SPSP Week

This week, I will be at the annual conference for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). I will still try to update at least a couple of times through the week, but it will more likely be conference photos than substantive articles.

However, I will be covering the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality preconference for the Religious Studies Project. I’ll submit my conference report to them over the weekend, and, if they deem fit, they’ll post it sometime after that.

If you will be at the convention and spot me, feel free to say hi!

Things Worth Reading

This week’s Things Worth Reading covers critiques of the data interpretations behind popular stories, how atheism can be uplifting, how our ideology colors our interpretations of facts, and high heels: hot or not?

• Maybe you saw the rape infographic that was circulating recently—the one with the numbers of rapists, reported rapists, convicted rapists, and falsely accused rapists? Unfortunately, it’s inaccurate and misleading. Amanda Marcotte wrote a great teardown with the real statistics at The XX.
• Perhaps you also saw the story last week about how we underestimate how much our personalities will change in the future? There is an interesting critique of the methods and interpretation of that study by math professor Jordan Ellenberg on his blog.
• The New York Times had a great piece on atheism in the face of tragedy this week by Susan Jacoby.
• Dan Kahan wrote a great post covering research on how ideology and political knowledge influence people’s reactions to factchecking (hint: it’s not good).
• Scicurious wrote an excellent piece on research about the sexiness of high heels.

Enjoy!

Revisiting Racism: Psychological Essentialism, Part II

Earlier this week, I wrote about psychological essentialism, the idea that people tend to see certain categories as having an underlying essence that causes them to be what they are and to have the properties that they do. I gave the example of thinking that tigers are what they are because there is something inside them, DNA perhaps, which is responsible for their being tigers and having stripes and tails. Today, I want to discuss what all of this might have to do with racism.

It turns out that people think this way not just about natural kinds (like tigers and gold) but about social kinds as well. You can see this kind of thinking throughout history. For example, in the US the one-drop rule, the idea that any amount of African ancestry (that is, any amount of African blood—even one drop) makes one Black, was for some time a legally instituted definition of race. Although people may not have believed the blood metaphor literally, it is telling in its emphasis on an internal, undetectable, and biological determiner of social identity. We may no longer talk about drops of racial blood, but we still see this same kind of thinking today. Consider, for example, the attempt to analyze Newtown shooter Adam Lanza’s DNA for an explanation for his actions. We’re probably just as unlikely to find killer DNA as we are to find African blood, but the desire to explain differences between humans in terms of underlying, biological essences is strong.

But believing that people are different beneath the surface doesn’t itself explain prejudice and discrimination. So how do psychologists go from one to the other? As I mentioned at the end of my earlier post, psychological essentialism doesn’t stop at the idea that there is something deep inside that causes category membership. After all, the idea that a group of people has some deep, biological similarity implies lots of things about that group. People who have that belief are also likely to have a host of other kinds of beliefs about category memberships. They also tend to believe that category membership is unalterable, stable over growth, passed from parent to child, biologically based, and innate. Likewise, they may believe that category members share many features and that category membership is exclusive (for example, a person can belong to only one race), absolute (for example, a person either is or is not White; one cannot be a part member of a race), informative (tells you a lot about someone), and inherent (a real part of the world and not simply a social categorization). These beliefs have implications for how people think about and act towards people of different social categories.

Revisiting Racism: Psychological Essentialism, Part I

Not actually a tiger. Image by Flickr user Exkhaniber.

There are a couple of posts that bring steady traffic to my blog, even though they written a long time ago and even though I have barely updated the blog since I wrote those posts. One of these is on the relationship between religion and racism. Racism is an important topic for psychologists, one with substantial application to our understanding of everyday social behavior. So there is a lot to say about it, and I would like to revisit it this week with a couple of posts on one of the psychological processes underlying racism: psychological essentialism. Today, I’ll explain what psychological essentialism is, and in the second post later this week, I will explain how it is linked to racism. 

What makes a tiger a tiger? Is something a tiger because it has black stripes, four legs, a tail, etc.? Or is there something deeper, something inside that makes it a tiger? If you are like most people, you probably believe that just having the features of a tiger (stripes, etc.) is not enough to be a tiger. After all, if I painted stripes on myself, crawled around on all fours, and taped a tail to my rear end, I wouldn’t be a tiger. No, there is something else, something invisible to the naked eye, something inside the tiger that makes it a tiger. If you agree, then you might be a psychological essentialist.

Things Worth Reading

This week’s Things Worth Reading covers science journalism, environmental effects on crome, and the New Year’s resolutions of famous people:

• Survival of the Wrongest – David H. Freedman explains why personal health journalism is so self-contradictory, confusing, and (often) wrong, and in doing so, he touches on how this reflects the realities of medical science.
  
• America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead – Kevin Drum reports for Motherjones on a link between rising and falling crimes rates in the US and childhood lead exposure—and on how much lead is left to be cleaned up. Don’t miss his follow-ups on lead paint and how much of the change in violent crime rates can actually be attributed to lead.
• Famous Resolution Lists: Jonathan Swift, Susan Sontag, Marilyn Monroe, Woody Guthrie – Maria Popova compiled these four charming and inspiring lists. My favorite is one of Woody Guthrie’s: “Stay glad.”

Enjoy!

EDIT: I must add two important links to this week’s Things Worth Reading:

• First, a speech on how science transforms understanding by Mark Lynas. In his address to the Oxford Farming Conference two days ago, Lynas apologized for opposing GMO foods based on a gut reaction without considering the science behind GMO. 
• Second, a letter from Brent Roberts to his family, explaining what research is and professors don’t really have months off the winter and summer.

Make the Most of Your Regrets

Regret feels bad. That fact is so obvious that it hardly needs explaining. When you think about how you could acted differently to make things better, that just feels bad. Perhaps because regret feels bad, you can find lots of people advocating living without regret. (A Google search for “live life without regrets” turns up millions of results.) After all, we’d all rather feel good than bad.

But ignoring or blocking your regrets might deprive you of their benefits. As you move into the new year, you might make better resolutions and be more able to keep them by reflecting on how your past behavior has prevented you from achieving your goals and thinking about how your future behavior might lead to new failures. In doing this, you will be taking advantage of two of regrets’ strongest benefits: improving on your past mistakes and avoiding new ones.

To understand the difference between these two effects, it’s useful to make a distinction between counterfactual thinking and prefactual thinking. When you recall the past and think about how it could have been different if only you’d made a different choice (for example, how you could have gone on vacation this year if only you hadn’t gone out to eat as much), you are engaging in counterfactual thinking. When you think about the regret you might feel about a choice you are about to make (for example, how you will resent the purse-tightening you will have to do if you rent a more expensive apartment), you are engaging in prefactual thinking. It turns out that both the regret felt during counterfactual thinking and the regret anticipated in prefactual thinking influence our behavior and decision-making in generally positive ways.

Counterfactual Thinking

Counterfactual thinking arises spontaneously when we encounter a problem (Roese & Hur, 1997). For example, when I check my January bank account balance and realize that I might not be able to afford a vacation this year, I spontaneously begin to think about all of the frivolous things I spent money on in the past year—trips to Starbucks, clothes that I haven’t worn, expensive groceries—and regret them. What’s important about this process is that it implies a causal link between my regretted behavior (frivolous spending) and my problem (no vacation). Since I’ve identified a causal mechanism linking my behavior to my problem, I am now better equipped to correct both my behavior (spend more carefully) and, consequently, my problem (afford a vacation) by forming intentions that allow me to behave better in the future (Epstude & Roese, 2008). Although regret might feel bad in the short term, it equips us with the understanding needed to improve our behavior and our outcomes in the future.

Prefactual Thinking

Several studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of anticipated regret in reducing risky behaviors. For example, psychologists have found that thinking about how you will feel after unsafe sex is a better deterrent than simply thinking about your feelings about unsafe sex itself (Richard, van der Pligt, & de Vries, 1996). Thinking about the regret they will feel after unsafe sex not only made participants form intentions to have safer sex, it actually influenced their behavior, leading to safer sexual practices.

More recent work has demonstrated that the effects of anticipated regret on decision-making are due to more careful thinking during the decision. Participants in one study were asked to pick one of two investment options (Reb, 2008). Although several pieces of information were available for both investment choices, participants had to click on a link to access each piece of information, meaning that learning about the choices involved deliberate investment of time and effort. Before beginning, however, some of the participants were asked to think about how much they might regret choosing the worse option. Participants who were asked to anticipate their regret took 42% more time (almost a minute longer) to reach their decision and sought out about a third more information before deciding. Even more telling was that participants in the regret condition sought out more relevant information (e.g., past performance of the funds they were choosing between). So when participants were asked to think about the regret they might feel after their decisions, they became more careful and more informed about the decision.

Conclusion

Ignoring or attempting to eliminate your felt or anticipated regret is a bad strategy if your goal is self-improvement and well-being. Regret serves an important function in self-regulation. By making the consequences of our behaviors salient and painful, regret inspires us to think carefully about our decisions and improve our behaviors. By listening to your regrets now, you can avoid feeling even more regret in the future.

