Category: Psychology & Medicine

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

The Importance Of Hugging

Posted on by Jinavie

American psychologist Harry Harlow was interested in the debate surrounding the role of the mother. Some scholars argued that a mother’s role is to provide food for the baby, while others argued for the importance of the mother’s tender loving care for the baby. To investigate this, Harlow created two “mothers” for a group of infant rhesus macaques (species of monkeys). One mother was made of wire and wood and the other made of soft cloth to simulate the physical contact of an actual mother monkey. The twist was that only the wire mother provided milk for the infant. Despite this, an overwhelming number of infant macaques chose the cloth mother over the wire mother, choosing physical contact over nourishment. It was found that when given the two choices, the infants would visit the wire mother only for a feed, then would cling to the cloth mother the rest of the time. Harlow concluded that the mother’s role is not only to feed the young, but to provide them with “contact comfort” through physical contact.

Hugging is a form of physical contact found in almost every culture across the globe. It non-verbally communicates to the other person that you love and care for them and that you are compassionate for their happiness. It can provide the warmth, comfort, support and security the other person may need at the end of a tough day.

The act of hugging induces a massive release of oxytocin into your system, giving you the sensation of happiness and connection. It reduces your blood pressure and dissolves anxiety, making you feel more at peace. The behaviour of hugging is seen in a mother holding her child, a child cuddling a teddy bear, a couple communicating their affection, or two friends sharing a moment of happiness.

When two people hug, they become something more than a simple group of two people. In that moment of a hug, the two people enter a transcendent zone filled with only love and happiness, where they are protected from the sorrows and evils of the world. It is the physical form of human connection. In other words, a hug is the closest thing to the physical manifestation of true happiness.

1 + 1 = 3

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Stampede

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In the movie The Lion King, Simba’s father Mufasa is killed when he is trampled by a wildebeest stampede. Stampedes are a common behaviour in herd animals such as cattle, horses, wildebeests and elephants. When one animal is startled by something, it shows a fear response which then startles the animals around it. This startle propagates rapidly through the herd and the entire herd begins running away from whatever caused the first startle. They run with no clear reason or direction – it is a mindless rush of fear. Because of this, anything in the path of a stampede is crushed to death as the herd blindly rushes forward with impressive power and energy.

The destructive nature of a stampede not only affects whatever is in the path of the herd, but the herd itself. Native Americans are well-known for their buffalo jump style of hunting, where they would herd wild bison then trigger a stampede. They would direct the stampede towards a cliff and the frightened bison would blindly jump off the cliff to their deaths.

As deadly as a bison or wildebeest stampede may be, there is a species that causes far greater damage to humans when they stampede: us. Human stampedes are a well-known phenomenon documented throughout history, from crowds rushing away from a city being bombed to religious pilgrimages to sports games. Just like animals, when there is a large enough crowd of people, a simple spark of fear can cause mass panic.

This is described as the “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theatre” effect. In 1941, 4000 people were killed when the Japanese army bombed the Chinese city of Chongqing, causing a mass panic at an air raid shelter. More famously, 96 people were killed in the Hillsborough stadium crush in England, 1989, when crowds of people attending a soccer match squeezed into a tunnel blocked at the other end. There have been several incidents during the pilgrimage to Mecca where hundreds of people were killed during stampedes.

In human stampedes, death is not usually caused by trampling but by compressive asphyxiation. The sheer force of people pressing on each other limits chest expansion, making breathing impossible. The force of a panicked crowd can be great enough to bend steel bars. This phenomenon is also called crowd crush.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Autopilot

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Anyone who drives to work knows the strange sensation of realising that you have no memory of driving the last few kilometres. It is as if you turn on an autopilot in your brain. Because your brain is a master of pattern recognition, it analyses the route and all the movements like handle turning that takes you to the destination then converts it into a habit. After many commutes, the habit is so strong that the brain does not need to spare any thought on the activity. Ergo, your brain literally turns on an autopilot for you so to spare brainpower.

Thanks to this autopilot, the brain does not have to think about the drive to work. This means that it creates no new memories about the commute and you come out the other side not remembering the drive. An analogy would be to think of your brain’s information processing ability as if it was taking photos. The more new information it processes, the more photos it takes. Because your commute is an automatic process, the brain takes hardly any photos. Therefore, the “album” has few photos and takes little time to flip through. In comparison, your brain takes far more photos if you were to spend an equal time exploring a new scenic route. When you look back on this drive, the album is much thicker and you perceive it as a longer, more detailed memory.

