabits. Find relief at the click of a mouse. A video game that is actually good for you? Now, that’s a concept!

Based on social intelligence research conducted at McGill University, these stress busting, confidence boosting games use simple, fun-to-play exercises that help players develop and maintain a more positive state of mind.

I’ve spent the last two weeks playing around with MindHabits and it’s been great fun. There’s loads of different types of ‘games’ that track many different aspects of ‘you’ and shows you trends and differences over time.  Some of the games are a little repetitive but you can see yourself improving over time really quickly – especially as you go through the levels.  My only annoyance with the software, and it is a little one, is the little ‘helper’ that pops up telling you what to do – sometimes you just want to get on with it.

As well as the game there’s a detailed website that goes along with it (MindHabits.com) which has a wealth of information on the science behind our ‘mind habits‘ and the research that has supported the game.  Much of which is quite readable and accessible.

Here are a few screen shots of the software in action. But if you’re still wanting more you can pop over to the MindHabits website and try their on-line demo to see what the game is like.

From a teaching point of view I can see how this game could be great for teaching stress and stress management. It’s interactive and fun. Also, there’s plenty of stuff to get students thinking about how and why the system works. There’s some great research behind the software and you might also want your students to have a read of this.

Considering the cost of most interactive ’self-help’ games, at only $19.99 (around £10) for the full version it’s well worth having a copy of Mind Habits around to play with or use as a demonstration in class.  PsychBLOG recommended for fun, learning and self-education.

This was an unpaid review but I did receive a full copy of the game to have a play on from MindHabits. Thanks.

Tags: 4Teachers, games, resources, review, stress

We all experience pain in different ways depending on individual differences, arousal at the time and habituation to chronic pain.  Some good examples of this is recent research which has shown that doctors can actually ‘turn off’ parts of their brain which would react to seeing others in pain.

What is central to future research into pain and pain experience is that we’re aware:

Although we typically associate pain with physical damage to the body, thinking only in terms of physical damage is counter-productive. We also need to tackle the psychology and neuroscience of pain both to fully understand it and to help people affected by it. [Mind Hacks]

Going even further we could even look at the sociological influences on pain perception.  Recent research reported in the May 2008 issue of The Lancet (via Providentia) has found some interesting factors that are associated with perception of pain (or it could be argued the ability to cope with pain).  Using a representative stratified sample of over 10,000 Americans were contacted (of which just shy of 4,000 responded) to inquire about their experience of pain or chronic (pain experienced for over three months) pain.

Those with lower income or less education spent a higher proportion of time in pain and reported higher average pain than did those with higher income or more education. The average pain rating increased with age, although it reached a plateau between the ages of about 45 years and 75 years, with little difference between men and women. Satisfaction with life or health and the pain indicators tended to move in opposite directions. [from Krueger & Stone, 2008 abstract]

This could be seen in two ways: are those on lower incomes experiencing more pain or are they just not as good as coping with it?  Also, it seems to suggest that we either become more sensitive to pain as we age or again we are less able to cope with pain as we age.  It seems that this research asks more questions that it answers but it raises some great questions.

Krueger and Stone used a 6-point likert scale to measure their participants perception of pain which raises more issues as to the reliability and validity of such simple rating scales for a complex thing as pain perception.  Maybe they should have used something more sophisticated like this example from Scrubs.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you’re still wanting more on pain then you could pop over to the How to Cope with Pain blog and read their May Pain Carnival where there’s links to loads more great articles on pain, pain perception and current thinking in the area.

Tags: A2, health, pain, pain measurement

This is a heads up for a new show that coming: A new science series for the BBC in which famous people ask one big question: why are we the way we are? Thanks to Cara Flanagan (and the fab Folens Blog) for the heads up on the TV Show. If you know of any show that you think is relevant to psychology do contact me so I can get it out to the masses.

Three celebrities go on a mission to discover the source of their defining trait, talent or characteristic. With the help of scientific testing, the latest psychology techniques, brain science and genetics, they attempt to answer a question that affects everyone – how do nature and nurture shape us?