References

Epstude, K., & Roese, N. J. (2008). The functional theory of counterfactual thinking. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12, 168–192. doi:10.1177/1088868308316091

Reb, J. (2008). Regret aversion and decision process quality: Effects of regret salience on decision process carefulness. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 105, 169–182. doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2007.08.006

Richard, R., van der Pligt, J., & de Vries, N. K. (1996). Anticipated regret and time perspective: Changing sexual risk-taking behavior. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 9, 185–199.

Roese, N. J., & Hur, T. (1997). Affective determinants in counterfactual thinking. Social Cognition, 15, 274-290. doi: 10.1521/soco.1997.15.4.274

New Year; Old Regrets

Image by deeplifequotes on Flickr

The New Year can be as much a time of regret as of renewal. While you are setting new resolutions, you might reflect on failed resolutions from the past—that weight you were supposed to lose or that language you were supposed to learn. And as you are returning to your normal schedule after the holidays, you might reflect on how that schedule could be better—if you got up earlier every morning, you might have more time to make a healthy breakfast at home, or if you rode your bike to work every day, you might be more fit.

As you reflect on the past year and prepare for the new one, you might ask: Are the things I regret really unique, or do we all regret the same sorts of things (lost love, missed opportunities)?  Will reflecting on my regrets inspire me to do better or bog me down in the past and trap me in negativity? Psychologists have studied these questions extensively and have some interesting and inspiring answers. Over the next two posts, I will try to share some of what they have learned. Below, I focus on what regret is and what sorts of things people generally regret. Tomorrow, I will write about how regret may actually be helpful.

New Year’s Challenge

Since the last time I updated this blog, a lot has happened:

• I passed the qualifying exam in my doctoral program.
• The Religious Studies Project posted another podcast response by me, this time on why women are more religious than men.
• My husband and I adopted two dogs.
• I saw the Mississippi River for the first time when we visited St. Louis.
• I ate a ghost chili (OK, I swallowed it whole–a strategy that resulted in much less suffering).
• I turned 30.
• Jesse Preston, Ryan Ritter, and I had a review paper on religious prosociality accepted for publication in a forthcoming book edited by Vassilis Saroglou.
• I began writing my (second) master’s thesis. (Some of the work from this thesis will be presented in a poster at the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality Preconference for the Society for Personality and Social Psycholigy’s annual meeting later this month.)
• I lost about 25 lbs.

Last night, a friend asked if anyone at the New Year’s gathering had any resolutions. I couldn’t help but think that my life was pretty good over the past year. I accomplished several milestones, all without the help of any New Year’s resolutions. So I answered

But reflecting on the question today, I feel differently. When I turned 30, I realized two things. First, I need to take care of myself–lose weight, sleep more, have a more regular schedule–otherwise, I might find 40 unpleasant. Second, I want to keep challenging myself, keep improving at what I do and keep trying new things. So why not see a New Year’s resolution as a challenge?

Ok, I challenge myself to write here at least three times a week. But to accomplish this, I need to make some compromises with myself: Not all of my posts can be 1,000-3,000 word essays on esoteric research topics. I just need to write about what’s inspiring me today. And sometimes, that might be my dogs or cooking or hiking. I will still write about psychology and religion and politics. I am just giving myself permission to write about other things as well.

Getting Into Graduate School

A while ago, I posted some advice for applicants to graduate schools. Today, The Religious Studies Project has posted a revised and expanded version of this advice that includes links to other online resources for grad school applicants. Here is an excerpt of that new post:

Generally speaking, the key to graduate admissions is fit—which means roughly that your interests are aligned with those of the department. So start browsing department websites. Get a feel for what the faculty are studying and decide if your interests match those of one or more faculty members. For large departments (such as psych and bio), the faculty are often further partitioned into divisions, and your application may be reviewed solely by the division to which you are applying, in which case you will want to focus on that division. Make a long-ish list of schools and faculty you are interested in, and then make an appointment with one of your professors to discuss that list. People in your field may know what departments tend to have good placement (getting people into jobs they want), have advisors whose students never graduate, etc. You want to know as much of this as possible.

 To read the whole post, please head over to The Religious Studies Project.

The Cognitive Approach to Religion

Greetings from SPSP! I’ve been quiet this week as I am at the largest conference in my field, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. It’s been a great experience so far. Yesterday, I attended a symposium on religion and prosociality that was extremely exciting and has inspired my next blog topic: the supernatural punishment hypothesis. But that will have to wait until Monday!

For now, I wanted to let you know that there is a post by me up at The Religious Studies Project. Recently, the fine folks over there posted an excellent interview with Armin Geertz, one of the leading cognitive scientists of religion, and they invited me write a response. Because the site is aimed to introduce people to different ways of studying religion, I thought it would be useful to summarize some of the major findings in that have resulted from the cognitive approach. So head over there and take a look and subscribe to the podcast.