I can recall being in the classrooms of my youth in the Midwest. During the winter, the only things to keep the school warm were large furnaces in each room.  These were truly large and obnoxious things.  The furnaces, covered in tin, had internal fans that created a horrendous buzzing that elevated the noise of the room twofold.  An odd thing happens when you sit around these things for hours at a time though; you forget they are even there.  In fact, often the only time I would find them irritating is after they cycled off.  The new-found silence that fell upon the classroom was so dramatic that I often found myself shifting my attention away from the lesson and onto the emptiness that now filled my ears. That is to say that I often found the absence of the sound more distracting than the sound itself.

Where Has All The Stimulus Gone?

Surely you have been in a loud room, party, or restaurant where you were able to focus on the conversation you were having with the person in front of you while ignoring all other conversations in the room.  Have you ever wondered how you are able to focus on the conversation your having at a party or a busy restaurant when there are literally hundreds of other conversations occurring within ear shot?  It turns out, our brain is pretty good at filtering out unwanted stimuli.  While it is possible to manually shift our attention to one (or several) stimuli, for the most part this all occurs without any conscious effort.  Although perhaps obvious, studies indicate that this filtration of external stimuli requires a lot of brainpower.  Specifically, it seems that focused attention (which requires the filtering of stimuli not being attended to), uses a broad network of brain pathways.  This is very likely why a common characteristic of brain damage (regardless of where the brain damage occurs) is a reduced ability to filter unwanted stimuli.

The Over-Stimulation of Today’s Brains

If you’re reading this post on an iPhone or iPad, that’s really cool because frankly I don’t have a mobile following yet.  It’s also a real sign of the times.  Here is a fun task: Go to a public place and do some people watching. Airports are probably the best example while restaurants may be more depressing.   In either case, it is not uncommon to find the majority of people filling their empty time texting, browsing facebook or catching up on the day’s news.  For the millennial’s, this is just life.  The ease of sharing information has become so profound in the last two decades across various platforms (both software and hardware) that we have become accustom to constantly seeking it out and feeding the perceived need to “know”.  In short, our brains are not only being stimulated by environmental stimuli, such as the sound of other people talking, the sensation of air moving across our skin, the feeling of the chair we are sitting in but additionally with information such as news on our iPad, music on our iPod and texts on our iPhone (if you own and carry all three of these devices at once, I suppose you are rather silly).

The effects of this over-stimulation should not be ignored and recent studies indicate that there can be some significant long-term ramifications.  It may come as little surprise that there is a strong correlation between internet addiction and ADHD in children.  A responsible question to ask: Does the ADHD lead to internet addiction or does the internet addiction lead to ADHD? The difference may seem minor but is in fact rather significant.  It is very possible that the speed of today’s internet makes it very tolerable, and in fact enjoyable, for children suffering from ADHD to bounce from topic to topic with ease.  It is, of course, also very possible that this nature of the internet also facilitates the development of ADHD.

Unfortunately, the body of academia seems to indicate the former more than the latter.  For example, children exposed to television at an early age seem to demonstrate less attention span than peers not exposed to television. Additionally, children who spend more than an hour per day playing video games have more severe  cases of ADHD than those that do not play video games. It is therefore not surprising to learn that ADHD rates are increasing from year to year, and have been for the past several decades.  This coincides with the growth of cable television, video games, the internet, and mobile technology (whether it is in the form of a cellphone or a PSP).

ADHD and Brain Size

Advances in brain imaging in the past two decades have allowed researches to dig deeper into the pathology of mental disorders.  In the past 10 years, many efforts have been made to pinpoint the cause(s) of ADHD and one, perhaps unsurprising, finding is that the brain development is delayed in children with ADHD.  In fact, individuals with ADHD have smaller brains than those who do not.  And while the delayed development is thought to take the same path as the healthy brain, this difference in gray matter volume persists into adulthood.

The reasons for these differences remain unknown and as with most psychological disorders, it is likely a combination of biology and environment.  That is to say that there may be a genetic predisposition that may be reinforced by environmental stimuli.  Is the recent spike in ADHD diagnoses related to the proliferation of environmental stimuli across our culture? It use to be the case that while sitting at a restaurant waiting for our food that we would speak to those we are with.  Increasingly, this time is spent reading LaymanPsych.com on our iPhones.

Isolation Tanks

Isolation Tanks were created to test the effects of sensory deprivation, and they do a very good job at depriving the brain of outside stimulation.  Ideally, an isolation tank cuts off all sound, light, and the subject floats in a mixture of saltwater kept at the same temperature as your skin. Thus, a proper isolation tank leaves the subject seeing nothing, hearing nothing, and feeling nothing.  The tank leaves the subject to float and let their brain meander through its own thoughts, completely uninterrupted by outside stimuli (ignoring taste and smell).   This dramatic shift in environment has been said to produce dramatic effects for participants.  One of the most visible proponents in recent years, Joe Rogan claims there is a hallucinogenic effect.  Recent study indicates that the isolation tanks can reduce anxiety, depression, hostility, and fatigue while increasing creativity.  With the sheer amount of brainpower dedicated filtering out unneeded stimuli, it seems logical that sensory deprivation would have dramatic effects by allowing more brain power to be dedicated to other tasks or brain development.