In the first programme, John Barrowman embarks on a journey of self-discovery to find out the truth about his sexuality. John is a successful actor, musical performer, dancer, singer and TV presenter. For as long as he has been aware of his sexuality, John has been convinced that he was born gay and firmly believes that homosexuality is not a choice. But did nature really mould him or did nurture have a part to play?

John undertakes a series of tests including a DNA examination that is compared with his straight brother’s, and he takes to the streets of LA to try out a theory that the origin of homosexuality is linked to events in the womb that may affect the foetus.

Throughout the programme, as well as picking up clues from psychologists and scientists, John also meets some celebrities and extraordinary people who help shed light on the origins of their traits.

The show starts next Thursday (24th July 2008) at 9pm on BBC 1. If you miss it on the night remember you can get it on BBC iPlayer for a week after and hopefully we’ll have it up on PsychClips for all to use after. Looks like it could be a great video for highlighting and starting a discussion on the nature-nurture debate.

While we’re on the topic: it seems that the ‘nature of us’ or whatever you want to call it is the ‘in thing’ at the moment – even Orange (mobile) has joined in …

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tags: nature-nurture, perspectives, tv, what's on

One of the most talked about studies, both here on PsychBLOG and throughout popular psychology, is Milgram’s study of obedience.  Here he asked a volunteer sample of men from the New Haven area to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to another person (a confederate).  How many people, both teachers and students alike asked themselves the same question: would I pull that switch?

The results from his study (well what was actually a series of studies) can force one to reflect heavily on the behaviour of the participants in the study, but also a lot closer to home.  A recent article in the New York Times titled ‘Decades Later, Still Asking: Would I Pull That Switch?’ puts a great perspective on the research as a whole.

Consider the psychologist Stanley Milgram’s obedience studiesof the early 1960s that together form one of the darkest mirrors the field has held up to the human face. In a series of about 20 experiments, hundreds of decent, well-intentioned people agreed to deliver what appeared to be increasingly painful electric shocks to another person, as part of what they thought was a learning experiment. The “learner” was in fact an actor, usually seated out of sight in an adjacent room, pretending to be zapped…

… In short, the Milgram experiments may have shown physical, biological differences in moral decision making and obedience, as well as psychological ones. Some people can be as quick on the draw as Doc Holliday when they feel something’s not right. Others need a little time to do the right thing, thank you, and would rather not be considered sadistic prison guards just yet.

It is amazing that a peice of research that is over 50 years old still has such a powerful hold over our understanding of obedience and other social behaviours.

Tags: AS, Milgram, news commentary, Social, video

Could social influence be having a positive effect for once?

It’s easy to blame those people around us when we try to rationalise why some take up habits.  It’s just easy to say that the behaviour is learned from those around us – social learning theory – who’s behaviour is imitated.  I have been one of those people myself; turning to social learning theory to explain why children might learn negative behaviours or even placing part of the blame for violent behaviour on children playing video games.

However, one concept that I touched on when looking at the ‘Children See: Children Do’ video clip, was that we need to be good role models.  More support for this has come from research published last month that suggests that quitting smoking can be triggered by those around you quitting themselves.

The urge to smoke is contagious, but quitting apparently is, too. A team of researchers who showed that obesity can spread person-to-person has found a similar pattern with smoking cessation: A smoker is more likely to kick the habit if a spouse, friend, co-worker or sibling did. Christakis, 2008

Christakis’ findings back up previous studies showing that peer influence plays a key role in people’s decision to stop lighting up and provide evidence that the “buddy system” used by smoking cessation, weight loss and alcoholism programs to change addictive behaviour works.

[The researchers] examined the social lives of 12,067 people in the Framingham Heart Study, which has been tracking the health of residents of that Boston suburb from 1971 to 2003. They were able to reconstruct people’s ties to one another since participants had to list contact information for their family, friends, co-workers and neighbours so researchers would not lose track of them over the years. The prevalence of smokers in the Framingham study over the years mirrored national trends.

