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Issue 195 (18.08.11):
1. Empathy breeds altruism, unless a person feels they have low status. 2. Take vitamin pill, eat cake. How supplements can encourage unhealthy behaviour 3. Fantasy-prone children struggle to apply lessons from fantasy stories 4. It doesn't always pay to be pretty 5. Why you should go for a brisk walk before revising 6. Let me help you with that ... How women suffer from benevolent sexism

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Empathy breeds altruism, unless a person feels they have low status.
In a defining image of the recent English riots, a man helped an injured youngster to his feet while an accomplice stole from the same victim's bag. This sheer lack of empathy on the part of the perpetrators has shaken observers to their core. How could humans display such a lack of altruism toward their fellow man? A possible clue comes from a new brain imaging study that has examined links between the neural correlates of empathy, an act of altruism, and participants' subjective sense of their social status. Among people who feel they have low status, the study finds, increased neural markers of empathy are actually related to reduced altruism. The researchers surmised this is because any feelings of empathy are quashed by a grudging sense of low status. This could be a kind of defence mechanism whereby self-interest dominates over empathy for others. A possible lesson is that by reversing people's feelings of low status, through educational opportunities and other interventions, we all gain, by reinstating the usual link between empathy and altruism. Yina Ma and her team at Peking University scanned the brains of 33 student participants while they watched numerous video clips of people being pricked painfully in the face or hand by a needle, or touched on those same parts by a cotton bud (referred to as a Q-tip in the US). Extra activity in the brain, in response to the needle clips versus cotton bud clips, was taken to be a neural marker for empathy (seeing someone else in pain is known to trigger activity in the pain matrix of one's own brain). The participants also rated their own empathy levels and their subjective sense of their socio-economic status. They were shown a ladder with ten rungs, with the top rung representing people with the best jobs and education and most money; participants then indicated which rung they saw themselves as occupying. Although the participants were students at the same university they varied in their subjective sense of status. Finally, the participants were left alone in a room with an anonymous donation box, labelled as raising money to help impoverished patients with cataracts. Among patients who considered themselves privileged in terms of socio-economic status, there was a positive relationship between empathy and altruism. The more neural signs of empathy they displayed in the scanner (based on extra activity in the left somatosensory cortex when viewing needle clips), the more empathy they said they had, and the more money they chose to donate to charity. By contrast, among participants who considered themselves lower in socio-economic status, the opposite pattern was observed. The greater their empathy-related brain activity in the scanner (based on extra right somatosensory cortex and inferior frontal cortex activity in response to needle clips), the less empathy they said they had, and the less money they chose to donate to charity. The researchers said the empathy-related inferior frontal cortex activity observed in these participants could be a sign of inhibitory processes quashing the emotional impact of seeing another person in pain. Note, there was no absolute difference in the amount of money donated by participants who self-identified as low or high socio-economic status. The finding is more subtle and suggests empathy has a differential effect on our altruistic behaviour depending on how we see our standing in the world. "Our findings have significant implications to the social domain," the researchers said, "in that, besides improving objective socio-economic status, raising subjective socio-economic status via education may possibly manifold altruistic behaviours in human society." The findings add to a complex literature that suggests lower socio-economic status is sometimes associated with more empathy and altruism (http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/99/5/771/), but sometimes associated with reduced empathy (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140197105001090). _________________________________ Ma, Y., Wang, C., and Han, S. (2011). Neural responses to perceived pain in others predict real-life monetary donations in different socioeconomic contexts NeuroImage, 57 (3), 1273-1280 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.05.003