Filtering, Over-stimulation, ADHD, What is The Connection?

Let us pause for a moment.  The first half of this article outlined an (unqualified)* argument that perhaps the reason the attention span of society in recent years is dropping, ADHD is on the rise, as a result of the increase in information and pure stimulation that our brains must filter out in order to function properly.  This filtering takes a massive amount of brainpower and yet because it happens without any conscious effort, it is taken for granted.  A newborns brain is roughly 1/4 of the size of its adult form and grows massively into the teen years.  Somewhere between the ages of 10 and 18, the brain begins to shrink.  This is a natural process as unused pathways are pruned out.  The differences are (subjectively) small, changing no more than 10% over the course of an individual’s life (from peak brain volume to death) and unrelenting.  Once the shrinking starts, it does not stop.

And at long-lost, this is where the study at hand comes into play.

Long-term sensory deprivation prevents dendritic spine loss in primary somatosensory cortex

The sky may not be falling, but our brains certainly are shrinking.  This is a fact and it is unavoidable. In all mammals, brains peak in size shortly after birth (this is relative, in humans it is around the age of 15 plus or minus a few years) and the number of synapses continue to decrease until death.  But can the shrinkage be slowed?

Yi zuo, Guang Yang, Elaine Kown & Wen-Biao Gan of the New York University School of Medicine sought to find out by playing a prank on mice…sort of.

The role of whiskers in those lucky mammals that have them

Whiskers are an important feature of those fury little creatures that have them: cats, dogs, mice, etc.  Whiskers are simply specialized hairs that provide tactical feedback.  Cats, for example, use their whiskers to gauge the size of an opening to determine if they can fit through it or not.  Whiskers exist to provide feedback, they are in every sense of the word…stimulating.

So Zuo and his fellow researchers used this fact to help study the effects of sensory deprivation on mice by cutting the whiskers off of several mice and looking at the effects of their brains.  The whiskers were trimmed daily of the experimental group of mice while a control group was left alone. Otherwise, the two groups of mice lived the same existence over the course of the experiment.

What they found

In short, the removal of the whiskers slowed down dendritic spine loss ( the part of a neuron that receives information a synapse).  Over the course of the study, this meant that the volume of the mice who underwent the whisker-trimming had larger brains than the control group. It should be pointed out that this was not because of new dendritic spine formation but rather a slowing down of loss of dendritic spines.   Additionally, while these findings held true regardless of the age of the mice, the results were more dramatic in adolescent mice than in adult mice.

Putting it all together: What can we take from this?

Zach Davis (The Good Badger) sits alone on a cliff while completing a 5 mile journey by foot along the Appalachian Trail

Here are some facts

1. Brains shrink as we get older
2. Our society is becoming more and more stimulated as we become more and more plugged in
3. ADHD, a disorder that predominately surfaces in adolescence, is on the rise
4. Individuals with ADHD have less brain volume than healthy counterparts
5. Isolation Chambers seem to have positive benefits
6. Sensory deprivation appears to reduce the rate of natural brain loss, this is more profound in children
7. If sensory deprivation reduces brain loss, one can reason that over-stimulation can promote it

In today’s ever-stimulating world, getting some rest and tuning out is becoming rare.  It only makes sense that we are probably frying our brains away on our iPods and video games.  Perhaps it’s time that we all just take a moment and listen to nature, unplug, and hike the Appalachian trail.  Ok, that may be a tad extreme, but you may want to reconsider that end-of-the-night facebook binge before you go to bed.  It’s not that computers are bad, certainly the benefits to today’s youth far outweighs the fact that many children have internet addictions and our taste and diversity in music is strongly related to the fact that it is so easy to listen to anything with a few passes of our thumb.  No, technology is not evil, but it probably shouldn’t run our lives unchecked.

*LaymanPsych never pretends to be authoritative and thus such arguments are to be taken with a grain of salt. Feel free to disagree with any arguments made here but please post comments below if you do!

%RELATEDPOSTS%

Understanding Human Reaction to Sudden Tragedy

The unfortunate reality of most human tragedies is that in the chaos that they create is the predictability that is human nature. As much diversity in our behavior that our (massive) frontal cortex allows for, at the base of our brain is an ancient structure that we share with every vertebrate on the planet. The brainstem, not surprisingly, is thusly the center of our most simple behaviors and bodily functions.

Many (women) may argue that men are mostly “brainstem” for it is the simple things that are required for life that are controlled by the brainstem. The beating of your heart, the rhythmic breathing of your lungs, arousal, and our alertness are all functions of the brainstem (among others).

