Ahh. Psychologists. Expectations calibrated.
"Expecting to know the answers made people more likely to get the answers right."
Ah, yes -- that conclusion should be easy to rigorously quantify, explain in neuroscientific terms, turn into a general theory, and replicate before anyone assumes we're doing actual science. But no one will shape a theory, there will be no replications, and this study, like 99% of psychology studies, will disappear without a trace, only to be inadvertently repeated years from now by someone who will arrive at the opposite conclusion.
Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? The article draws attention to a phenomenon that isn't predicted by current theory. Before a predictive theory has been developed, there is even some censorship or bias risk in using neuroscientific terms.
> Isn't that putting the cart before the horse?
Not in science. In science, the explanation is both the cart and the horse. No explanation, no science. Einstein didn't win a Nobel Prize for noting that electrons are emitted by a metal surface, he won for explaining why they are emitted. Had Einstein been a psychologist, publishing the fact that electrons are emitted (for simply describing) would have been enough.
> The article draws attention to a phenomenon that isn't predicted by current theory.
That's uncontroversial, since there are no theories in psychology, only descriptions. This, by the way, is why the director of the NIMH recently decided to abandon the DSM, to so-called "bible" of psychiatry and psychology, on the ground that it only contains descriptions and therefore has no scientific value (the DSM will remain as a diagnostic guide):
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...
Quote: "... symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment ... Patients with mental disorders deserve better."
> Before a predictive theory has been developed, there is even some censorship or bias risk in using neuroscientific terms.
I think there's little risk in asking "Where's the science?"
'seem' is the operative word here.
A, a positivist reductionist. Expectations on intellectual sophistication and ability to comprehend the world beyond simplistic models calibrated.
> A, a positivist reductionist.
With respect to psychology, given its history, the burden isn't on me to avoid faulty generalizations, it's on psychology to overcome the weight of its past.
> Expectations on intellectual sophistication and ability to comprehend the world beyond simplistic models calibrated.
At a time when the director of the NIMH has decided to abandon the DSM on the ground that it's not scientific enough to take seriously?
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...
Quote: "The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity ... Patients with mental disorders deserve better."
What appears to be a simplistic generalization is, in this case, the result of much reflection and analysis, and a reluctant but legitimate conclusion.
Well, yes, if someone expects you to know the answer it seems pretty straight forward that you would be more inclined to make a guess rather than saying "I don't know." All of us who ever watched a quiz show on TV know that people who guess an answer instead of passing will sometimes get it right. More often than people who pass, actually.
And what makes you think that they didn't account for the "I don't knows"?
It generally surprises me how, from reading an 100 high mile description of an article, some commenters always assume (without any evidence) that the results are due to some extremely naive methodological mistake.
I recall reading something posted recently about how the way the grants in social sciences is set up ensures that you get a whole lot of papers that have a catchy 'truthy' hook to them, which will then get disseminated by the mainstream media and quickly forgotten.
It basically turned the fields into little more than generators of soundbites.
Yep, I had a lot of nerve doing that. :)
A while ago, in an article I noted that Wikipedia defined neuroscience as "the scientific study of the brain and nervous system", while psychology was defined as "the study of the mind, partly through the study of behavior." Within hours of my article's appearance someone inserted the word "scientific" into psychology's definition. Solved that problem.
> I recall reading something posted recently about how the way the grants in social sciences is set up ensures that you get a whole lot of papers that have a catchy 'truthy' hook to them, which will then get disseminated by the mainstream media and quickly forgotten.
Yes, even to the extent that two studies arrive at opposite conclusions but don't notice each other (and no one points out the contradiction). My favorite example of overlooked contradictions are two current, well-regarded psychological theories -- Grit and Asperger Syndrome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait) : "Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait, based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term goal or endstate coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective."
So according to the Grit contingent, focusing on a few activities, or just one, is a "good thing", and typical of successful people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome : "Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's syndrome or Asperger disorder, is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests."
So according to the Asperger contingent, focusing on a few activities, or just one, is a mental illness.