Of course, this is extremely dangerous as your brain’s autopilot does not protect you from changes to your usual commute, such as a car swerving into you by accident. The automatic process means your brain is less ready for information processing and you have a delayed reaction, which may cost you your life.

The same goes for meeting a new person. On a first date, you learn many things about the other person and your brain frantically takes as many photos as it can. Looking back on it, it feels as if every second lasted forever and you can remember every little detail like the song that was playing in the background or the colour of her nails. But twenty years down the line, a day with that same person might feel less special and more “automatic”. Just like your drive to work, such an “autopilot” might result in a horrible accident.

So never stop paying attention to details, avoid forming ruts with surprises and new things. Don’t let your relationship turn into a boring commute.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Masculinity

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In the womb, a fetus with XY chromosomes is exposed to testosterone and other androgens that help it develop into a male. Research has shown that people exhibit features that give away how much testosterone we were exposed to before birth. The digit ratio is the ratio between the length of the second and fourth fingers. If both fingers are the same length, the ratio is 1. The lower the digit ratio (ring finger longer than index finger), the more testosterone the fetus was likely exposed to.

It is not clear why testosterone affects the length of your fingers, but there is significant evidence to support the theory. Men with a lower digit ratio tend to be described as more aggressive, dominant and overall “masculine”. Men with a higher digit ratio, closer to 1, are typically described to have more feminine traits such as higher emotional quotient, sensitivity and interestingly, excelling in mathematics and science. The effect is more pronounced in men but also affects women. Women with a low digit ratio are more likely to be assertive. It has also been shown that lesbian women have a lower digit ratio than heterosexual women.

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Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Attraction

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The saying goes that “opposites attract”, suggesting that people are attracted to those who are different to them, complementing each other like yin and yang. But then, another saying states that “like attracts like”, suggesting that people feel attraction to those that are similar to them, helping them bond over similar interests and hobbies. So which is true?

Biologically speaking, it makes sense for people to look for those who are “different” as it allows for a more varied gene pool. This is highlighted by the famous experiment where women were asked to smell and grade the “attractiveness” of t-shirts worn by different men. It was discovered that the t-shirts each woman chose belonged to a men who were most immunologically different to the woman. Every human being has a unique marker on their cells called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). The more dissimilar the MHC is, the more likely that the person is not related to you genetically. By choosing a mate with a different MHC, your offspring will have an immune system that has a broader cover against various pathogens. It seems that we have an innate ability to smell this difference. The way we do this best, of course, is through the act of kissing.

Psychologically speaking, we appear to find those who look similar to us attractive. Professor Penton-Voak undertook a study where he showed people a book of photos of the opposite gender and asked them to pick the most attractive one. He found that the participants tended to rate the picture with their own face morphed into the opposite gender as most attractive. Other studies have shown that similar personality, interests and hobbies, attitude and life goals were all strong predictors of attraction between two people. This is most likely because of self-affirmation – the theory that suggests that people like receiving confirmation about every aspect of their life and there is no better confirmation than spending time with someone similar to you and discovering said similarities as you connect.

According to studies on this exact debate, researchers determined that similarity is more important in initial attraction, while being different helped the relationship develop over time. Surveys have shown that people tend to be more satisfied in a relationship when their partner was different to them, especially in terms of how dominant – that is, how much they lead the relationship – they are. When two people are similar in dominance, such as both being dominant leading to frequent conflict, while both being submissive will lead to frustration as neither takes initiative.

Another interesting point is that when the couple is complementary, they tend to change each other for the better, such as an active person helping their shy partner improve their social skills while she teaches her partner the importance of keeping his head on when under stress. Through this process, long-term couples tend to become similar over time. Not only that, but because people tend to mimic people close to them, their speech, behaviour, idiosyncrasies and even facial expressions become similar.

However, there is a law of attraction that surpasses both similarity and complementarity. The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon where the more we are exposed to something, the more we like it. This is further expanded by the propinquity effect that states that the more we see and interact with someone, the more likely we are to befriend or date them. Simply put, just spending more time with or even living in close proximity to someone is a high predictor of them becoming your friend or romantic partner.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Art Of Persuasion

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An effective way to persuade or manipulate someone into doing a favour for you is the foot-in-the-door technique. Firstly, ask the person a small request that they will probably agree to. This is the metaphorical foot in the door. Once that is successful, continue to pry open the door with slowly increasing (not drastically as it raises suspicion) demands. Finally, like a frog swimming in a boiling pot, the person will happily say yes to your original intended request as you escalate the scale of your demand until you reach it. You have successfully made a sale to someone who would have otherwise closed the door on you.