There is more than irony in Disney's personification of the animal stampede

Human Emotion in The Brain

Additionally, it has been hypothesized that our emotions are largely controlled by areas of the brainstem.  A PET study (conducted by Antonio R. Damasio, Thomas J. Grabowski, Antoine Bechara, Hanna Damasio, Laura L.B. Ponto, Josef Parvizi & Richard D. Hichwa) in 2000 demonstrated that when humans think of emotional historical events in their lives, activity in the regions of the brainstem increased, indicating that the brainstem plays an important role in the creation and reaction of emotional stimuli.

So what does it matter if the brainstem controls all of these simple functions?

The point is that although the rest of our brain has evolved significantly from our early ancestors, ultimately the very basic functions of our being are shared with the rest of the animal kingdom.  This is no more visible than in times of sudden and unexpected tragedy, specifically in large groups of people.

Human Reaction to Disaster

As natural as it seems to run from disaster, as can be seen in many clips of the earthquake it’s easy to take for granted the lack of control we actually have when the brainstem is in high gear.  Many refer to the brainstem as the brain’s “auto pilot” because the functions it is mostly responsible for are also the ones that we take without thought.  This is not by accident but rather by design.

If we were tasked to assess and react accordingly to every experience in our lives, our survival rate would be more similar to Layman Psych’s Call of Duty score.

Every time you slam on the brakes because of a car you didn’t see, every time you duck from a soccer-ball that grazes your head, and every time you see a mass of people running like a herd of cattle, the brainstem is at work.  The masses of people running from ground zero on 9/11 were not thinking about getting away, it was an automatic response.  And while many would likely tell you later “We were just trying to get out of there” the truth is that this was more likely something that they became conscious of after they had already started running.

How do we know this?

As mentioned previously, there have been many studies that point to evidence that suggests our brain stems play a significant role in emotional responses. Such suggestions are nice on their own, but how can we further make this claim concrete?  What if we studied an emotional disorder–the mental disorder–and examined the cause of that disorder–the physical or biological reason the disorder exists?

The Brainstem’s role in Panic Disorder

It just so happens that by studying panic disorders, we can begin to understand what part of the brain is responsible for eliciting this emotion.  A now outdated, but oft cited study from 1994 (by V J Knott, D Bakish, and J Barkley) found that stimulation of the brainstem elicits panic attacks.  Since then, a vast amount of scholarship has been written that supports these claims.  Additionally, a recent study found that not only is there a correlation to panic (and panic attacks) and regions of the brainstem, but an abnormally large area of brainstem is correlated with an increased chance of an individual having panic (attack) disorders.

The Take Home

Every vertebrate on the planet has a few things in common. They eat, they breath, they sleep, they panic, they have a brain stem.  While many animals lack the vast majority of structures and/or size of the human brain, we all share the ability to panic and react in auto mode.

Underneath the sadness of loss of human life is pure horror and animal-like reaction in the form of panic

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nNkuig1l8s

Although the findings are not firm, it seems likely that violent video games lead to more successful in-game advertising.

The Real World Example

For those who play video games, a completely new world has opened up over the last decade as these gamers (and their games) become increasingly connected to the internet.  No longer are gamers stuck with playing against the computer, no longer are sports rosters outdated, no longer is the game you purchase the final version of the game.  Many video games are played strictly on the internet.

Beyond the entertainment value of incorporating the internet into gaming, there is a monetary value.  In-game advertising is certainly nothing new. However, the addition of the internet to in-game advertising allows for a dynamic experience. The ability to use the internet to target and change in-game advertisements has created a completely new opportunity to capitalize on ads in ways that has never before allowed.  And with this comes an increased desire to spend money on in-game advertising, which will certainly lead to more of it.

This seems harmless to all but the gaming purests whom are bothered by advertisements fudging with their gaming experience.  This begs to question whether or not an in-game advertisement can even be effective if the individual who is suppose to see the ad is too busy killing Nazi’s.  One must also consider whether or not an advertisement in a game where you kill Nazi’s is going to be as effective as say, Sonic the Hedgehog.  It turns out, that such questions are beginning to be answered by researchers.

Who Are They?

Andre Melzer, Brad Bushman and Ulrich Hoffman, The University of Michigan The University of Amsterdam and University of Luebeck

What They Did

Melzer, Bushman and Hoffman developed a 3D driving simulator that allows for researchers to manipulate the scenery (specifically, though not exclusively, billboards) in the game.

Users were split into two groups. The first group played a non-violent version of the game in which they were rewarded for running over geometric shapes.  A second group played the violent version of the game. The only change in the game was that users were rewarded for running over innocent pedestrians (it may be worth noting that when an individual ran over a pedestrian, a loud screaming sound reinforced the act).