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Take vitamin pill, eat cake. How supplements can encourage unhealthy behaviour
Have you ever had that feeling, after an energetic gym session, or perhaps a long walk, that you've earned the right to a mountainous slice of cake, or to lounge lazily in front of the telly? Psychologists call these licensing effects and a new study has documented a similar phenomenon following the simple act of taking a vitamin pill. The researchers say the finding could help explain why the explosive rise in the consumption of dietary supplements (approximately half the US population take them, according to recent data) has not led to a commensurate improvement in public health. Wen-Bin Chiou and his colleagues gave an inert pill to 82 participants recruited via posters in the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung. Half the participants were told it was a placebo; the other half were told it was a vitamin pill. They were instructed to suspend their usual intake of supplements, if any, for the duration of the study. Afterwards, compared with placebo participants, the participants who thought they'd taken a vitamin pill rated indulgent but harmful activities like casual sex and excessive drinking as more desirable; healthy activities like yoga as less desirable; and they were more likely to choose a free coupon for a buffet meal, as opposed to a free coupon for a healthy organic meal (these associations held even after controlling for participants' usual intake of vitamin pills. Participants also said at the end that they hadn't guessed the purpose of the study). The vitamin-takers also felt more invulnerable than the placebo participants, as revealed by their agreement with statements like "Nothing can harm me". Further analysis suggested that it was these feelings of invulnerability that mediated the association between taking a postulated vitamin pill and the unhealthy attitudes and decisions. A second study with student recruits was similar to the first, but this time, participants who'd taken what they thought was a vitamin pill opted to walk a shorter distance to return a pedometer to a researcher located elsewhere on campus (even though they'd just been reminded of the health benefits of walking). Again, this association, between the vitamin pill and behaviour, was mediated by feelings of invulnerability. "People who rely on dietary supplements for health protection may pay a hidden price: the curse of licensed self-indulgence," the researchers said. "Policy interventions that remind individuals to monitor the licensing effect may help translate the increased use of dietary supplements into improved public health." _________________________________ Chiou, W., Yang, C., and Wan, C. (2011). Ironic Effects of Dietary Supplementation: Illusory Invulnerability Created by Taking Dietary Supplements Licenses Health-Risk Behaviors. Psychological Science DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797611416253

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Fantasy-prone children struggle to apply lessons from fantasy stories
Part of being human is the ability to imagine other worlds, to fantasise. Kids as young as four can tell the difference between fantasy characters and real characters, and they realise that pretending something exists doesn't make it real. They even understand that fantasy worlds are separate from each other. One charming study showed how three- to six-year-olds believed Batman could touch Robin, but couldn't touch SpongeBob. Now Rebekah Richert and Erin Smith have expanded this literature by looking at pre-schoolers' ability to transfer solutions learned from fantasy stories to real-world problems - a pertinent question given that fantasy stories are often used to teach young children. The researchers' somewhat counter-intuitive finding is that the more immersed a child tends to be in fantasy and pretend play (a trait the researchers call "fantasy orientation"), the less likely they are to transfer solutions from fantasy to reality. It's as if these children have built a mental barrier between the two worlds, thus preventing them from transferring lessons from one to the other. The first study involved 33 children (aged three to five) being read a story by a researcher, one-on-one. Half the children heard a fantasy story involving a boy and astronaut rescuing other astronauts, while avoiding an enemy robot. The other children heard a real-world story involving boys playing hide-and-seek with their baby-sitter, and retrieving a small toy. Crucially, both stories conveyed solutions to the same two basic problems - hiding by locating oneself behind an object, and pulling an object closer by attaching a rope or string to it. Afterwards, the children were tested on whether they could remember the solutions, and if they couldn't, they were reminded of them. Next, they were presented with two new, real-world dilemmas that could be solved using the solutions conveyed in the earlier stories. The key question was whether the children would transfer the solutions from the stories they'd heard. Children were significantly more likely to transfer one or more of the two solutions successfully if they'd earlier been told a real-world story, as opposed to a fantasy story (1.36 average correct solution transfers vs. 0.64). This was the case even though children in both story groups had earlier displayed the same average memory for the solutions. A second study with 51 pre-schoolers was similar to the first except that the two story types were told in a class setting - this was to encourage children in the fantasy story condition to believe they were being presented with useful information. Despite this, the results were the same: children who heard a real-world story were again far more likely to transfer the solutions to novel, real-world problems. This time, among kids who heard the real-world story, being older and having a better memory for the solutions were both associated with more successful solution transfer. By contrast, among kids who heard the fantasy story, these factors didn't matter. Instead, it was those who were typically less engaged in fantasy worlds (e.g. spent less time playing pretend games; didn't have an imaginary friend) who were more likely to transfer the solutions to the real world. An important detail here is that "fantasy orientation" was not correlated with measures like cognitive ability or memory, so it's not the case that the children typically more engaged in fantasy were less bright than the other kids. "The children with the most experience in fantasy worlds were the least likely to use the fantasy story as a resource for realworld problem solving strategies," the researchers said. "Until children have a firm grasp on what kinds of principles can overlap between real and fantasy worlds and what kinds of principles cannot, it may be beneficial for children to keep fantasy and real worlds separate from each other." _________________________________ Richert, R., and Smith, E. (2011). Preschoolers Quarantining of Fantasy Stories. Child Development, 82 (4), 1106-1119 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01603.x

