How long does it take for chocolate to affect your mood?

Three minutes.

Just three minutes is all it takes for chocolate to have an affect on our behaviour, according to a study by Match & Muller (2007).

In their study they found that chocolate had a positive effect on the mood of the participants, when they were in a ‘bad mood’ (induced by the experimenters).

This is because, there are specific neurotransmitters which are associated with the immediate sensory pleasure we have when eating chocolate. It has been researched and found that chocolate (mainly dark chocolate) may increase serotonin levels, and that is why it has an affect on our mood!

According to an ethnobotanist Chris Kilham “The medicine hunter”, he found that chocolate, due to it increasing seratonin, works well as an an antidepressant, he states

“Almost every single antidepressant aims at either enhancing serotonin or keeping it in the brain longer. Chocolate or cocoa does that very well.”

However, the short elevation of mood is usally only temporary and your mood will revert back to normal after a few minutes (hence why you end up wanting more and more chocolate once you have a small bit).

Also, the affect on your mood depends on the quality of the chocolate, good chocolate can give you a positive effect, however, low quality chocoalte can also have a negative effect

Yes! Chocolate makes us all feel good, however health benefits may outweigh the momentarily pleasures – so there are other foods, mainly fruits which will also have positive effects on our bodies (and chocolate in moderation of course). These fruits include

• Bananas – can increase levels of dopamine as well as giving slow releasing energy
• Blueberries – healthy antioxidant which can improve mood

 

Happy (and healthy) Eating

~ Tadi

P.S Blue berries are BRAIN FOOD! Best thing is to have a blueberry and Banana smoothie on the morning of your exams !

 

Why you need to include testing in your revision

Over 17 years of teaching Psychology I have recommended many different types of revision to my students, cue cards, mind maps, summaries, you name it. And my conclusion – they work for some people. But as a psychologist I thought that I should look for evidence based techniques.

3 years ago I started to hear about retrieval practice and started recommending it to my students. From seeing the results I am convinced this works and new research keeps supporting it’s effectiveness.

Retrieval practice is testing yourself. Here are the benefits.

1. You will recall more than spending the same amount of time studying
2. Retrieval practice protects memory against acute stress
3. Retrieval practice works better than every other technique – look at this table for a comparison of different techniques – practice testing is the one to look for (utility is whether it actually works – click the table for the full article)

All you need is a blank piece of paper or some generic questions, headings etc.

Write down as much as you can recall – check your recall against a summary – mark in red what you forgot or got wrong. Repeat again in week or two.

The article which inspired this post -> https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2017/apr/12/five-proven-hacks-to-help-students-tackle-revision?CMP=ema-1693&CMP=

The Pratfall effect

 

Imagine. The presenter bellows your name, the audience cheers and all eyes are on you. But as you make your way up the stairs to claim your award (be that an Oscar, PhD, Nobel peace prize or whatever your heart desires) and give your acceptance speech, the tip of your foot catches on the next step. You trip and find yourself rolling down into the depths of social humiliation. Feel like a failure right? Well… Don’t, because you might have just done yourself a massive favour.

The phenomenon in social psychology, The Pratfall Effect states; a person will be perceived as more likeable after making a mistake in public  – depending on the individual’s initial competence (ability to generally perform well). Because celebrities and other popular people are modelled as perfect and flawless individuals, their occasional blunders make their humanness endearing to others. To sum up, Perfection creates a perceived distance and air of invincibility that the general public cannot relate to, therefore those who make occasional mistakes are seen as more likeable or attractive than those who seemingly never make mistakes.

The conditions needed for the pratfall effect to take place are:

1. The competent person has already established brilliance in their field of expertise. If they are already considered ‘a goof’ then another blunder will only further degrade the likeability and attractiveness of the person.
2. The mild mistake must not have an impact on the key issue. In other words, the clumsiness should not jeopardise the final product or task in which the person is displaying his or her competence.
3. The blunder should not be staged to gain pity. Witnesses will only see this gesture as the competent person acting childish in need of a nurturing parent.

The social phenomenon was first described by psychologist Elliot Aronson in 1966. In the original experiment likeability was tested using ‘the coffee spill test’. The experiment involved re-enacting a quiz show and participants were asked to listen to recordings of the quiz show run through. Some of the recordings included the host accidentally knocking over a cup of coffee and reacting to it and some of the recordings did not involve the host spilling coffee. The coffee spilling hosts’ perceived likeability was much higher than that of the control group.