Throughout the game billboards were placed in the scenery which displayed 64 corporate brands which were proven (through prior testing) to be well-recognized brands by the general public. Following completion of the simulation, users were given a surprise memory (consisting of two parts) test as well as a questionnaire.

The Memory Test

The first aspect of the memory test presented users with blurred versions of real brands, some of which were in the game, and some were not.  The second aspect was a “free recall” test in which users listed as many of the brands they saw while playing the game as they could.

The Questionnaire

The questionnaire served a few purposes but the most significant question asked the user whether or not the game was violent.

The Results

As expected, most users correctly identified whether or not their version of the game was violent (as per the questionnaire).  There was no difference in the amount of brands that were recalled by users in either version of the game (that is to say that on average, non-violent game players recalled an equal amount of brands as the violent game players). Interestingly though, users who played the violent version of the game were quicker to identify which brands were actually in the game compared to the non-violent game players.

What Does It Mean?

Truthfully, the study is somewhat lacking, and this is recognized by the researchers who intend on further developing the study.  For example, they set up an eye-tracking system in the game but unfortunately it malfunctioned for most of the trials.  Having said that, it appears that violent video games may lead to an increase in awareness of advertisements presented in-game.  When the users played the violent game they appeared more ready to identify brands that they saw while playing the game.

Violence sells but many fear it may negatively impact those who partake in watching violent movies, television shows, and especially video games.  It seems plausible that if violence in fact increases brand awareness when combined with video games that we will see more violent video games capitalizing on in-game advertisement.
Is this a bad thing? That is for you to decide.

More Reading

When Items Become Victims: Brand Memory in Violent and Nonviolent Games (link to article)

Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill : A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence

The Real World Example

We have all been there; the night before the final and you haven’t dedicated a minute to that class on “Maple Syrup” that you took as an elective and thought would be an easy A.  After all, you’ve had far more important things to worry about, like a Madden franchise or perhaps some actual studying on your Intro to Marketing class.  So before you call it a night you dedicate 2 hours to the fine science of Maple Sugaring. You remind yourself that,  “Below-freezing nights and sunny, warm (40 degrees F) days provide optimal conditions for sap to start moving up the tree.”  For the remainder of your night, you cram everything you were suppose to have already known about the fine art of making Maple Syrup into that sponge-like brain of yours in preparation of that test you have at 9:30am the following morning.

Inevitably, you manage a C+, which strikes you as odd.  On one hand, you did procrastinate a little bit but on the other hand you spent 2 solid hours just the night before studying the art and the best you can manage is a 78%.  At least you didn’t fail, right?  But why the heck isn’t 2 hours of study the day before a test about maple syrup enough to get at least a B?  Turns out that it’s not because you’re stupid, it’s just how our brain works.

Who Are They?
Murray Glanzer and Anita R. Cunitz of New York University for The Institute for Behavioral Research, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA in 1966.

Some Background in Memory

Glanzer and Cunitz worked off the assumption that humans have “two” memories. A “working memory” and a “long-term memory”. Working memory, they surmised, is a short-termed memory system that is only in use while you are “working” on something.  Think of working memory as your brain’s post-it note.  Long-term memory is what most of us think of as memory. If something is in long-term memory, we can remember it on demand.  Most people know, for example, that the leader of Nazi Germany was Hitler. In short, long-term memory is the goal in school.  If you are able to store everything you need to know for a test in long-term memory, chances are good that you’ll get an A.

The mistake that many students make is that they think the path to long-term memory is a short one.  In truth, it requires a little bit of effort.  Glanzer and Cunitz’s work begins to explain why.

What They Did

Glanzer and Cunitz designed two studies both relying on an often used model in which the presentation of a list of words to subjects who were then asked to recall as many of those words as possible immediately following the presentation of the list (this procedure is known as free recall). Glanzer and Cunitz knew that the subjects would, in general, be able to recall more words from the beginning and end of the list than the middle based on the work of Hermann Ebbinghaus.  Glanzer and Cunitz tweaked this common methodology two ways.

In the first experiment, they varied the presentation rate of the words.  In some trials, they lengthened the duration between words, and in some they shortened it.

In the second experiment, they varied the delay with which words were presented and when the subject was asked to recall the words. In some trials there was a small duration between the reading of the list and the recall of the list. In others, this duration was lengthened.

What They Found

As expected, Glanzer and Cunitz found a common U-shaped “Serial Position Curve” which displays better recall of the first and last sections of the list but a severe inability to recall words in the middle of the list.  This was expected due to two known effects: the primacy effect (which explains why the begining of the list is remembered more easily) and the recency effect (which explains why the end of the list is remembered more easily).

What they also predicted was that the rate at which words were presented would effect the begining of the curve (the primacy effect).  If words were presented more slowly, more words were remembered early in the curve.

Lastly, they predicted that the duration of time between presentation and recall would effect the end of the curve.  If there was more time between the presentation and recall, less words at the end were remembered.  If there was less time, more words were remembered.

