Research Digest Free every fortnight Issue 166 Contents: 1. How language reflects the balance of good and bad in the world
2. The homeless man and his audio cave
3. Inner words spoken in silence
4. Men with brown eyes are perceived as more dominant
5. The psychological barriers facing MMR promotion campaigns
6. Doubt cast on the maxim that time goes faster as you get older
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Subscribe free at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog Research Digest Free every fortnight How language reflects the balance of good and bad in the world Imagine a garden filled with sweet smelling flowers and weeds. The flowers vastly outnumber the weeds, but the
latter are more varied. And there's another asymmetry - whereas the flowers have a pleasant scent, the weeds aren't
just scent-less, they're poisonous, they can kill. According to a new study, life is like this garden. Positive events
outnumber negative events, but negative events are more varied and potent. Paul Rozin and colleagues say that the
English language reflects this state of affairs and so do at least twenty other languages.
Rozin's team began by analysing a corpus of 100 million words of spoken and written English and found that
positive words are used far more often than negative words - just as you'd expect if positive events are more
common (to take one example, 'good' is mentioned 795 times per million words compared with 153 mentions per
million for 'bad').
Moreover, the researchers say we've adopted a number of habits of convenience that reflect the frequent use of
positive words in our language (in turn reflecting the greater frequency of positivity in the world). For example,
positive words tend to be 'unmarked' - that is, the positive is the default (e.g. 'happy') whereas the negative is
achieved by adding a negating prefix (i.e. 'unhappy'). Rozin cites four more such habits. Here's one more: when
stating pairs of good and bad words together, it's nearly always the convention to mention the positive word first: as
in 'good and bad' and 'happy and sad' rather than the other way around.
Turning to the dark side, the greater variety of negative events in the world is also reflected in English usage. For
example, many negative words don't have an opposite: 'sympathy', 'murderer', 'risk', 'accident'.
To see if these patterns are reflected in other languages, Rozin's team interviewed the speakers of twenty languages
(one speaker per language): Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Tagalog, Ibo, Arabic,
Turkish, Tamil, Hindi, German, Icelandic, Swedish, French, Portugese (Brazilian), Spanish, Russian, and Polish.
Overwhelmingly, the patterns found for English also applied in these other languages. For instance, for eight
sample adjectives, including 'pleasant', 'dirty', 'disgusting' and 'pure', it was the convention in 83.9 per cent of cases
across all 20 languages for the positive word to be stated first alongside its negative opposite. Likewise, the
negative words 'sympathy', 'murderer', 'risk', and 'accident' nearly always lacked a positive opposite.
'We hope that this study calls the attention of emotion researchers to some interesting and widespread valenced
biases in the use of language,' the researchers said. 'We believe these biases are adaptive responses to asymmetries
in the world, as it interacts with organisms.'
_________________________________
Rozin, P., Berman, L., & Royzman, E. (2010). Biases in use of positive and negative words across twenty natural
languages Cognition & Emotion, 24 (3), 536-548 DOI: 10.1080/02699930902793462
Subscribe free at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog Research Digest Free every fortnight The homeless man and his audio cave We're defined in part by where we are, the places we go and what we do there. We adorn our homes with
paraphernalia caught in the net of life - the photos, the books and pictures. But what happens when you're
homeless? How do you define your space and identity when your home is a public place? To find out,
Darrin Hodgetts and colleagues have conducted an unusual 'ethnographic' case study with 'Brett', a 44year-old homeless man in Auckland.
The researchers gave Brett a camera, asked him to take photos representative of his life and then they
conducted two in-depth interviews with him, using the photos as spring-boards for discussion.
The clearest finding to emerge was the way that Brett used a portable radio to insulate himself from the
outside world - what the researchers called an 'audio cave'. 'I've got a sound bubble around me,' Brett said,
'and I can wander through the streets without paying attention to what's going on around me.' At the same
time, by consistently listening to his favourite station George FM, Brett was able to develop a sense of
belonging with the station's other listeners. This provided Brett with a 'fleeting sense of companionship
and "we-ness",' the researchers said.
Brett is a self-confessed loner who avoids contact with other people where possible and who tries to
conceal his homeless status. He told the researchers about the places he went that enabled him to do this,
including a former gun emplacement with stunning views of the sea; Judges Bay where there are free
showers and gas barbecues; and in the city centre, the church, bookshops and libraries. These places
allow Brett to experience 'life as a "normal" person who has interest in books and reading, or simply
escaping the city to sit and reflect,' the researchers said. By contrast, returning to photograph the public
toilets on Pitt Street was an ordeal for Brett, reminding him of this time as a drug addict.
Brett referred to how other homeless people spend a lot of time sitting round talking and how it
[homelessness] psychologically unhinges them. By contrast, the researchers said Brett had never 'lost
himself' to the streets. '...[H]is memories, imagination, and daily practices, including his use of space,
provide anchorage to an adaptive sense of self and belonging.'
