Occupational

Small acts of kindness at work benefit the giver, the receiver and the whole organisation

GettyImages-471193662.jpgBy Alex Fradera

In the lab, psychologists have shown how generosity propagates and spreads. If someone is kind to us, we tend to “pay it forward” and act more generously to someone else when given the chance. But it’s not clear if these findings are realistic. For example, when we’re juggling priorities on a busy work day, might receiving an act of kindness actually be a nuisance, leaving us feeling indebted to return the favour when we’ve got more important things to do? An uplifting new study in the journal Emotion looks at acts of altruism within a real-life working environment, and shows how kindness really does ripple outwards from a good deed.

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Brain, Methods

Emotionally competent teens have brains that fire “in tune” with their parents’ brains

GettyImages-174967551.jpgBy Christian Jarrett

Up and down the land parents and teenagers are engaged in tense negotiation and diplomacy in an effort to maintain domestic peace. Some households are finding more success than others. Their secret, according to a new paper in NeuroImage, is a literal meeting of minds – synchronisation of brain cell firing seems to foster emotional harmony. Moreover, when parents and their teenagers display this “neural similarity”, write Tae-Ho Lee and his colleagues, “this promotes youths’ psychological adjustment”.

These are intriguing findings – in the fact the researchers claim this is the first time that anyone has compared the brain activity of parent-child dyads with their interpersonal relations. However, sceptics will baulk at the rampant neuro-reductionism and at the paper’s repeated claims of brain-based causation on the basis of purely correlational evidence.

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Emotion, Mental health

Soon after giving birth, mothers typically experience a self-esteem dip lasting at least three years

Mother feeding babyBy Emma Young

“After decades of debate, a consensus is emerging about the way self-esteem develops across the lifespan.” So wrote a pair of psychologists – one from Kings College London, the other from the University of California Davis – in a paper published back in 2005. That “consensus” is that self-esteem is relatively high in childhood, drops during adolescence, rises gradually through adulthood before dropping sharply in old age. But a new paper suggests that there’s a major blip in this pattern for one huge part of the population. Becoming a mother triggers a decline in self-esteem and relationship satisfaction over at least the next three years, according to research on nearly 85,000 mothers in Norway, forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

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guest blogger, Sport

What is the psychological state underlying “clutch performance” – excelling under pressure?
Images From The Book "In The Moment' - By Tom Jenkins
With 26 seconds left on the clock, Jonny Wilkinson scores the winning drop goal in the 2003 Rugby World Cup Final

By guest blogger Bradley Busch

Pressure does interesting things to an athlete. For some, it leads to an increase in tension, nerves and anxiety. Others are able to channel this increased pressure into running faster, jumping higher and throwing further. What strategies do these “big game players” use to raise their game under heightened pressure – known as a “clutch performance”?

In the Journal of Sports Sciences, researchers from Australia and England recently reported the results of their interviews with sixteen athletes from around the world just a few days after they had delivered an excellent sporting performance in a competition when under pressure. The findings represent a step forward in our understanding of expert and skilled performances, showing how clutch performance is similar to, but distinct from, the related concept of “flow”.

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bullying, Personality

Having a personality that’s different from average may increase teens’ risk of being bullied

lonely school pupil sittingBy Christian Jarrett

Most of us remember kids at school who seemed a little different – less sociable, more introverted and fragile, perhaps – and that they often seemed to be the ones to get picked on or rejected. Maybe you remember because you were one of those kids and you know what is was like to not fit in. Personality psychologists who study these things have partly backed this up: they’ve found that children and teens who score low in the “Big Five” traits of emotional stability, conscientiousness and agreeableness (similar to friendliness) are more likely to be bullied.

But of course being different is relative, it depends a lot on the crowd you’re in. A new study in the European Journal of Personality has looked into this, providing a more nuanced picture of how a teenager’s personality may place them at risk of being bullied. The results suggest that teenagers are more likely to be a victim of bullying if they have a personality that is unusual compared with what’s typical in their particular classroom. The researchers, led by Savannah Boele at Tilburg University, say their findings need to be extended and replicated, but they hope they could help teachers spot and support the kids in their class who are most likely to be bullied.