The Serial Position Curve

Explaining What’s Going On

The reason that words in the begining of the list are remembered more is because as the subject is read the words, they have the ability to commit those words to memory, typically by internally repeating them in their head until there is too much information to process. If there is more time to do this, by slowing the pace at which the words are read, for example, you will remember more words.  At this point, near the middle of the list, the brain is relying more on it’s short-term working memory.  This is why recency of the list matters.  Things are only stored in our working-memory for brief periods of time.  Thus, if there is more time between the presentation of the list and recall of the list, there is more of a chance that these words escape our working-memory.

What This Means

I hope that you can make the connection between cramming for a test and this free-recall experiment.  When you are “craming”, you are essentially reading a list of facts to yourself and trying to commit them to memory.  Unfortunately most of these things won’t actually be committed to memory and will be forgotten in a few hours.  This is not to say that you won’t remember anything.  Chances are good that come test time, the things you studied at the beginning of your “cram” session will be recalled, and some of the things at the end of the “cram” session will be recalled.  The majority though, will be lost among many other post-it notes in your brain.

So what can you do? Here are 5 cramming tips:

1. Avoid cramming.  You are better off spending 20-30 minutes a night for the duration of a month or more trying to focus on a small portion of facts

2. If you have to cram, try and study the more important parts of the test at the beginning of your cram session, the next most important things at the end, and the least important things in the middle

3. If cramming is a must, try and reduce the amount of material you study.  If there is a smaller list of things to try and remember, you’ll likely remember more of them.

4. Cramming is about prioritizing.  If you have gotten to this point you are already in trouble.  Focus on the most important material.  You simply can’t remember everything so if you can weed out the trivial stuff then you can dedicate more memory to the important stuff.

5. Did I mention that you should avoid cramming?

(5 points to anyone who see’s what I did with that list)

More Reading

Two Storage Mechanisms in Free Recall (the study)

The Psychology of Learning: Why Context Matters (a laymanpsych article)

The Real World Example

In my early days of college, I would often spend my time studying with music blasting in my ears.  In my later years in school, I was more likely found in a quiet room.  Not surprisingly, perhaps, my grades were better in my later years of school. It’s possible that learning material with something as distracting as music on is simply difficult but it is possible, and perhaps likely, that something else is work here. How do we know this? Because it’s been studied, of course.

Who Are They?

D. R. Godden and A. D. Baddeley of The University of Stirling in 1975.

What They Did?

Godden and Baddeley designed a simple experiment that required deep sea divers (and they were all deep sea divers) to learn material while either on land or while under water.  They were then asked to recall this information in the form of a quiz.

There were four groups of subjects. One group learned material under water, and took the quiz under water.  Another group learned the material on land and recalled the information on land.  Another group learned the material under water and recalled it on land. The final group learned the material on land and recalled it under water.

What They Found?

The point of the quiz was to determine an individuals ability to learn the material. Obviously, if someone performs better on the quiz, we can assume that they learned it better. So what did they find?

When an individual learned the material on land and recalled it on land, they performed fairly well on the quiz.  When an individual learned the material under water and recalled it under water, they too did fairly well (though, slightly less than the former group).  But here is the kicker.  Those who learned under water and took the quiz on land, or learned on land and took the quiz under water, performed significantly worse than the other two groups.  Furthermore, they performed about as equally as bad, despite the fact that those who learned and tested on land were better than any other group.

What This Means?

The takehome here is your ability to recall something in a particular context is directly correlated with the context of where you learned that information in the first place.  So what does this mean for you? If you have a test where the teacher blasts Metallica while you take the test, then by all means, you should listen to Metallica while you study.  When you begin studying for something, ask yourself “How much does this room remind me of my lecture hall” or wherever you are going to be taking your test.

But it’s important to realize that whether you’re wet or dry isn’t the only thing that matters. Many other studies have confirmed the notion that context-dependent learning is real.  This means that the looks and sound and even the smells around you have an impact on your ability to remember things.  Try this, study with a Jolly Rancher in your mouth and then take a test with a Jolly Rancher in your mouth.  The effect is likely going to be small but you never know when the sweetness of a watermelon Jolly Rancher reminds you who the lead the British Expeditionary Force into the 1st Battle of Ypres in 1914 (it was Sir John French, for those of you wondering)

More Reading

Context-Dependent Memory in Two Natural Environments: On Land and Underwater (the article)

The Psychology of Learning: Cramming and why it doesn’t work (A laymanpsych article)

Swat teams, Oakland Raiders fans, The Wicked Witch of The West, the Russian MIGs in Top Gun, ninjas, and L.L. Cool Jay in Any Given Sunday all have two things in common; they all wear black and they are all pretty intimidating.

Our association with Black and Evil is pretty well known and interestingly it does not seem to be attached to a single culture but is instead accepted across many cultures.   Why we associate black with evil is as much (if not more) historical than it is psychological. But what are the psychological implications of this association?  It turns out that this has been studied quite a bit, perhaps most interestingly by a team of researchers from Cornell in 1988.