How can this happen? The answer is that there's no central defining theory in psychology, so people are free to draw conclusions that don't need to be compared to tested, defining principles like relativity or evolution.
> It basically turned the fields into little more than generators of soundbites.
Well put. :)
That may be true, but only one of those can be studied scientifically.
Unfortunately there is no indication in this article, or the abstract of the paper, and the journal article itself requires a subscription.
I've noticed this is true in ever facet of my life. When I was 14, I memorized pi to 50 digits with almost no effort. Later, I memorized it to 100, then 200. I realized at that point that I could memorize anything that I wanted to. I memorize phone numbers, credit card numbers, everything with almost no effort and not using any mnemonic device. It's so handy when buying something on the Internet to have every credit card in my wallet memorized.
Invariably when I demonstrate this to someone I get the, "Oh I could never do that, my memory is terrible." I actually convinced a friend of mine many years ago that he could in fact memorize pi to 100 digits... and he did and still remembers it to this day. I'm convinced anyone can do this and the major thing stopping them is their belief that they can't do it.
Your response makes it all about me, but I specifically mentioned other people being surprised by their own memorization capabilities after I asked them to consider that maybe they're more capable of memorizing numbers than they believed.
Your comment also says that I memorize through "no effort" when I stated, "almost no effort" which is > "no effort". When I originally memorized pi to 50 digits it took about 15 minutes which is what I could consider "almost no effort" but that's more than 15 seconds which is what I would consider "no effort".
And I'm sorry my comment made you resentful. Hopefully you don't resent other people telling you how with little effort they were able to increase their vertical jump or learn how to play the guitar.
The thing I've found to be true in my case is that I do have bad memory in general -- but this is because of the unique childhood I had: I was never forced to memorize anything. I've a habit of referencing my smartphone when I need to know what someone's phonenumber is, I've a habit of looking at address books and maps to know where someone is, instead of making a concerted effort to think where they live beforehand. My brother-in-law is the opposite of me: he purposely avoids using his smartphone/GPS, and instead looks at Google Maps directions before taking off for the trip... and relies on it with memory. I asked him why he did that instead of just using the GPS that he does have and he straight up told me he does these things for memory exercises. So now, at least for the past few months, I've also been making a concerted effort in improving my memory and I've found that I can do these incredible things... I can memorize pi to 100 digit, I can memorize pages of books that are in a language I barely understand -- despite my shrink telling me that I have terrible memory.
So I don't think 300bps's comment was offensive at all. Memory is very much a skill that can be improved with dedicated effort. I'm someone who long believed until recently that I had bad memory and I had to deal with it... but this is not true, I can do mental exercises to improve it. Research has proved time and again that learning new languages, new musical instruments, etc. are great exercises to keep the mind/memory sharp. I implore you to look into the idea: use little tricks, read the book "Moonwalking with Einstein" (it's about memorizing things in fun ways), take about a week to memorize digits of pi (spend about 10 hours, I'd say -- use various techniques (which you can read up on online)), and get back to us. See if you truly can or can't memorize pi to the 50th (or even 100th) digit if you really put the effort to it. The more you do it, the more your ability will improve. If it takes you 5 hours the first time around to remember some 50 digits, it'll take you just one hour the next 50th time you do it.
For example, journalist and author, Joshua Foer[1], talks about the astonishing feats of memory by average people. It becomes more persuasive, when it turns personal. While he starts out by writing a story on memory championships, he decides to take it further and delves deep into learning the techniques himself. Some time later, he ends up becoming the USA Champion!
"In 2006, Foer won the U.S.A. Memory Championship, and set a new USA record in the "speed cards" event by memorizing a deck of 52 cards in 1 minute and 40 seconds"[1]
The Ted Talk provides more detail [2].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Foer
[2] http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_...
I strongly recommend the book "Moonwalking with Einstein" which was very enlightening for me.
The research is on the parent's side: most people can improve their memory performance with focused practice.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/20/magazine/mind-...