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It doesn't always pay to be pretty
The beautiful people have it all, or so we're usually told. According to research, they're seen as friendlier, more intelligent, and they earn more. But a pair of new journal articles tells a different story, outlining some contexts in which being pretty doesn't pay. Maria Agthe and her team had 400 students appraise one of four job candidates based on his or her CV, with their photo attached. Although the detailed CVs suggested all the candidates were equally qualified for the job, appearances affected the results. Participants judging a candidate of the opposite sex showed the positive bias you'd expect for highly attractive candidates, being more likely to recommend them for the job. By contrast, participants judging a same-sex candidate showed the opposite pattern, exhibiting a negative bias towards same-sex good lookers. This pattern was mediated partially by the desire for social contact with the candidates - that is, participants were more likely to say they wanted to work with and be friends with opposite-sex beauties, but showed the opposite pattern for good-looking, samesex candidates. Men and women were similarly prone to negative bias against attractive specimens of their own sex (the effect size was -.5 and -.39, respectively). The investigation continued with another set of participants appraising candidates shown in a video interview, and again there was a negative bias against attractive same-sex candidates. A final study with yet more participants included a measure of their self-esteem. This showed that high self-esteem participants displayed a positive bias not only towards attractive opposite-sex candidates but also towards attractive candidates of their own sex. Agthe and her colleagues said this suggests the usual negative bias against same-sex beautiful people is all to do with the threat they represent, a threat that those with high self-esteem are immune to. What are the practical implications of all this? Agthe's team said that the practice of including photos with CVs should be discouraged (it's standard practice to include a photo in several countries including Austria, Denmark, Germany, Slovakia and Switzerland), and that assessment panels should be comprised of a mix of men and women, to help cancel out any beauty-based biases. Coincidentally, another new journal paper has looked at the interaction between attractiveness, gender and forgiveness. April Phillips and Cassandra Hranek had dozens of heterosexual college students imagine a hypothetical scenario in which they were let down by a female student with whom they were meant to be giving a joint class presentation. Participants were shown a picture of this "offender" and told that she either had or hadn't apologised. So long as she apologised, male participants were more likely to forgive an attractive female offender than an apologetic unattractive one. But female participants showed the opposite pattern, being more likely to forgive an apologetic unattractive female student. A follow-up study replicated this result and found that women were more forgiving of an unattractive female student because they found her apology more sincere, whilst men thought the same thing about the attractive offender's apology. "For female offenders, being attractive can be an asset or a hindrance, depending on the gender of the victim," the researchers said. "A male victim, who might want to pursue a relationship with her in the future, can preserve this possibility if he is willing to offer forgiveness in some circumstances, whereas a female victim who perceives the offender to be a potential rival might be less likely to offer forgiveness." _________________________________ Agthe, M., Sporrle, M., and Maner, J. (2011). Does Being Attractive Always Help? Positive and Negative Effects of Attractiveness on Social Decision Making. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37 (8), 1042-1054 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167211410355 PHILLIPS, A. and HRANEK, C. (2011). Is beauty a gift or a curse? The influence of an offender's physical attractiveness on forgiveness. Personal Relationships DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2011.01370.x