Who Are They?

Mark G. Frank and Thomas Gilovich of Cornell University in 1988.

What They Did?

Frank and Gilovich wondered what wearing the color black might do to ones aggressiveness on sports teams.  So they designed 4 studies that investigated what wearing black uniforms in athletics did to perceived and actual aggressiveness of the participants involved.

What They Did: Study 1–Semantic Interpretations of Team Uniforms

Frank and Gilovich found 25 subjects who knew nothing of the NFL or NHL and nothing about the corresponding sports (football and hockey, respectively).  The subjects were shown various team jerseys and were asked to rate them on 5 aspects (good or bad, timid or aggressive, nice or mean, active or passive, and weak or strong).

A uniform was considered black if 50% of it was black.  In the NFL this included the Steelers, Saints, Raiders, Bengals and Bears (although the Chicago Bears uniform is technically a deep blue, a pre-experimental test showed that most perceived it to be black and in fact much of the football world refers to their uniforms as being black).  In the NHL this included Vanvouver, Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago.

What They Found

Despite the fact that jersey’s were shown out of context and without an athlete wearing them, the three scales relating to aggressiveness (good or bad, nice or mean, timid or aggressive) correlated to each other in a way that allowed for the researchers to combine them into a single score that demonstrated an overall aggressiveness level when combined (in other words, subjects who picked “good”, for example, tended to pick the same for the rest of the areas).  What they found was that teams with black uniforms were consistently rated as being more aggressive than their counterparts. Again, the interesting thing about this is that the subjects knew nothing of what these jersey’s represented, only what it looked like.

—-

Obviously a jersey that looks aggressive doesn’t automatically equate to a team that acts more aggressive.  So they sought to find out what the facts actually said of the teams that wore black uniforms.

What They Did: Study2–NFL and NHL Penalty Records

Frank and Gilovich went to the NFL and NHL and requested official penalty records for all teams from 1970 through 1985(NHL) and 1986(NFL).  Because in football, more aggressive penalties (such as roughing the passer, pass interference, or unnecessary roughness) equate to larger yardage losses, the aggressiveness of a given team was based on the amount of yards it was penalized in a given data set. If a team was assessed more penalty yards, it was viewed as playing more aggressively.  In hockey, a player who commits a foul is given a time penalty.  More aggressive penalties equate to more time. Therefore, a hockey team’s aggressiveness was based on its total penalty time in a given data set. If a team had more penalty time, it was viewed as being more aggressive.

What They Found

As they expected, the top 5 most penalized teams in the NFL over the duration of the data set were also the 5 teams that had black uniforms.  The same held true with the NHL teams in terms of penalty minutes with the exception of one team that came in 4th. Coincidentally, it was the New Jersey Devils.

Even more interesting, perhaps, are the findings of two of the NHL teams, Pittsburgh and Vancouver, who actually switched to black uniforms (from non-black uniforms) at one point in the data set. Further analysis revealed that the teams in fact had more penalty minutes post-black uniforms than pre-black uniforms, one of these changes (Pittsburgh) even happened in the same season, and therefore on the same team!

—

At this point we have found two things. First of all, people seem to think that individuals dressed in black are inherently more aggressive (study 1). Second, we discovered that in two professional sports, teams wearing black uniforms are in fact the most aggressive teams in their respective sports (study 2).  This leaves us with an obvious question though: If people view individuals who wear black as being more aggressive, isn’t it possible that the people calling penalties are simply more prone to calling them on teams in black?

What They Did: Study 3–Bias in Calling Penalties on Individuals in Black or White Uniforms.

To address the above question, Frank and Gilovich decided to directly investigate whether or not people would call penalties more on individuals wearing black than some other color. To be a experimentally sound investigation, the plays needed to be the exact same for those wearing the  black uniform and those not wearing black.  To overcome this dilemma, Frank and Gilovich videotaped two plays.

The two videos showed the exact same play with the exact same penalty likely occurring. The only difference in the two films was that for one, the defense wore black while the offense wore white and in the other, the defense wore white and the offense wore black.  Aside from this, the videos were designed to be as close to each other as possible.

Frank and Gilovich utilized a group of college students and a group of referees who would assess whether or not they felt a penalty had occurred. Every subject viewed the exact same plays. However, the referees and college students were each split into two groups (thus forming four groups).  The first group watched the videos in color, allowing them to plainly see that one team was wearing a black jersey.  The second group watched the video in black and white, and therefore they couldn’t tell if the darker jersey was black or another color like blue, red, or pink.

What They Found

The results showed that black jerseys tended to get penalties called on them more than white jerseys.    This held true for both plays, from both college students and professional referees, despite the fact that they were shot identically.  In other words, if you felt that the offense made a penalty in video 1, you should have felt the offense made a penalty in video two, regardless of the change in jersey color.  This is not what was found. Instead, more referees and college students felt that the black jersey teams made a foul than the white jersey teams.