This effect has been demonstrated numerous times on celebrities. One instance being Jennifer Lawrence; a Hollywood actress who has starred as Katniss Everdeen in the popular movie series: The Hunger Games and Mystique in X-Men: First Class and Days of Future Past. She is one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year 2013, and Academy and Golden Globe Award Winner. Seeing a powerful and successful woman tripping on the stairs at the Oscars in 2013 and then again on the red carpet in 2014 explains why she also has a tendency to be described as ‘down to earth’ and ‘relatable’ by many fans and critics. The effect is not only seen through celebrities but other famous figures such as Pope Francis who tripped and fell as he arrived for Holy Mass at the Black Madonna shrine of Czestochowa in southern Poland. This hiccup may have caused his increased likability.

So if you do humiliate yourself on stage in front of all your friends, don’t worry – chances are your humanness will be perceived as attractive and endearing. You can rest easy knowing that your mistakes are acceptable and instead of shaming you, may actually encourage others to embrace you.

Feeling demotivated?

So, it’s that time of year, where we’re being reminded that time is not on our side and that we have six weeks until exams.

And as the stress levels go up, motivation levels seem to come down, and it’s really annoying, you just don’t feel like you can do anything.

So here are some tips to get through.

1. Stay Positive

Easier said than done, I know, but if you continously tell yourself “I can’t do it”, – the theory on self-fulfilling prophecy shows that if you begin to internalise something, it’ll turn out that way. Keep telling yourself that you can do it!

 

Here is a link to the TED talk by Amy Cuddy, and she tells us how she managed to fake it until she made it, by being positive, by standing tall (quite literally – powerposing does have an effect!) So sometimes although you may not believe it, stand up straight, speak positive. Fake it until you make it.

Feeling like you can’t?

Tell yourself you can.

And keep doing it until you finally make it!

 

2. Keep looking ahead

Now when I say this I don’t just mean look ahead to sitting in the exam hall, but look ahead to something you’re looking forward to! That holiday in summer, going to visit the uni you want to go to, or seeing yourself laid in bed not having to worry about exams anymore!

If it helps, also have visual aids that may help

So for me:

Sometimes we need that reminder that this is all just part of the journey and there’s a light – if that light is your uni course, or that holiday, – give yourself that gentle reminder.

3. Be Organised

Fail to prepare and Prepare to fail – I know sometimes finally cracking down and writing your revision timetable can just take forever, but sometimes, just see what topics you have to revise and then picking a topic or two, to study during that hour you have – instead of scrolling down facebook or instagram! Identify when you’re free, and slot in these times where you’re going to look at your Psychology books. And try different methods, because sitting down and opening your book, staring at your pages is not revising. Ask around for different methods, see how other people do it.

Are you a visual learner? Flash cards with colour co-ordination

Have you tried retrival practice? Getting a piece of paper with the topic heading and writing as much as you can, checking it

Past papers? The best way to prepare for an exam, is to practice doing the exam! Get as many past papers or specimen papers. In a lot of our textbooks and class books, there are practice questions! Use them

4. Ask for help

You are not alone, help is there when you need it!

5. Balance and Manage Time Wisely

You don’t need to be sat at a computer or your desk 24/7, just manage your time wisley through organisation!

And above all, just know you can get through it!

Tadi

 

Colourful Music; Literally.

I am a fan of the TV show “Heroes”. In this, the ‘heroes’ are mutated humans with superpowers. One of the powers shown was the ability to see colours when music was heard. Up until reading this article, I thought that, along with things like teleportation was something made up to tell a story.

However, it seems I was very wrong. 1 in 5 people experience what is called synaesthesia. This means you interpret senses differently. For example, seeing colours when music is played, hearing a word such as hello and tasting a cheeseburger whenever you hear it. Or even hearing sounds when you see movement which doesn’t have any noise.

Linking these senses, researches say, might be partially genetic as it often goes down in families. It is said to be caused by high levels of serotonin, producing sensory hallucinations.

One specific woman was studied, referred to a ‘AB’. She sees colours when she hears music, and colours around people which indicate their personality, e.g. green for loyalty. She had several life experiences as an teen which altered her experience of synaesthesia. She had migraines, concussions, contracted viral meningitis and was stuck by lightening. Her concussions made the colours she associated with music change, and her migraine medication made the colours change from her central vision to her peripheral vision. Then when she was stuck by lightening, and she lost her synaesthesia.

3 month later however, it returned, restored to it’s original state. This suggests that it is hard-wired in the brain, and people with synaesthesia have it from birth and it stays that way; their brains are made with this sensory abnormality.

A man with similar symptoms was also studies, and the colours he saw around people was the way he felt about people, and then he too saw colours when music was played. At age 20, he was given anti-depressants. The drug he was on increased serotonin levels, and he lost his synaesthesia. 20 years later when he stopped taking the drug, it returned, exactly the same as before. On a different drug which affected different chemicals in the brain, it changed slightly.

Researchers now believe that because different drugs affect what happens to the synaesthesia, it isn’t just serotonin levels that cause this. They believe that it could be a chemical switch in the brain, that the brain is partly hard-wired to do it, but the switch isn’t on in everyone.

1/5 people have synaesthesia. Alot of us have these ‘extra’ senses but don’t realise it. Freeman did a study to see how people with this condition behave, and if it affects other senses.

He tested people to see if they could hear sounds in motion.

Below is an example of what this means;

When tested, the hearing motion effect enhanced the person’s ability to interpret fine visual movements. However, it interfered with their ability to be able to interpret sound, suggesting that the motion sound acted like background noise.

He tested 40 participants, and presented them with pairs of visual or auditory Morse code like patterns, the visual being flashes of light. The participants had to decide if it contained the same or different sequences. They were then asked whether they were aware of hearing faint sounds accompanying the flashes. Out of 40, 22% reported hearing sounds with the visual flashes and Morse code. Freeman said that they are two types of people, those who do hear it and hose who pretend to.

The sensory condition is more common than you might think, and you yourself may experiencing this and not even notice.

TAKE THE TEST HERE TO SEE IF YOU HEAR MOTION; https://cityss.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bKSkV69EJ6TKmKV

Neuron Activation Makes Mice Savage Murderers

So mice are often found to be pretty chill, to eat what they find and to be generally not that aggressive. However, firing a laser at it’s amygdala makes it go psycho…

Ivan de Araujo, a neurobiologist at Yale University came across a study done in 2005, stating that the amygdala was active during hunting and feeding in rats. This was found to be odd, as the amygdala research is mainly focused on defensive or submissive emotions.

After more research, a sort of switch was discovers in a mice’s amygdala, which when activated, switches on their predatory instinct. In the past, researchers used a technique called optogenetics to alter memories and make mice thirsty. De Araujo used this technique when working with the mice.

Predatory behaviours such as grabbing and biting are familiar to all, but the brain circuits necessary for this to take place are unknown. We know that the central amygdala produces fear and it is activated when hunting. The researchers wanted to know if they amygdala was responsible for these behaviours.

Researches injected the mice with a virus that made their brains sensitive to blue light. Then, they used a tiny optic fibre to shine a blue laser onto its amygdala. This prompted the animal to tense its neck and jaw muscles, and this behaviour didn’t occur when other ares in the brain were stimulated.

When the laser was switched on, the mice hunted everything in their path, from crickets to bottle caps, and even hunted when nothing was present. The researchers thought that “maybe it is jut generalised aggression, or maybe we made them very hungry”. To see if this was true, or to see if the behaviour was actually caused by the light stimulation, they did further tests.

Further tests concluded that there are two pathways in the amygdala that work in tandem to execute a hunt;

1. The first controls prey pursuit (PAG)
2. The second controls bite accuracy (PCRt)

Targeting PAG with a laser made the mouth either move faster or slower, and targeting the PCRt made the mice’s bite stronger or weaker. When both were stimulate, the mouse stopped whatever it was doing and hunted anything it could find, and proceeded to give a lethal bite.

The mice, however, are able to tell the difference between friend and foe, as when other mice were there, it was curious but made no attacks. This proves that predation is a complex behaviour and the amygdala is involved. It suggests also that because the mice didn’t just attack everything in sight, that other parts of the brain are involved,, helping the amygdala to stay ‘in check’.

Here is a video of the mice’s behaviours;

Where from here?

Maybe this neuron activation can be used to make an army of lethal human killing machines ready for the next war, or maybe we can just defeat enemies with our psycho rats.

I think that whatever science decides to do with this discovery, that we know the brain gets more and more complex the further we delve in.

As Aristotle said;

“The more you know, the more you realise how little you know.”

We Aren’t Alone

C.S Lewis once said “we read to know that we’re not alone.” In 2011, Gabriel and Young carried out a study about this, and it was found that reading can expand our self-concepts, and actually make us feel less lonely.

Reading is often seen as boring, time consuming, and overall pointless by many, however reading and literature is one of the fundamental aspects of humans and society. Social media for example, is a form of literature and reading, and this is something that I know I spend hours doing.