This could be explained in terms of social comparison (of which I talked about in relation to obesity a few months ago).  Now that smokers are being marginalised – being made to stand in the rain at pubs, having to ‘excuse’ themselves from friends to only have to be in the cold with the other smokers – could it be that we’re looking around us and thinking that it’s the time to quit?

However, the researchers are careful and state that it’s hard to tease out whether social influence is mainly responsible for a whole group kicking the habit. Other factors such as public bans on smoking or studies highlighting the harmful effects of smoking may also play a role.

What do you think? Any recent quitters around? Why did you give up the habit?

Tags: A2, addiction, health, health promotion, SLT

With the popularity of YouTube many people are turning to it to make their own little videos for revision and other classroom activities. So, we’re (Mark and I) putting a competition together for all our readers. We want you to get those cameras out and start to make your own video. It can be about anything related to A Level psychology. Maybe you might want to record a presentation of yours or get even more creative with things and do something like this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Or you might want to try to recreate one of the core studies in your own special way.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But please don’t do something like this (even though it was our feeble attempt) as it’s not psychology related at all even though it’s our psychology students in it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We’re not too sure what the prize will be – we’ll have a rummage around our stash of psychology books and DVD’s and if we get enough entires we might even have a 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Just get your cameras out, film a clip, put it up on youtube and send us a link!

Lights … Camera … Action …

Tags: A2, AS, competition, psychblog, rant, video

Back in January I talked about a fascinating video from a TED conference where Vilayanur Ramachandran discussed a new ‘treatment’ for phantom limb pain that he had come up with: the mirror box. I’m fascinated by phantom limb pain as I feel that it provides massive support for the thesis that pain perception is a psychological perception rather than a purely physiological phenomenon.Well over the last few months there has been a few really interesting posts from around the web that concern phantoms that I will summarise here. All these pieces of research can be used in the A2 Psychology of Pain topic.

Inspired by Ramachandran’s talk at TED a group of military hospitals researched the ‘mirror box’ concept that he put forward on 22 patients with amputated lower limbs and found some impressive results. After 4 weeks of treatment, 100% of patients in the mirror group reported a decrease in pain [and] two patients had brief reactions (<2 minutes) of grief on viewing the reflected intact lower limb.

If you want to read more about this then you can go over the CNN coverage of the research.

More on phantoms and the brains perception of the body comes from an edition of ABC’s National Opinion programme where they John Bradshaw discusses how our perception and ownership of our body can break down after brain injury – leading to disorders where we think our limbs are someone else’s, where we feel there’s a phantom body behind us, or where we think we’ve been cloned. [From Mind Hacks]

Finally, and most strangely, an article on phantom penises:

Since male-to-female transsexuals typically feel themselves to be ‘a woman in a man’s body’, Ramachandran and McGeoch reasoned that their response to penectomy might well be different from that of other patients. And so it proved: while 58% of men who have undergone penectomy for other reasons reported sensation in a phantom penis afterwards, only 30% of those who had done so as part of gender reassignment had a similar experience. So people who felt that a penis was not part of their true body image were much less likely to experience a phantom penis after removal.

Stranger still, perhaps, 62% of a group of female-to-male transsexuals reported having had phantom penis sensations before any surgery. In many cases the sensations dated back for years: in others, they did not occur until hormone treatment had begun. No non-transsexual women, unsurprisingly, reported the sensation of having a phantom penis (’even when prompted’ as the researchers say). [From Conscious Entities via Dr. X]

Well a wide-ranging selection of articles there. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post I am a big believer in the idea of a cognitive body image that has a profound effect on the way that we perceive our body and the senses that we get from it. From pain perceived in a limb that is not present to having sensations in a penis that has been removed it is all compelling evidence for the cognitive and psychological influence of the mind on our perceptions.