Furthermore, the college students and professional referees who viewed the black and white films (the groups viewing the “non-black jerseys”) made no significant change in the way they called the play.  If they felt it was the offense in video 1, they felt it was the offense in video 2.

In other words, when the subjects knew that the team was wearing black, they felt they made more penalties, regardless of what side of the ball they were on. But when the color of the dark jersey was unclear, there was no bias in how they called the play.

–

This leaves us with one final question.  We obvioulsy perceive people wearing black as being more aggressive, even when they may not be (study 3).  So if we perceive others who wear black as more aggressive, what do we think of ourselves when we’re in black?  This question leads us to Frank and Gilovich’s final study.  For their final study, Frank and Gilovich sought to discover if people became more aggressive simply by wearing black uniforms.

What They Did: Study 4–Inducing Aggression by the Wearing of Black Uniforms

Subjects were put into groups of 3.  Each group was informed that they would be competing against each other in a series of 5 activities from a list of 12 possibilities.  Prior to being grouped each subject was asked individually what their 5 favorite activities were.  The list of activities ranged in aggressiveness.  Since some sports are inherently more aggressive than others, the choices they made indicated their level of aggressiveness.  For example, golf is a rather un-aggressive sport, while basketball is somewhat aggressive, and football is inherently aggressive. To determine actual ratings for aggressiveness of the activities, prior to the study a separate group of 30 individuals ranked the aggressiveness of 20 activities and the 12 most consistent results were averaged together to form a scale for the study.

Once the groups were together they were asked to then collaborate with each other on which sports they wanted to participate in.  The teams were either issued white uniforms, or black uniforms.  While making the decision on what activities they wanted to participate in, they did not see their opponents.

The study was looking for two things: 1). Would a team wearing black become more aggressive than they had been as individuals and 2). Would the teams wearing black chose more aggressive sports than the white uniformed teams.

There are therefore 4 groups to look at.

Individuals who would eventually be on a black uniform team
The black uniform teams
Individuals who would eventually be on a white uniform team
The white uniform teams

What they found

Not surprisingly, the results were conclusive.  As individuals, levels of aggression between groups was about the same.   However, once individuals were put on a team with a black uniform, the group then became significantly more aggressive in their choice of activities.   Not only were the group of black uniformed teams significantly more aggressive than the individuals as a whole but they were also more aggressive than their white teamed counterparts.  Furthermore, the white uniform teams aggression hardly changed at all from what they had chosen as individuals!

What does all of this mean?

The 4 experiments above outline some pretty interesting facts on human aggression.  The first alarming finding is that we make quick judgments  about people and what they are wearing.  We automatically assume that individuals wearing black are inherently more aggressive than individuals not wearing black.  But, as it turns out, we may be doing this for good reason because when individuals are wearing black seem to feel, and certainly seem to act, more aggressive.

The only advice I have for you; watch what you say to your buss boy!

Interesting stuff…

More Reading
Black Uniforms and Aggression (full article)

The Real Life Example

Last weekend I was at a small bar in the Apostle Islands in Wisconsin.  The bar was neat enough but one of the reasons we were there was for the live music.   The band consisted of four musicians. A bassist who was good enough, a percussionist who kept a nice beat,  and a final guy who sang, drummed a beat and played guitar.  The third guy was the main attraction, and he was good…really good.
He kept a drum beat with his two feet. He played guitar better than most, and he sang off a sheet of music, meaning he had to concentrate on those words as well.

I’ve played guitar for about 6 years now. I’ve never really dedicated my life to the craft but I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to learn. To this day I still can’t sing while I play. I still can’t play Hendrix’s “Little Wing”.

Why is it that some of us are better at music than others? Perhaps you know this family: The mother teaches piano, the daughter is the best singer in her high school chorus, and the son’s band won Battle Of The Bands last week.

It appears that this pattern isn’t random. A recent Study out of Finland has found evidence that musical talent is a genetically inherited trait.

Who Are They?

Liisa T. Ukkola, Päivi Onkamo, Pirre Raijas, Kai Karma and Irma Järvelä of the University of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland.

What They Did

Ukkola and her team found 343 Finnish individuals from 19 families who had professional or amateur musicians in their families.  The individuals were tested on three separate standardized musical aptitude tests.  The first tests the ability of an individual to recognize the structure of a musical piece. The second tests the ability for an individual to accurately recognize variations in pitch. The third tests an individuals ability to maintain consistent timing.

Together, these three tests comprise the basic aspects of a musical piece: structure, time and pitch.

A fourth test of creativity required the individual to compose or improvise a piece of music. Their piece was then judged by many people through a web-based application.

What They Found

Ukkola and her team found that there was statistically significant correlations within family and how the individuals scored.  More creative individuals tended to have more creative siblings.