This should not seem that surprising; we easily accept that most people can improve their physical fitness with exercise, for example.
300bps didn't do that though. So did he/she actually mean what was said? Well no, because 10 minutes later your criticisms will be dismissed as [strikethrough]pedantry[/strikethrough] silliness.
If you can memorize this without a mnemonic device, then I hate to break it to you, you are a mutant with Eidetic memory. And, so incidentally was your friend.
If you can't, then perhaps you've found a special, easy way to make memorizing numbers easy. Perhaps you should start a website and sell this technique?
I highly recommend reading Moonwalking with Einstein. It's about a journalist who got interested in memory competitions and, with a lot of practice, ended up winning the US memory championship. Anyone can do it.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Rememberi...
You see, it's not that my memory is equally terrible for all things. Sometimes i forget about things i was told literally seconds ago; but somehow i remember quotes from The Simpsons episodes that i haven't seen in years, or equally seemingly useless stuff. So, what makes these things different? Maybe the situation of being told something and thinking "shit, i must remember this! [but i probably wont]" actually makes things much worse.
Thanks. Just to dig the hole deeper for myself - I used to have a terrible time falling asleep when I was younger.
For the past 20 years though I sleep like a baby every night. If I wake up in the middle of the night (normally due to one of my 3 children or my wife), I fall back asleep with no problem.
Honestly the only thing I did differently was I managed to convince myself that I am a great sleeper. I found the thing that was keeping me up nights was worrying about how much sleep I was going to eke out that night.
I'm sure someone will now say how arrogant and smug I am because they have a disorder that causes them to smack themselves in the face every 10 seconds which makes good sleep impossible.
i already have a preconception that i'll forget about everything if i don't write it down.
I purposely write nothing down temporarily. I deal with CUSIPs at work a lot and I will purposely memorize them for short time periods instead of copying/pasting them because I find the more I do it, the better I am at it.
Anyhow, I think your root sentiment is valid (that most people are only limited by what they believe they can accomplish). Most people take offense to the "little effort" part, but I believe that if you through pure will power accomplish something you thought you would NEVER accomplish, that's "little effort". Most people would probably be surprised by their progress in something if they just put their heads down and worked at it.
Oh no, this guy maybe over reached in his assumption about how well general people can memorize numbers! Better make ourselves look like idiots and go wildly off point about it!
Check out the thread about that guy's blog "Kids these days can't use computers" as a prime example :(
I have similar experiences with (re)teaching basic math tricks and approximation to adults. "Oh, I wish I could to that but I suck at math" is a quite common response. I love the flash in their eyes when, after a short explanation, they make their first multiplication by 9 or division by 5 without the use of a calculator.
What I still don't understand is why some people are satisfied after learning the first trick while other (only 1/10th max) ask for more tricks. Shouldn't the idea of having learnt something new _always_ sparkle the interest in learning more?
What I said is that most people don't try to memorize things because they think that they can't.
Most people memorize things by simple repetition
Sure, and most people don't try to memorize things because (again) they think that they can't no matter what technique they use.
I don't buy it
I'm not selling anything. I'm merely passing on my own experiences and those of my friends. If you choose to continue to believe you can't memorize things because of some innate lack of ability, it doesn't affect me at all.
You might want to write a book on memory and memorizing things using what you learned when you were young. People like me need to learn that. My memory is not perfect, and I am often picked on for not being able to remember stuff.
I believe that I can do it, and am not sure why I fail. Ever since I developed a mental illness in 2001, I've been having memory issues and difficulty concentrating. The psyhe meds for example make me dizzy, confused, and drowsy. In 2003 I could no longer work as I was too sick and became disabled. I always wanted to get out of this rut and get back to work some day. I am 45 now, and nobody wants to hire someone that old these days.
Maybe that's why some people have multiple personalities - one is good at math, one at geography, one at programming ;)
[1]http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/07/if-women-a...
Regarding the original article, people who were told the answer got flashed might simply doubted their intuition less.