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Why you should go for a brisk walk before revising
The exam season may be over, but here's a simple piece of advice for next semester. Go for a brisk walk before studying and your memory of the material is likely to benefit. Carlos Salas and his colleagues had dozens of students study 30 nouns, each displayed for 6 seconds. Some of the students went for a ten-minute walk before being presented with the words. They were told to adopt "the walking speed one would use when late to an appointment, but without the anxiety caused by such a scenario". Other students spent the same time sitting quietly looking at pictures of natural landscapes. After the study phase, some of the students went for another ten-minute walk before attempting to recall as many of the words as they could; other students sat quietly for ten minutes before their recall attempt. This meant there were four experimental groups (walk-walk, walk-sit, sit-sit, and sit-walk, depending on how the participants behaved before the study and recall phases). The key finding is that those students who went for a walk before the study period recalled 25 per cent more words correctly compared with students who sat still before the study period. By contrast, walking versus sitting before the attempt at recall made no difference to the students' performance. Past research has shown context-dependent effects on memory. For example, if you chew gum while learning, your recall performance will benefit if you also chew gum when attempting to retrieve memories. No evidence for this was found in this study in the sense that the students' performance was no better when their pre-recall activity (walk vs. sit) matched their pre-learning activity, perhaps because the recall test followed too soon after the learning phase, so that the effects of the earlier walk or sitting period were still ongoing. Another detail of this study is that the researchers asked the students to report their levels of arousal and tension after the periods of sitting or walking. Arousal was higher after walking than sitting, but tension was no different. So increased arousal is a possible physiological mechanism underlying the benefits of a pre-study walk (see earlier Digest item: "Memory performance boosted while walking" http://bps-researchdigest.blogspot.com/2010/06/memory-performance-boosted-while.html). Salas and his team also looked at meta-memory: this is people's insight into their own memory processes. During the study phase, after each word appeared, the participants were asked to indicate their likelihood of recalling it correctly. Students who sat for ten minutes before studying tended to significantly overestimate their later performance. By contrast, the walkers were much more accurate. However, there was no absolute difference in the predictions made by the two groups. In other words, it seems the walkers only had superior meta-memory because walking boosted their performance to match their confidence. "Overall, these results suggest that individuals can gain a memory advantage from a ten-minute walk before studying," the researchers said. "Given [these] positive results ... and [their] potentially important practical applications, we hope that researchers will continue to explore the relationship between walking, memory, and meta-memory." _________________________________ Salas, C., Minakata, K., and Kelemen, W. (2011). Walking before study enhances free recall but not judgement-oflearning magnitude. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 23 (4), 507-513 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2011.532207

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Let me help you with that ... How women suffer from benevolent sexism
What could be wrong with a gentleman opening a door for a lady? According to some social psychologists, such acts endorse gender stereotypes: the idea that women are weak and need help; that men are powerful patriarchs. Now a study has looked at how women are perceived when they accept or reject an act of so-called "benevolent sexism" and it finds that they're caught in a double-bind. Women who accept help from a man are seen as warmer, but less competent. Women who reject help are seen as more competent, but cold. Across three studies Julia Becker and her colleagues presented dozens of German students with a vignette (either in prose or as a comic strip) in which a male office worker offers to help a female colleague set up a computer server. As he makes his offer, he says: "Oh, the network server, that's so difficult and frustrating for a woman to grapple with. Let me do it for you." Some students read a version in which the woman accepts the offer; others read a version in which she rejected it, saying "I can do it. It's not a problem for a woman". If the woman rejected the offer she was rated as more competent, but less warm (compared to a story version in which her reply wasn't revealed). If she accepted the offer, she was judged as more warm, but less competent. These effects also influenced the participants' decisions over her job suitability. If she rejected the offer of help she was judged less suitable for a care-home job that depends on emotional skills. If she accepted the offer then she was judged less suitable for a managerial position. By contrast, men aren't caught in the same double-bind. Other participants read a different version of the story in which a woman offered technical help to a man. In this case, participants judged the man as more competent, but no less warm, if he rejected the offer. An important caveat was identified once the researchers began measuring the participants' endorsement of benevolent sexism, as revealed by their agreement with statements like "Women should be cherished and protected by men". The perception of an independent woman as competent but cold was only formed by those participants who endorsed benevolent sexism. Another aspect the researchers looked at was perceptions of the help-giver. Here they found that advocates of benevolent sexism perceived a male help-giver as particularly warm and competent when his offer of help was accepted. "Nowadays, sexist behaviour has become more subtle because of changing social norms, and patronising offers come in subtle guises," the researchers said. "This exacerbates a woman's dilemma about how to respond and increases the likelihood that she will be viewed as 'cold' if she declines paternalistic help." _________________________________ Becker, J., Glick, P., Ilic, M., and Bohner, G. (2011). Damned if she does, damned if she doesn't: Consequences of accepting versus confronting patronizing help for the female target and male actor. European Journal of Social Psychology DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.823

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