Most importantly though, they found that music ability was directly related to a specific gene that is, “associated with social, emotional and behavioral traits, including pair bonding and parenting”.  This provides a neurological basis for musical talent.

What This Means

These findings may seem logical on the surface but the implications are somewhat significant in explaining the psychology of music ability.  It appears that many of the things that we are good at, in this case music, are directly related to our parents.  This likely explains why there are so many Andretti men in racing or why any number of successful father son combination’s in sports exist.

The physical attributes given to us by our family is nothing new.  Tall parents tend to breed tall children. Good looking parents tend to breed good looking children.  What makes this study interesting is that it seems feasible that many of the cognitive traits that we possess are also passed on from our family members biologically.

For years there has been a very intense debate about human intelligence and whether or not it is more the product of nature or nurture.  The general consensus has been that there is an inherent genetic potential that must be nurtured to come to fruition.  These findings do not exactly dismiss this notion, but they certainly confirm that many of our cognitive abilities are genetic in nature.

In short, there is a good chance that no matter how much you play guitar, you may never be as good as Hendrix.  But then, Hendrix would never have gotten as good as he was had he never played, so I wouldn’t suggest not trying.

More Reading

Musical Aptitude Is Associated with AVPR1A-Haplotypes (link to article)

Genetic Basis Of Musical Aptitude: Neurobiology of Musicality Related to Intrinsic Attachment Behavior (link to story)

I met a guy the other day.  I had no reason to believe that I knew him except for the fact that I was convinced that I had seen him before. I know this is an experience that you have encountered before. Despite the fact that we encounter thousands of people in our life–out of the billions on this planet–we seem to have the ability to remember a random face better than we remember the color of our first car. It turns out I did know him as we had taken a class together in college.

Facial recognition is a skill dependent on a specific part of our brain

This is a scene that has been played out weekly on TV crime shows; a witness can’t remember what a person was wearing but can spot a crook in a lineup with ease. The truth is that this isn’t merely the work of clever writers. It turns out, humans do have a special face recognition system.

What is the system?

It turns out that there is a specific area of the brain dedicated specifically to recognizing faces. It is an area of the brain that shows heightened activity when a person looks at a face.  This activation does not occur when they look at anything else, like a mug or a car.  It is known as the fusiform face area or FFA. The FFA is located in the occipital lobe which is located at the rear of the brain. In most people, the FFA seems to be more prominent in the right hemisphere of the brain. The occipital lobe is where your brain processes what you see, so it makes sense that if there is an area specifically for processing faces that it is located here.

How do we know?

The FFA was first recognized in 1992 by Justine Sergent, Shinksuke Ohta and Brennan Macdonald of Montreal Neurological Institute.

What They Did

Sergent and his researches performed lesion studies on patients who had brain damage in the occipital and temporal lobes.  Some of the subjects, it was already known, had problems identifying faces while other patients did not have this problem. Subjects were presented with a grated images, arbitrary objects, and faces.  The goal for the subject was to identify what they were looking at as accurately as possible. Note: They were not asked to identify if what they were looking at was a face or an object, but rather identify what face and what object they were looking at.

While the subjects performed this task, a computer analyzed the levels of blood flow throughout the brain.  This is a form of brain imaging known as PET.  It works under the premise that when the brain works, it uses energy, and when the brain uses energy it needs to replace it. Energy is replaced through the blood. Thus, if a particular area of the brain is working harder, it is also getting more blood.

What they found

As  suggested earlier, what they found was that there is a specific area of the brain that “lights up” with activity when looking at a face in subjects who had no issues identifying faces.  In subjects with brain damage in this same area, they had a significantly more difficult time identifying the faces.

Pretty simple huh? People who can identify faces have activity in a specifica area of the brain, even people who may or may not have had brain damage in other areas of the brain. People who couldn’t identify faces though, also had brain damage in the same area of the brain that was highly active in those that could identify faces.

What to make of this?

For starters, these findings give indications that there are certain areas of the brain that are dedicated to specific tasks.  This helps explain why some people may be better artists than mathematicians.  Or why some excel at philosophy while others at English.  But this is idea is not limited to academics. In fact, a recent study indicates that there is a percentage of the population that excels specifically at recognizing faces.

From the article:

The new study suggests that skill in facial recognition might vary widely among humans. Previous research has identified as much as 2 percent of the population as having “face-blindness,” or prosopagnosia, a condition characterized by great difficulty in recognizing faces. For the first time, this new research shows that others excel in face recognition, indicating that the trait could be on a spectrum, with prosopagnosics on the low end and super-recognizers at the high end.

So next time you find yourself thinking that you recognize that new person in the office, you may very well have run into them before!

For More Reading

Some People Really ‘Never Forget A Face:’ Understanding Extraordinary Face Recognition Ability (article on “super” face recognizers)

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking