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Hypnosis stops being hypnotic when it’s described to participants as ‘relaxation’. This finding by Balaganesh Ghandi and David Oakley at UCL’s Hypnosis Unit complements earlier research showing the opposite effect: that relaxation labelled as ‘hypnosis’ can be hypnotic. Ghandi and Oakley performed an identical, standard hypnotic induction on 70 participants. But whereas half of them were told their suggestibility was to be tested “whilst in hypnosis”, after they had completed [ Read More ]
By eight months of age, babies are already smiling ’socially’. That’s according to Susan Jones and Hye-Won Hong at Indiana University who filmed 20 eight-month-old infants while they played for ten minutes alone in a room with their mother who was seated behind them. Half the time the mothers were instructed to watch their child play, the other half of the time they read a magazine and ignored their child [ Read More ]
“…the most beautiful thing that man can do is to forgive a wrong”, wrote Jewish rabbi, Eleazar of Worms (1176-1238). It may once have been strictly theological territory but now psychologists are turning their attention to understanding forgiving. It’s hoped research in the area could aid conflict resolution and there’s also emerging evidence that failing to forgive could be bad for your health (e.g. see Berry, J.W. & Worthington, E.L. [ Read More ]
Is it possible to have a preference for one taste over another without being able to distinguish between the two? That’s apparently the case with patient B, a 72-year-old man brain-damaged by Herpes simplex encephalitis in 1975. Patient B suffered bilateral damage to the amygdala, the hypocampus, basal forebrain, insular and cingulate cortex, all of which left him severely amnesic, unable to recognise familiar people and objects, with profoundly impaired [ Read More ]
Wearing perfume can make you feel and look more confident. No, this isn’t an advert, it’s the implication of a study by a team of Japanese researchers who filmed thirty-one young women while they underwent a mock interview. Halfway through the 10 to 15 minute interview, a break was taken and half the women were sprayed once on the wrist with the perfume “Breath Garden-Tenderness Time”. Afterwards, 18 students were [ Read More ]
How someone understands and responds to their illness can influence whether or not they do all that is medically necessary to protect their health. Judith Moskowitz and Judith Wrubel at the University of California conducted bimonthly interviews with 57 HIV-positive gay men over two years. They wanted to explore the different ways these men responded to their illness, how they coped and the emotions they experienced. They asked the men [ Read More ]
From the trivial – ‘I wouldn’t have this thumping headache if only I hadn’t drunk that last double vodka’, to the (slightly) more profound – ‘If only I’d studied finance rather than psychology I might be going to Las Vegas, not Blackpool’, it can be frustrating pondering what might have been. Now Eric van Dijk and Marcel Zeelenberg at Leiden University in the Netherlands have investigated what influences how much [ Read More ]
Negative events at work, like being criticised, affect our mood far more than positive events, such as receiving praise. That’s according to Andrew Miner from the University of Minnesota and his colleagues. They gave 41 employees a palmtop computer that prompted them to answer questions several times a day. The participants all worked at a light manufacturing company, some in engineering, some in information services and others in customer services. [ Read More ]
Understandably, the first priority of the authorities when tackling a hostage situation is to keep the captive(s) physically safe. But Ellen Giebels at the University of Groningen and her Belgian colleagues argue that more attention should also be paid to how to protect hostages’ psychological health. Giebels’ team conducted in-depth interviews with eleven former hostages. Seven of them had been held in a siege and five had been kidnapped. Sieges [ Read More ]
Because there’s too much information out there for us to process all at once, we have to selectively attend to some things at the expense of others. Indeed, psychologists have spent a lot of time examining how we select certain things for preferential processing – colours, movement, whole objects and so on. But David Melcher at Oxford Brookes University and his colleagues wanted to know: how does what we’re focused [ Read More ]