_________________________________
Hodgetts D, Stolte O, Chamberlain K, Radley A, Groot S, & Nikora LW (2010). The mobile hermit and
the city: Considering links between places, objects, and identities in social psychological research on
homelessness. The British journal of social psychology / the British Psychological Society PMID:
19531282
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Inner words spoken in silence As the the words fall from your lips, it's the first you've heard of them. That is, you don't have a sneak preview of
what your own words sound like before you utter them. That's according to Falk Huettig and Robert Hartsuiker
who say their finding has implications for our understanding of the brain's internal monitoring processes.
The researchers took advantage of an established effect whereby the sound of a spoken word draws our eyes
automatically towards written words that sound similar. Forty-eight Dutch-speaking undergrads were presented
with a succession of line drawings, each of which appeared alongside three written words. The participants' task
was to name out loud the objects in the drawings. Meanwhile the researchers monitored their eye movements.
On each trial, one of the written words sounded like the name of the drawn object - for example, for a drawing of a
heart ('hart' in Dutch), the accompanying words were: harp (also 'harp' in English), zetel ('couch') and raam
('window'). As expected, after saying the word 'hart', the participants eyes were drawn to the word 'harp'. The key
question was whether this happened earlier than in previous studies in which participants heard the target words
spoken by someone else rather than by themselves. If we hear our own speech internally, before we utter it, then
the participants' eyes should have been drawn to the similar sounding words earlier than if they'd heard another
person's utterances.
In fact, the participants' eyes were drawn to the similar sounding words with a latency (around 300ms) that
suggested they'd only heard their own utterances once they were public. There was no sneak internal perceptual
preview.
It's important to clarify: we definitely do monitor our speech internally. For example, speakers can detect their
speech errors even when their utterances are masked by noise. What this new research suggests is that this internal
monitoring isn't done perceptually - we don't 'hear' a pre-release copy of our own utterances. What's the alternative?
Huettig and Hartsuiker said error-checking is somehow built into the speech production system, but they admit:
'there are presently no elaborated theories of [this] alternative viewpoint.'
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Huettig, F., & Hartsuiker, R. (2010). Listening to yourself is like listening to others: External, but not internal,
verbal self-monitoring is based on speech perception Language and Cognitive Processes, 25 (3), 347-374 DOI:
10.1080/01690960903046926 [open access]
Subscribe free at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog Research Digest Free every fortnight Men with brown eyes are perceived as more dominant but it’s not because their eyes are brown White men with brown eyes are perceived to be more dominant than their blue-eyed counterparts. However, a blueeyed man looking to make himself appear more dominant would be wasting his time investing in brown-coloured
contact lenses. A new study by Karel Kleisner and colleagues at Charles University in the Czech Republic has
found that brown iris colour seems to co-occur with some other aspect of facial appearance that triggers in others
the perception of dominance.
Sixty-two student participants, half of them female, rated the dominance and/or attractiveness of the photographed
faces of forty men and forty women. All models were Caucasian, and all of them were holding a neutral expression.
Men with brown eyes were rated consistently as more dominant than blue-eyed men. No such effect of eye-colour
was found for the photos of women. Eye colour also bore no association to the attractiveness ratings.
Next the researchers used Photoshop to give the brown-eyed men blue eyes and the blue-eyed men brown eyes.
The photos were then rated by a new batch of participants. The intriguing finding here was that the dominance
ratings were left largely unaffected by the eye colour manipulation. The men who really had brown eyes, but thanks
to Photoshop appeared with blue eyes, still tended to be rated as more dominant.
This suggests there's some other aspect of facial appearance that tends to co-occur with brown eyes, which is
responsible for the perception of dominance. An analysis of the men's facial configurations showed that the browneyed men tended to have broader, bigger chins, bigger noses, eyes closer together, and larger eye-brows than blueeyed men, so it's possible some or all of these facial features are responsible for the perception of dominance.
Certainly previous research has shown that men with wider faces are perceived as more aggressive.
Kleisner's team can't say at this point why eye colour co-occurs with certain facial features and with the appearance
of being more dominant or submissive. However, one suggestion they make is that boys with blue eyes come to be
seen as less dominant by a process of social feedback. 'It is possible that subjects with blue eyes are treated as a
small child for a longer period than brown-eyed children,' the researchers said. 'Such early social experience may
have been literally "inscribed" into their faces, preserved until adulthood, and finally bring on the perception of
higher submissiveness.'
_________________________________
Kleisner, K., Kočnar, T., Rubešová, A., & Flegr, J. (2010). Eye color predicts but does not directly influence
perceived dominance in men. Personality and Individual Differences, 49 (1), 59-64 DOI:
10.1016/j.paid.2010.03.011
Subscribe free at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog Research Digest Free every fortnight The psychological barriers facing MMR promotion campaigns A focus group study of parents' attitudes towards interventions promoting uptake of the MMR vaccine suggests it is
better for health advice to be seen as independent from government.