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In Brief, Political

Politicians – when you dodge the question, it makes you look dodgy
Party Leaders Appear On Live Televised Show 'May v Corbyn Live: The Battle for Number 10'
The research also suggested that we’re more likely to notice evasions by politicians whom we distrust

By Alex Fradera

Evasive politicians tend to pay for their slipperiness, according to new research in Journal of Language and Social Psychology. To study the art of the dodge, David Clementson of Ohio State University created videos of a male politician with no obvious party affiliation (he was played by an actor, but the participants thought he was a real politician), who was quizzed on a number of topics by a news reporter. In some versions of the video the politician played it entirely straight, but in others he dodged one of the questions, either by switching topics, or by giving a terse “no comment”. Either evasion led to the politician being rated as less trustworthy, both by a young group of 200 American university students, and a more seasoned group of 200 US citizens with an average age of 57.

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Emotion

If high self-control has a downside, these psychologists couldn’t find it

kettlebell balance demonstrationBy Emma Young

Self-control has been dubbed a “master virtue” – one which enables so many others, such as selflessness and perseverance. Indeed, better control of short-term impulses in conflict with long-term goals is linked to everything from greater health to greater wealth. It’s no surprise, then, that schools are adopting strategies designed to improve their students’ self-control, under the assumption that there is no downside. But is there…?

Some researchers have argued that there might be. High levels of self-control might promote obsessive-compulsive tendencies, or a dysfunctional kind of perfectionism, in which a person rigidly strives for unreachable standards. Another potential downside has been suggested: “Too much” self-control might lead to “frequent and sometimes unnecessary regulation of emotions, thoughts and behaviours, resulting in a life marked by rigidity and blandness, thereby lowering subjective wellbeing” note the authors of a new paper on the topic, published in the Journal of Personality. 

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Autism, guest blogger, Memory, Thought

Researchers are figuring out how sense of self develops differently in autistic teens

Teenage woman looking at herself in a mirrorBy guest blogger Dan Carney

Our autobiographical memory is fundamental to the development of our sense of self. However, according to past research, it may be compromised in autism, together with other skills that are also vital for self understanding, such as introspection and the ability to attribute mental states to others (known as mentalising).

For example, experiments involving autistic children have highlighted retrieval difficulties, “impoverished narratives”, and a greater need for prompting, while also suggesting that semantic recall (facts from the past) may be impaired in younger individuals.

Now a UK research team, led by Sally Robinson from London’s St. Thomas’ Hospital, has published the first attempt to assess the nature of – and relationships between – autobiographical memory, mentalising and introspection in autism. Reporting their findings in Autism journal, the group hope their results will shed more light on the way that autistic children and teens develop a sense of self.

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Forensic, Social

More than 50 years on, the murder of Kitty Genovese is still throwing up fresh psychological revelations

KittyGenovese-2By Christian Jarrett

The horrific killing of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese in New York in 1964 inspired research into what’s known in social psychology as the Bystander Phenomenon – our increased disinclination to intervene when in the company of others. That’s because early reports told how 38 witnesses to Genovese’s murder did nothing to help. But in fact it’s now clear that several people did intervene. So the tragedy that inspired research into the Bystander Phenomenon is actually a bad example of that real phenomenon.

But it’s not time yet to leave the sad story alone. As psychologist Saul Kassin documents in Perspectives on Psychological Science, hidden in the story in plain sight all these decades is an example of another important psychological principle: the power of false confessions. Moreover, in another twist, details have emerged recently of how a few days after her murder, Genovese’s killer, Winston Moseley, was initially detained by members of the public – ironically, given how the Genovese case inspired research into bystander apathy, these bystanders chose to act.

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Cognition, Decision making, Feature, Intelligence, Thought

5 Reasons It’s So Hard To Think Like A Scientist

Maria Goeppert MayerBy Christian Jarrett

Thinking like a scientist is really hard, even for scientists. It requires putting aside your own prior beliefs, evaluating the quality and meaning of the evidence before you, and weighing it in the context of earlier findings. But parking your own agenda and staying objective is not the human way.

Consider that even though scientific evidence overwhelming supports the theory of evolution, a third of Americans think the theory is “absolutely false”. Similarly, the overwhelming scientific consensus is that human activity has contributed to climate change, yet around a third of Americans doubt it.

We Brits are just as blinkered. In a recent survey, over 96 per cent of teachers here said they believed pupils learn better when taught via their preferred learning style, even though scientific support for the concept is virtually non-existent. Why is it so hard to think like a scientist? In a new chapter in the Psychology of Learning and Motivation book series, Priti Shah at the University of Michigan and her colleagues have taken a detailed look at the reasons, and here we pull out five key insights:

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