I've noticed this with self confidence as well. Its interesting because suppose there were two people who were both identical in capability - the one with confidence will do much better. He/She will put ideas out, will come across as more impressive to other people, and in the long term grow faster than the unconfident person because of it...
I mention it because I was surprised when I realized that success is not just intelligence, hard work, and social interaction, but that success is also intertwined with general personality characteristics, like confidence.
In one experiment, when given a morphine placebo, patients reported pain relief, but when a morphine-blocker was silently introduced, the placebo morphine no longer worked. [*http://letterstonature.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/the-placebo-...]
It's fascinating and deserves more research.
(One fascinating claim mentioned in the article is that in clinical trials, Valium can no longer be statistically distinguished from placebo, possibly due to patients' expectations. This statistical skew in favour of placebo is problematic for a lot of drug research, essentially preventing manufacturers from proving that their drug works.)
[1] http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo...
[2] http://brainsciencepodcast.com/bsp/neurobiology-of-placebos-...
I often travel with electronic prototypes and/or custom parts, which can be really annoying if you have to cross an international border and go through customs.
I found that the best way to get through it speedily is to also carry one of my Antbots, and go into sales pitch mode when asked to explain it. People will automatically want to get rid of a traveling salesman and the fastest way to do so is to let you through.
Got me out of a ticket once, too.
http://www.daily-comix.com/image/comic/small/1307/jesus-save...
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff100/fv00014.htm
or as a method for private communication
But my eyes always glazed over while listening to him talk about tapping into the "Infinite Intelligence".
If nothing else, I would like to thank this article for gently reminding me that I do not know everything there is to know about this universe.
http://hci.ucsd.edu/102b/readings/WeirdestPeople.pdf
often engages in dodgy data manipulation after gathering the data,
http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/
and is usually part of a larger scientific universe of rushing to publish.
http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/mks/statmistakes/filedrawer.h...
That said, while we will always have to be wary of grandiose claims about preliminary study results,
http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
and especially about "mind over matter" claims,
there are skeptical psychologists
http://www.lscp.net/persons/dupoux/teaching/JOURNEE_AUTOMNE_...
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/o...
http://www.psichi.org/pubs/articles/article_730.aspx
and other researchers in psychology who apply rigor to their discipline, so over time we may actually find out something about human behavior from psychology more reliable than the weak and debatable assertions found in the article submitted here.
AFTER EDIT:
Because the submitted article mentions the placebo effect, in the usual manner of popular articles, perhaps I should share here some links that are helpful for understanding what placebo effects are all about. Some of these online links cite quite a few useful scholarly publications.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/behold-the-spin-what-a-n...
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/michael-specter-on-the-p...
"In other words, the best research we have strongly suggests that placebo effects are illusions, not real physiological effects. The possible exception to this are the subjective symptoms of pain and nausea, where the placebo effects are highly variable and may be due to subjective reporting."
Despite the numerous press releases on the Web pointing to publications co-authored by Ted Kaptchuk, who has NO medical training or credentials,
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/dummy-medicine-dummy-doc...
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/dummy-medicine-dummy-doc...
the statements typically found in those articles, such as "Recent research demonstrates that placebo effects are genuine psychobiological phenomenon [sic] attributable to the overall therapeutic context, and that placebo effects can be robust in both laboratory and clinical settings" are untrue.
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-rise-and-fa...
"Despite the spin of the authors – these results put placebo medicine into crystal clear perspective, and I think they are generalizable and consistent with other placebo studies. For objective physiological outcomes, there is no significant placebo effect. Placebos are no better than no treatment at all."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20091554
"We did not find that placebo interventions have important clinical effects in general. However, in certain settings placebo interventions can influence patient-reported outcomes, especially pain and nausea, though it is difficult to distinguish patient-reported effects of placebo from biased reporting. The effect on pain varied, even among trials with low risk of bias, from negligible to clinically important. Variations in the effect of placebo were partly explained by variations in how trials were conducted and how patients were informed."
Fabrizio Benedetti, a co-author of one of the most cited papers who is also a medical doctor, sums up his view this way: "I am a doctor, it is true, but I am mainly a neurophysiologist, so I use the placebo response as a model to understand how our brain works. I am not sure that in the future it will have a clinical application."
To sum up, despite claims to the contrary by a person without medical training who is often covered by the lay press, the best-considered view among medical practitioners with clinical experience is that the placebo response has no clinical application.
See also:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/does-thinking-make-it-so...
http://www.skepdic.com/placebo.html
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/revisiting-daniel-moerma...
I believe this is a narrow view. Our brains are not separate from our bodies and have a huge influence over what happens with us. And it seems that at lot of what we previously called "autonomic" systems can be influenced by the mind. This is something we do not understand, which is OK — but I don't think it is OK to mock anyone who says otherwise.
My views on these things changed after, having spent 8 years trying to cure joint pains, I finally got rid of them just by thinking (a simplification, but close enough). Oh, and the throat infections and allergies? Gone, too. That sort of killed my smug scientific approach, or more precisely, made it clear to me that our scientific tools are inadequate and that there are lots of things happening in our bodies that we a) do not understand, b) cannot meaningfully measure, c) cannot reason about in statistical studies. This doesn't mean it is impossible to measure those things, just that at present we do not know how to do it.
I also now believe that "medical training" is not it's all cracked up to be. And I learned that doctors really hate saying "I don't know".
So, I would much rather hear people say "something is happening that we do not understand" rather than discount any articles like this one as pure quackery.
If by "we" you mean you, sure. If you mean scientists I call bullshit. You're going to need a good citation to make that claim.
> having spent 8 years trying to cure joint pains, I finally got rid of them just by thinking
Not surprising. Pain is the one thing you expect to be able to change by "thinking." Pain is perception and placebos (and thinking) change perception.
> Oh, and the throat infections and allergies? Gone, too.
Now we're going down anecdote road. You do realize that allergies change as you age right? My anecdotes: until I was in my late teens / early 20's I didn't have allergies. Then suddenly one year I had them badly. Years later they went away again. My dad never had allergies until they came on strong in his 50's.
Similarly infections come and go.
> And I learned that doctors really hate saying "I don't know".
Good doctors don't. The problem is that the medical profession is full of egos. Egos don't go well with admitting you don't know or are wrong.
"Conclusions: It is evident that placebo effects are real and that they have therapeutic potential. Laboratory evidence supports the existence of numerous placebo mechanisms and effects in both healthy volunteers and patients with a variety of medical conditions. Furthermore, clinically relevant evidence demonstrates that placebo effects can have meaningful therapeutic effects, by virtue of magnitude and duration, in different patient populations. Although substantial progress has been made in understanding placebo effects, considerable scientific work remains to be done in both laboratory experiments and translational clinical trial research, with the ultimate aim of harnessing placebo effects to improve patient care."
from: "Placebo Effects: Biological, Clinical and Ethical Advances" / by Damien G Finniss, Ted J Kaptchuk, Franklin Miller, and Fabrizio Benedetti / Lancet. 2010 February 20; 375(9715): 686–695. / https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2832199/
"The studies that raise eyebrows are mostly in an area known as behavioral or goal priming, research that demonstrates how subliminal prompts can make you do all manner of crazy things. A warm mug makes you friendlier. The American flag makes you vote Republican. Fast-food logos make you impatient. A small group of skeptical psychologists—let's call them the Replicators—have been trying to reproduce some of the most popular priming effects in their own labs.
What have they found? Mostly that they can't get those results. The studies don't check out. Something is wrong."
When we focus our attention on something, we are applying more brain resources towards that task, sending more energy through our neurons, etc. If sitting in an aircraft simulator makes you more alert due to the excitement of the experience and task, it makes sense that you will invest more energy into it to get a better outcome. Not too mysterious.
I disagree with those commenters who imply that there is nothing scientific about making observations without a theory to attach to it. I actually tink it's a lot more responsible than trying to force a theory that we don't have enough evidence for.
Ozgun Atasoy is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Marketing at Boston University School of Management.