Tags: A2, health, pain, phantom

Within Crime-Victim interaction we look at the ‘fear of crime’ and many students learn about the British Crime Survey as part of this. More-and-more so students are using out-dated versions of the BCS (like pre-2000 which seems to be in many text books) which are methodologically flawed in their delivery. Following a review in 2001 the BCS has altered the methods quite a lot and these flaws have been remedied.

So, it’s important to keep up-to-date with what’s going on and not use the old versions of the BCS (soon out dated BCS’s will not be getting credited in examinations) and ensure that we are teaching the most recent version of the BCS – which is the 2006/07 one.

What is the BCS then?

The BCS is a continuous survey of adults aged 16 or over living in private households in England and Wales. The findings in this bulletin are based on 47,203 face-to-face interviews conducted by BMRB Social Research between April 2006 and March 2007. The sample is designed to be representative of private households, and of adults aged 16 and over living in private households. The overall response rate for the calendar year 2006/07 was 75 percent.

BCS respondents are asked about their experiences of crime-related incidents in the 12 months prior to their interview. In addition, the respondents are asked about their attitudes towards different crime-related issues such as the police, criminal justice system, perceptions of crime and anti-social behaviour. [From the Full 06/07 BCS pg. 22]

The British Crime Survey is a very important source of information about levels of crime and public attitudes to crime; but what actually does the BCS do?

• The BCS measures the amount of crime in England and Wales by asking people about crimes they have experienced in the last year.
• The BCS includes crimes which are not reported to the police, so it is an important alternative to police records. Victims do not report crime for various reasons. Without the BCS the Government would have no information on these unreported crimes.
• The BCS helps to identify those most at risk of different types of crime, and this helps in the planning of crime prevention programmes.
• The BCS looks at people’s attitudes to crime, such as how much they fear crime and what measures they take to avoid it.
• The BCS looks at people’s attitudes to the Criminal Justice System, including the police and the courts.

PDF 2006/07 BCS Resources

• Summary Booklet for 2006/07 Findings (16pgs long)
• Crime in England & Wales 2006/07 (full BCS – 193 pgs long)
• BCS Over 25 Years – commentary on the development of the BCS (32 pgs long)

Tags: 4Teachers, A2, bcs, crime, crime-victim, resources

There has been quite a bit of research on the effectiveness of police lineups and whether presentation of the ’suspects’ could affect the reliability of the outcome (see here for a huge list of research). One of the big questions is should we show all the suspects together (as above) or is identification more reliable if we present each of the suspects one-at-a-time. In the A2 Psychology of Testimony area we cover aids to recall and recognition and this issue is a very pertinent one.

Much research has provided evidence that this ‘all at once’ approach can have many faults as witnesses expect that the criminal must be there and therefore go for the one that ‘best suites’ the memory of the suspect. With a sequential lineup the witness is not aware of how many people are going to be presented. Each suspect is brought up to the window and the witness must say yes or no. They do not get to go back to look at others again. Some researchers (like Cuttler & Penrod, 1995) have shown this to be a far superior and more reliable way to conduct lineups.

However, a recent report from the US has suggested this might not be the case:

In response to the problems associated with the traditional lineup, pioneering researchers such as Gary Wells spent years developing, researching and testing new lineup procedures. The two major advancements to arise from this thirty year research agenda were The Sequential Lineup, whereby witnesses view suspects one at a time rather than simultaneously; and Double-Blind Techniques whereby the person responsible for the lineup does not know who the real suspect is.

In March 2006, however, a study of an Illinois pilot program, also known as The Mecklenburg Report turned conventional wisdom on its head by claiming that sequential lineups actually result in more false identifications than traditional lineups. [From All About Forensic Psychology]

The Macklenburg report has come under criticism for being methodologically flawed and irresponsible. I have spent a few hours reading several papers which argue both sides of the argument and it seems that most of the research (over 30 years of it actually) supports the idea that sequential lineups are much better – but still police forces around the world are using the conventional ‘all-at-once’ approach.

Read more about this and eyewitness testimony at All About Forensic Psychology.