The findings come after the General Medical Council ruled yesterday that Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who first
suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, was guilty of serious professional misconduct.
The MMR vaccine protects children against measles, mumps and rubella. Unfortunately the number of UK parents
vaccinating their children plummeted in the wake of Wakefield's 1998 Lancet study, since discredited and unreplicated, which purported to show a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Today vaccination rates remain
at around 85 per cent, compared with the desired rate of 90 to 95 per cent required for herd immunity (whereby
even the unvaccinated are safe).
For the new study, Benjamin Gardner and colleagues analysed five focus group interviews they held with 28
parents in London. The parents were asked for their responses to three 'motivation-based' interventions (a website;
an information pack; and parent-led group discussions) and three 'organisational interventions' (health care workers
acting as immunisation champions; mobile vaccination units; legislation to penalise non-compliers).
Five key themes emerged. Parents felt they didn't have enough information, especially in relation to the dangers
associated with not vaccinating. Government sources were not trusted. By contrast, other parents were trusted:
'Parents trust advice from other parents,' one mother said. '[You] take it on board. You listen to them.' Parents also
revealed they were biased towards risk-related information. And they misunderstood balance, believing that proand anti-MMR arguments should be given equal weight even though the scientific evidence overwhelming favours
MMR vaccination.
Gardner's team said a number of practical implications emerged from their findings. In particular, promotional
MMR campaigns are likely to be better received if they appear to be independent of government and if they are
fronted by parents. More information is needed about the risks of non-vaccination. And care should be taken when
highlighting the small risks associated with vaccination - parents are likely to zoom in on these.
The researchers acknowledged their study has some limitations, most notably that the majority of the parents
involved had actually vaccinated their children. Nonetheless, they said their results 'highlight important
psychological barriers and facilitators that may determine whether MMR promotion interventions are effective.'
_________________________________
Gardner B, Davies A, McAteer J, & Michie S (2010). Beliefs underlying UK parents' views towards MMR
promotion interventions: a qualitative study. Psychology, health & medicine, 15 (2), 220-30 PMID: 20391239
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Doubt cast on the maxim that time goes faster as you get older
Time gets faster the older you are. Or does it? When William Friedman and Steve Janssen asked 49 New Zealand
undergrads (average age 21) and 50 older adults (average age 68) to say how fast time passed for them, including the last
week, month and year, very few differences emerged. Most participants felt time passed quickly but it was only when
considering the speed of the last ten years that the older adults said time had gone by more quickly than the younger
participants, and even here the effect of age was small.
This finding, and another like it involving German and Austrian participants published in 2005, casts doubt on some of
the classic explanations for time speeding up with age, including William James' suggestion that time feels slower when
younger because it is packed with more memorable events. If true, you'd expect the effect to apply over time periods
shorter than ten years.
Friedman and Janssen's initial study also undermined a novel explanation for time speeding up known as 'telescoping'.
This is the idea that time feels faster when we look back on past events and discover that we underestimated how long
ago they occurred. Earlier in the study, the researchers had asked their participants to estimate when 12 newsworthy
events from the past had occurred, including Saddam Hussein's capture in 2003. By giving them false feedback on their
accuracy, the researchers exaggerated or reduced the telescoping effect but this didn't have any effect on participants'
subsequent ratings of how fast time goes by.
A second study, conducted on the internet, tested a novel explanation for time seeming faster to some people than others:
feeling rushed. Nearly two thousand Dutch participants aged between 16 and 80 rated the speed of time and how rushed
they felt in life. Once again, very few age differences emerged, with only the ten-year period being judged to have
passed more quickly by older participants.
Age accounted for four per cent of the variance in how quickly participants said the last ten years had passed and just
one per cent of the perception of time's speed in general. By contrast, how busy and rushed people reported feeling
accounted for ten per cent of the variance in subjective speed of time. Consistent with this, women reported feeling more
rushed than men, on average, and they perceived time to go by more quickly.
Quite why the idea that time speeds up with age is so widely believed requires further study, the researchers said.
'Another significant question,' they continued, 'is why age differences in the subjective speed of time are found when
adults are asked to consider the last ten years but not present or only very weak when they report on the last year or more
recent intervals.' The effect over ten years, they suggested, could simply be the self-fulfilling effect of the cultural belief
that time speeds up with age.
'The answers to these questions,' Friedman and Janssen concluded, 'may shed light on a topic that has engaged
philosophers and psychologists for more than 100 years.'
_________________________________
Friedman, W., & Janssen, S. (2010). Aging and the speed of time. Acta Psychologica, 134 (2), 130-141 DOI:
10.1016/j.actpsy.2010.01.004
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