Reading transports us to other places and other worlds, allowing us to be someone else, even just for a minute. It is a form of escapism- produced by the brain of an author, delivered to us on dead trees tattooed in ink, and our minds and imaginations do the rest. We picture the world the author describes, the characters they invent, and they feel as real as the neighbour’s dog that keeps you awake at 4am in the morning. We feel deep, emotional and spiritual connections with these imaginary people- that can last lifetimes.

Gabriel said “Obviously, you can’t hold a book’s hand, and a book isn’t going to dry your tears when you’re sad, yet we feel human connection, without real relationships, through reading. Something else important must be happening.” He wanted to delve into this concept, find out more about why this happens and what stimulates it.

The researchers recruited 140 university students, and assessed the participants on the extent to which they “meet their needs for connection by identifying with groups”. They were then divided into two conditions, one read a passage from Twilight, where Edward described what it was like to be a vampire to the female protagonist, Bella. The other condition read a passage from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. In this passage, the students were being separated into their houses, and Harry meets Professor Snape. The students had 30 minutes to read the passage and were instructed to “read for their own pleasure”.

Two assessments were then made to find out the participants’ psychological affiliation with the vampires or wizards.

In the first assessment, the students were told to categorise “me” words, such as ‘myself’, ‘mine’, and “wizard” words, such as ‘broomstick’, ‘spell’, ‘wand’, ‘potions’, as quickly and accurately as possible by pressing the same key when any of those words flashed on the screen. They pressed another key for “not-me” words such as ‘they’, ‘theirs’, and “vampire” words, such as ‘blood’, ‘fangs’, ‘bitten’ and ‘undead’.

The pairs were then reversed. Gabriel and Young expected participants to respond more quickly when “me” words were linked to the group to which “me” belonged, which depended on which book they had read.

The researchers then gave the participants what they called the Twilight/Harry Potter Narrative Collective Assimilation Scale, containing of questions indicating identification with wizards or vampires.

For example;

“Do you think you might be able to make yourself appear and disappear somewhere else?”

“How sharp are your teeth?”

Finally, there was a short questionnaire to assess the participant’s life satisfaction and mood.

Results were as predicted. On both measure, Harry Potter readers “became” wizards, and Twilight readers “became” vampires. Participants who were more group and socially orientated showed the largest assimilation effects. “Belonging” to these fictional communities gave the students the same mood and life satisfaction level people get from affiliation with real-life groups.

This study proves that reading makes our minds psychologically embed itself into the community described in the story, be it fantasy or not. Reading satisfies that of us which is deeply human, something so embedded in our brains that is our evolutionarily need for belonging. We take on the traits of the protagonist, embedding our own characteristics in the story, and long to be them. We develop our own person, morphing ourseleves into whomever and whatever we so desire.

Reading widens our horizons, teaches us that we are able to stand up for ourselves, be whoever we want to be, and experience life from as many perspectives and times in both history and the future that we want.

But more importantly, it helps us feel connected, and not alone.

“New Years Resolutions”

So, we’ve all been there “This year my New Year’s resolution is to go to the gym, twice – no three times a week” and the first couple of weeks we stick to it, but as soon as the third/fourth week of January hits “I’ll try again next year”.

New Year’s Resolutions

Those targets we set ourselves at the start of every year, which always seem to disappear towards the end of January. Sometimes we set ourselves some very unrealistic targets, which may be the reasons that we can’t always achieve, therefore it’s not the fault of our willpower that causes us to be unable to fulfill our our resolutions.

According to Psychologists(1) many of us are victims of “false hope syndrome”, which is the reason why we set ourselves unrealistic targets and resolutions. Common symptoms of false hope syndrome is false expectations of the speed and ease of a particular outcome (i.e “Everyday I’m going to complete about 10 hours of revision in order to achieve 4 A*’s). 

However, this doesn’t mean that targets cannot be set and met, it just means you have to be SMART about it!

S – Specific (what exactly do I want to do? Not just “Lose Weight”, but “Lose 5KG”)

M – Measurable (How will you know you’ve achieved this goal?)

A – Achievable (Is the goal possible?)

R – Realistic (How realistic is this goal?)

T – Time (When will you have achieved this goal by?)

So here’s Tadi’s Top Tips on achieving those resolutions

1. Write down what you want to achieve and be honest with yourself.
2. Make some small steps putting things into action, don’t rush it or expect things to change overtime.
3. Talk to people, get some encouragement on your new targets e.g. if it’s about going to the gym, talk to others who have also achieved going to the gym more
4. Positive Reinforcement – We know from Skinner that a positive consequence/reward of  a behaviour will lead to strengthening of that particular behaviour – so it’s not a bad thing to treat yourself after fulfilling your targets for a week or so.
5. Don’t be afraid to start again! Just because you may have slipped up, doesn’t mean it’s too late to start again 🙂

So from all of us at Psychomashup…

(1)http://theconversation.com/the-psychology-of-new-years-resolutions-51847

Rapport-building more effective than traditional torture

                   

Contemporary research has discovered that when interrogating highly important suspects with potentially vital information, it is much more effective to build a rapport rather than opting for the cliché torture methods often seen in American films. It appears that in America – where tortuous methods such as sleep deprivation and waterboarding are widely used as a CIA interrogation practice – citizens are almost ideologically split in half, with some supporting torture, and some opposing it.

This traditional method has been questioned by many for its obvious unethicality. The CIA have been criticised for making detainees stand on broken feet, force feeding them, and even humiliating them by stripping them nude. Not only are these methods highly unethical in practice, but they can also have a lasting psychological impact on detainees long after they have been interrogated, as many detainees can develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from enduring such torture.

Arguably, a blind eye may well be turned towards the unspeakable conduct found within places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, as some citizens may believe that using torture is a necessary evil in order to obtain essential information about terrorist plots. However, building a relationship with the detainee by showing respect and empathy increases the likelihood of receiving facts and details.

A recent Senate Intelligence Committee report argues that the barbaric CIA interrogation techniques only result in “fabricated” information, and are “deeply flawed”. The Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein, continued to say that any information gathered from such techniques could have been obtained from other means, rendering torturous interrogation both useless and completely unnecessary.

So, is building a rapport with detainees the way forward?

A recent study by Jane Goodman-Delahunty suggests so. Her research illustrates that inhumane treatment is no longer needed, or possibly never needed in the first place, in order to gain information or a confession from terror suspects. This involved interviewing different interrogators from countries such as Australia and Norway on their experiences with 30 terror suspects, focusing on the outcomes of interrogations and the methods which they used. The results show that “disclosure is 14 times more likely to occur” when using a rapport-building interrogation technique rather than using force and control and confessions were 4 times more likely when the interrogator was respectful and neutral towards the suspect.

Perhaps this research can be used for good, and instead of the CIA treating suspects with abrasive cruelty, information can be extracted from detainees in a much more humane manner in the future.

Catherine Joyce

Anonymity can be dangerous

Mainly a feature which is only available online, anonymity is widely regarded as a useful tool when we want to hide our identity. A lack of identity enables users to voice opinions they would be otherwise afraid to express – half of the things you say online, you wouldn’t say in real life – or talk about something that they wish to keep separate from their personal lives, but mostly it is used for evil. When given a screen to hide behind, some regular citizens who seem completely normal allow their sadistic and anti-social sides come out to play.

It’s said that “anonymity breeds courage”, and this has been shown as online forums have become a breeding ground for hateful comments and insults, leading to the American Psychiatric Association naming cyberbullying as the top online risk for teenagers. Adverse behaviour like this has become so substantial in recent years that a term has actually been coined for the way that people behave anonymously online: the Online Disinhibition Effect, which consists of six features that can change a person’s behaviour online. One of these is called dissociative imagination. It is often believed by people who think nothing of sending and posting abusive messages to others online (sometimes known as trolls) that the online world is nothing more than a game, fictional in comparison to our reality offline. And since it’s all “make-believe”, then surely any hurtful posts made don’t have any real-life consequences?

Despite all of this happening with a computer as a platform, anonymity can also explain behaviours outside the cyber world, such as rioting. Since there are so many of them, rioters fail to have an individual identity whilst in a crowd; and as long as they remain amongst the sea of similar faces, they remain nameless and faceless. Instead of hiding behind a screen, they are hidden amongst the many people around them, and it’s unlikely that they will be caught individually for any crimes they may commit. Consequently, a rioter wouldn’t think twice about smashing a shop window and stealing anything that’s on the shelves.

This idea of deindividuation has been explored by Diener et al in their 1976 study into children’s trick or treating behaviour, which found that children who were anonymous (by having costumes that concealed their identity) stole more sweets when left alone with the bowl, than those who had who were not anonymous. Aside from this, there is lots of research which demonstrates that negative social behaviour is linked to anonymity. Douglas and McGarty found that within the online world, anonymous participants in discussion forums were more likely to engage in “flaming” behaviour.

Which leads me to believe that if online or offline a person can become depersonalised, and completely separate themselves from their identity, then they may be capable of anything.

Catherine Joyce