Tags: A2, Cognitive, crime, testimony

It’s widely accepted that when a person suffers from stress this has massive negative effects on that person; both psychologically and physically.  Much research has provided support to the idea that a being stressed can effect our immune system quite drastically making us prone to illness.  However, could being exposed to a stressed parental environment cause the same problems vicariously onto the children of stressed parents?

Recent research has suggested that stressed parents might not just be effecting their own health but actually having a negative impact on their children’s too.  Caserta et al. (2008) found that children of parents who suffered from stress are more likely to get sick.  Through a longitudinal study of 3 years following family groups (169 children aged 5-10) it was found that those children of stressed parents were more likely to have raised illness through parental self-reports.

Caserta’s team found that the total number of illnesses, both with and without fever, was significantly higher in the children of parents who reported high levels of emotional stress. The team also measured the levels of immune cells in the children, and found those with highly stressed parents were much more likely to have heightened immune activity – a sign that they were working hard to fend off infection. [from NewScientist]

This research could raise an interesting debate about the situation of stress: does stress have it’s roots in situational or dispositional psychology?  This research followed families who were all genetically related therefore it could have been that there was a genetic disposition to being stressed that was passed down from parents to children which would suggest that it’s not the situation that is causing the stress.  One has to be careful not to be too deterministic here though as the situation and environment that a child is raised in obviously has massive impact on their personality and ability to cope with stress.

Important to note for parents or parents-to-be: if you’re finding yourself struggling to cope with stress get support from your GP or on-line from the BBC or NHS Direct.  Alternatively there’s this useful stress reduction tool!

Tags: A2, health, stress

I have written about Health Promotion a bit in the past but over the last few months there’s been quite a lot of talk about it so here I am going to collate it into another carnival of research.

1) Increase the costs to get them doing it.
The Health Belief Model states that we need to evaluate the costs involved before performing a health behaviour – is there threat a percieved risk? Only if we percieve the risk as being high will we then perform a cost-benefit analysis on the health behaviour. Consequently, one way of improving a health behaviour is to make the perceived risk higher and this can be achieved easily by just emphasising what will happen if you don’t do it.

This philosophy is now being applied to the MMR vaccine following research conducted by Purva Abhyankar (research abstract) who thinks that it’s more important to emphasise the protection that is lost by not having the jab. He suggests that we can use prospect theory to understand this:

Prospect theory – our willingness to take risks in the context of possible losses, in contrast to our aversion to taking risks in the context of possible gains. In other words, because people tend to see the MMR vaccine as risky, Prospect Theory suggests it is better to promote the vaccine in terms of what will be lost if that risk isn’t taken, rather than in terms of what might be gained – a prediction that is supported by the current results. [quote]

2) Health promotion going too far?
There’s a fine line between getting people’s attention through advertising campaigns and actually over arousing them so that they just ignore the message and I’ve raised this before. This time it’s an advert to alert the issues surrounding anorexia.

Isabelle Caro, age 27, has suffered with anorexia for 15 years and weighed just 31 kilograms (approximately 71 pounds) at the time of the photo. The actress from France told Italian Vanity Fair that she began starving herself as a child to please her mother, who disapproved of her escalating weight. Now in recovery, she wants to bring this issue to the masses.

You can see the two advertisements here and here – but be warned the pictures may disturb some readers. What are your thoughts on the pictures? Getting the message across or just going too far?

3) Entertainment for some, education for others.
What do you get when you combine AID’s awareness with Bollywood? Well these videos will give you the answer.

Condom Awareness Video

Click here to view the embedded video.

AID’s Awareness Video

Click here to view the embedded video.

These videos, produced by the Nrityanjali Academy, a non-profit voluntary organization that has been working to help those in small villages in Southern India deal with STD’s, HIV, and AIDs, are being used to educate villagers about how to recognize and prevent sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDs.

4) Anti-smoking ads: more harm than good?
Could anti-smoking campaigns actually be causing more teens to turn to smoking rather than their intended effect? Could teenagers actually see the message behind the adverts and see a clear way to rebel against public opinion and their parents? As we learn about in the AS course (and showed recently in Children see, children do) it seems that children are more influenced by their role models which at their age is likely to be peers.

Paek said the data showed middle school students are more likely to be influenced by the perception of what their friends are doing, and that anti-smoking campaigns should be more focused on peer relations. Rather than saying, ‘Don’t smoke,’ it is better to say, ‘Your friends are listening to this message and not smoking. [Quote]

Maybe this should be kept in mind when advertisers are putting together ad campaigns in the future.

Hope you’ve enjoyed the carnival!

Tags: A2, adherence, adverts, Carnival, health, health promotion, video

The influence of our role models on behaviour is something of particular interest to psychologists and we study it through the entire psychology course. More specifically we look at the research conducted by Bandura and his work into Social Learning Theory (SLT) in the imitation of aggression. In a television advertisement called “Children See. Children do” which was actually aired in Australia a few year ago a powerful message is passed across to the viewer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The message in the video is clear: children imitate behaviour that they see around them: talking on a phone, body language … smoking, violence, so make sure that you’re setting a good example. There’s plenty of psychology behind this and it can be related to many areas that we cover: AS, crime and health behaviours, and we’ll look at how this links in to it all now.

Although SLT is a concept that you came across in the first year in relation to children and learned aggression we can apply the same theory to criminality. In the Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1961) study it was found that boys would imitate an aggressive act of a male role model showing physical aggression towards an inflatable ‘Bobo’ doll. SLT simply states that a person will imitate the behaviour of a role model, and this behaviour will continue if they receive positive reinforcement of that behaviour.

Applying this to criminality, we can ignore all of the more complex arguments that would have us believe that criminality is down to biology, genes, neurotransmitters or such else – it’s simply a learned behaviour, imitated from role models. When a person sees a role model performing a behaviour and then receives positive feedback this is remembered. If that person has the chance to imitate this behaviour they will. If they then get positive reinforcement for this imitation then the chance of them repeating this behaviour is increased.

Although this theory does seem to account for many people becoming a criminal, especially petty crime and nuisance offences, it doesn’t take into account those people who become offenders without any apparent poor role models. For example, some crimes are kept secret (white collar crimes – fraud, embezzlement) so people wouldn’t have a role model to copy. This theory also ignores the cognitive element of offending: we all have a choice when it comes to committing an offence.

We can also see the links with health promotion and how some children may ‘learn’ unhealthy behaviours such as smoking or even just eating unhealthily (think back to the parents in those ‘Jamie’s School Dinners‘ TV programmes.)

Overall, I think that the video is an excellent example of using psychology to provoke awareness of a very serious problem.

Your thoughts in the comments: what do you think about the video?

You can get a better quality version (Quicktime) here.

Tags: A2, aggression, AS, Bandura, crime, crime prevention, developmental, health, health promotion, news commentary, SLT, video

The A2 Crime module covers a wide range of areas and the Home Office has an excellent resource which could come of use to you for lessons or just to get a little wider ranging information on crime theories, models and practice.

Over the past 2 decades our understanding of crime and crime reduction has grown. This section introduces and organises some of the approaches that have been developed to inform crime reduction practice. [quote]

I’ve only had a brief ‘wander’ through some of the resources but it seems like a really valuable resource for anyone teaching or learning about psychology and crime. Well worth a browse if you have a spare five minutes.

http://www.crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk/learningzone/lz_learning.htm

Hat-tip to Louise on the OCR E-list for making me aware of this excellent resource.

Tags: A2, crime, resources, teaching, websites

In the A2 health module we look at pain perception and what can affect this. One of the most fascinating disorders within pain (well in my opinion at least) is phantom limb pain. Phantom limb pain is when pain is perceived in a limb (although it can be experienced in other parts of the body too – there’s been writing on phantom menstrual pains in women who have had hysterectomies) which has been amputated.

As psychologists this type of pain is important as it provides massive evidence that pain perception is influenced massively by psychological factors: it’s a top-down process. This must be the case in phantom sufferers as there is no physiology there to send any signals (as specific theory suggests) to the brain so the brain must be ‘creating’ the pain signal itself.

Whilst stumbling recently I came across TED – Inspired talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers – where there are some excellent videos (some general science interest and others specifically linked to psychology and neurology). One video in particular caught my attention: A journey to the center of our minds.

In a wide-ranging talk, Vilayanur Ramachandran explores how brain damage can reveal the connection between the internal structures of the brain and the corresponding functions of the mind. He talks about phantom limb pain, synesthesia (when people hear color or smell sounds), and the Capgras delusion, when brain-damaged people believe their closest friends and family have been replaced with imposter’s.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Not all of the video is relevant to OCR (still excellent viewing) but the part in the middle regarding phantom limb pain and possible remedies is superb (email and rss subscribers – you may have to visit the site to view the video). This video is one in a series called “How the Mind Works“. One other video of note in this series is Susan Savage-Rumbaugh’s (new to OCR 2008) where she asks whether uniquely human traits, and other animals’ behaviours, are hard-wired by species (an article on this to follow).

Personally, I believe that this video provides even more support for the thesis that phantom limb pain is very much a psychological process (well as far as the perception of it goes). Obviously, I am not saying that there is no physiological processes going on – in most cases there has to be the physiological nauseous event to trigger the pain – but maybe our minds are more instrumental in pain perception that some think.

Tags: A2, health, pain, phantom, resources, video

Which gender experiences the most pain? The age old question is still rife: what hurts more, child birth or being kicked in the … well .. man bits?  I try to raise this question when talking about measuring pain in the Health section of the A2 using the McGill Pain questionnaire to quantify – well at least in part – the pain experienced at different times.

A recent piece of research has found that at 5 out of 12 pressure points men’s pain threshold was higher than womens.  However, we have to note that individual differences are rife in perception of pain.  Men may have just been more likely to report that the pain wasn’t there to prove their ‘butch man persona’.  Maybe we could have used some form of physical measure to attempt to get a more objective idea of the perception of pain.

You can read Christian’s comments on the study over at the BPSRD or go find the original study and see what you think.

Garcia, E., Godoy-Izquierdo, D., Godoy, J.F., Perez, M. & Lopez-Chicheri, I. (2007). Gender differences in pressure pain threshold in a repeated measures assessment. Psychology, Health and Medicine, 12, 567-579.   Hat tp to the BPSRD.

Tags: A2, health, pain

Manchester Police have just released a new set of television ads to raise awareness of rape and to give support to those who have been the victim of it. The two adverts, one from a man’s perspective the other from the woman’s are aimed separately at men and women.

The ‘male version‘ shows a young chap in a bar, flirting with a young lady and one thing leads to another but the woman tries to stop this and the man continues. The ‘female version‘ puts the emphasis on the fact that you can get support if such a thing happens to you.

Det Ch Insp Carol Ashworth said: “Many young men, like in the commercial, don’t realise the consequences of their actions and I hope the ad makes them understand that they are committing a crime if they fail to gain consent for sex.”

Dr Catherine White, Clinical Director at St Mary’s Sexual Assault Referral Centre said: “These ads are a powerful reminder of how rape can devastate people’s lives and that there are excellent support and counselling services in place to help them. [taken from BBC News]

Will this work? Does this really address the problem of sexual assault that we have at the moment? Will men really be out in a bar flirting and flash back to this advert? I’m not too sure. But it does get the message across with a ‘tag line’ that is short, sharp and to the point.

Rape: short word, long sentence.

This is probably the most provocative part of the advert – well at least in my opinion.

The relevance here? Well we can think of it in terms of preventing crime or crime-victim interaction in the A2 crime unit.

As always your thoughts on the videos (male version & female version) in the comments.

Tags: A2, adverts, crime, crime-victim, news commentary