For example, ask your friend if you can borrow a pen. Then, ask if you can borrow their phone to make a phone call. After a reasonable amount of time, ask casually if you can borrow a few coins for a drink from the vending machine. If your friend complies with these requests without protest, ramp up to your original intent of asking if you can actually borrow $10 because you left your lunch at home. If that is successful, then say you might need some cash for the rest of the day and ask to borrow a nice even $50 (with the addendum that you will pay them back soon).

This technique of slowly and surely expanding the size of your demand works because it is far easier complying with a small favour than a big one. Once that is established, the increasing demand becomes more tolerable as the person only compares it to the previous demand rather than seeing the absolute size of the favour. This is called reciprocal concession.

Strangely, the opposite stratagem seems to be just as effective. The door-in-the-face technique works by starting with an unreasonable, ridiculous request. The person will say no straight away, to which you respond with a milder favour, which seems much more reasonable relatively speaking. For example, ask a friend if you can borrow $1000. In most cases, that request will be denied. Then suggest that it is quite a large amount of money and ask if you can just borrow $100 instead. This will be far more effective than asking to borrow $100 from the start.

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Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Eye Contact

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When you see a person of the opposite sex for the first time, what part do you see first? Each person may give a different body part such as face, shoulders, legs or breasts, but the universal truth is that most people will unconsciously look at the person’s eyes first. The eyes are literally “windows to the soul”, providing valuable information about the person’s state of mood and mind.

Eye contact is an important part of social life. Looking directly into someone’s eyes conveys the message of “I am interested in what you are saying and you have my attention”, as if a bridge is made between the two people’s minds. Strong eye contact is a common feature of two people in love, as they communicate non-verbally to share their feelings of attraction. Good eye contact is seen as “socially appropriate”, giving the person an air of confidence and helping them build better rapport with the person they are talking to as the other person feels listened to and that they matter.

However, eye contact may not always be a good thing. If eye contact is too intense, the other person will become uncomfortable as they may feel that they are being probed and their privacy is being invaded. This is why people in crowds, such as in the subway, avoid eye contact with each other as to protect their privacy.

In Eastern cultures, direct eye contact may be seen as disrespectful, especially when speaking to a superior or a person older than you. To show respect, the person lower in hierarchy lowers their gaze.

Certain psychiatric disorders can result in poor eye contact. It is common for patients with depression or social anxiety to avert eye contact, minimising the social connection that comes from it. Autistic children are particularly famous for finding it extremely difficult to make eye contact with others as it unsettles them. The poor eye contact gives these people a cold, uncaring, weak image which may be criticised by other people.

Unlike modern humans, many animals perceive eye contact as a threat or a sign of aggression. It is very dangerous to maintain eye contact with an aggressive monkey or dog as it will increase your chance of being attacked.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

The Centipede’s Dilemma

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In 1889, British zoologist E. Ray Lankester published an article on the work of the motion of animals in the prestigious journal, Nature. He concluded his article with a poem (which he admitted in not knowing the author of, but commonly attributed to Katherine Craster). The poem goes as follows:

A centipede was happy – quite!
Until a toad in fun
Said, “Pray, which leg moves after which?”
This raised her doubts to such a pitch,
She fell exhausted in the ditch
Not knowing how to run.

The allegory of the centipede illustrates a strange yet hilarious psychological phenomenon, which has been called the centipede effect to honour the poem. Most of the time, we do not put much thought into day-to-day activities such as breathing and walking. We do not have to give much thought because they have become habits – a handy mechanism nature devised to let us do more while using our brain to think about more important things. Habit automatises tasks to reduce attention, but it comes at the cost of the centipede effect, where conscious thought and attention impairs the ability to do that task, much like the centipede tripping on her own leg.

For example, even a professional golf player or violinist will make mistakes the more they thinking about their individual swings or notes they play. A simple experiment you can do is thinking about your breathing. Just by reading that sentence, you consciously divert your attention to your breathing and you will find it difficult to breathe “normally”. Similarly, you can cause considerable distress and time-wasting if you point out a tiny error in someone’s habits, making them overanalyse what they are doing wrong and hyper-reflecting.

What we can learn from The Centipede’s Dilemma is that overthinking never helps. The more we think about something, the more we look at the trees rather than the forest and we get lost in the details. This means we cannot see the overall big picture, which may turn out to be very simple. So the next time you are stuck on a problem in life, stop and take a breath. Clear your mind and let your gut feeling do its thing. Your mind can build so many roadblocks by overthinking – clouding your judgement and crippling your ability to do things. But just remember, all you have to do is drive through those roadblocks and let your heart do what it wants.

Thinking Ahead

(Image source: http://xkcd.com/439/)

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Choice

Posted on by Jinavie

Every day, we are faced with many choices. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the work we do, the people we love… Whether you are at work, school or home, choice is an unavoidable part of life. In fact, we put a great deal of importance in choice, stating that it is a fundamental right of a free individual to make their own choice.

So what happens when this right is taken away from us? A common reaction to this is anger and revolt. People whose freedom are taken away by a dictator will throw a revolution to choose who they want as a leader. Children throw tantrums to show that they do not want their parents to decide things in their stead. There are cases of death row inmates attempting to take their own lives because “ending my life is the one choice I have the right to”.

We like to think we are free individuals, making our own decisions in life. We mock others for being sheeple – choosing to not choose by following the mainstream decision or preference. But choice is often an illusion.
Consider how many of “your decisions” are truly from your own heart. Are you drinking Coke over Pepsi because you really appreciate the taste difference, or because of effective marketing? Are you listening to that song because you enjoy the melody, or because it is at the top of the charts and everyone is listening to it? Are you eating that menu because you were attracted to what the ingredients are, or because the waiter recommended it as “the special of the day”? You would be surprised how little choice you have sometimes, no matter how free you think you may be.

But choice has an ugly, darker side. Making a choice is often difficult, mentally taxing us as we make an internal pros and cons list to try sort things in order and determine “the best choice”. There are countless research showing that the more choice that is available to you, the harder it becomes for you to choose and the more distressed you become. It could be severe to the point that you get analysis paralysis, where you spend so long making a decision that you miss out or never take an action. Not only that, but making a choice puts the responsibility on you. For example, although medicine is moving towards a patient-oriented system where the patient makes an informed choice, the patient may feel burdened with guilt if their choice results in a poor outcome. This applies to every choice we make from day to day in the form of regret. Regret is the sinister monster that makes us think “What if?”. What if we chose differently? Regret leads to blame and blame leads to sorrow and anger at yourself.

This is the paradox of choice. It feels good to be able to express your uniqueness through choice, but at the same time, the freedom of choice can cause pain and distress just as easily. If your choice goes against the group decision, it can make you stand out and cause you to be shunned. This is why so many of us “choose to not choose” and give up our right of choice. Being social animals, we have a tendency of following groupthink while ironically shouting for the importance of free will. To fight this natural tendency and making a choice reflecting your own thoughts, beliefs and identity is a brave thing to do.

However, that is not to say that surrendering your choice is always a bad thing. A couple who met through arranged marriage may have a happier relationship than those who met through romance. People who’ve grown up in communist countries say that “it was easier when we didn’t have to choose everything”. Most importantly, reflect on your childhood where so many of your parents’ decisions – no matter how oppressive they seemed then – turned out to be the right call.

So in the end, the most important choice you can make is this: do you choose to surrender your choice or do you choose free will? Choose whatever makes you happy, because there is no point choosing something and regretting it because you are unhappy.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Psychopath

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A common character found in psychological thrillers are those who seem to have no regard for the well-being of others, disobey social rules and act violently for seemingly no reason. They show no remorse or empathy and can be very intelligent, charming and high-functioning (although not typically). We describe these people as psychopaths, or sometimes sociopaths. To over-simplify it, a psychopath essentially has no moral conscience and do not believe in the social contract.

The terms psychopath and sociopath are often used interchangeably, but in modern psychiatry, they both fall under the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). ASPD patients tend to have a long history of criminal charges, often relating to violence, chronic lying and fraud, drug use and other law-breaking actions. These characteristics may show from early childhood, with the typical psychopathic child being described as one murdering animals and being violent towards other kids. These children are often diagnosed with another disorder called conduct disorder.

Psychopaths are very popular in movies and TV shows due to their unpredictable nature, wanton violence and maniacal behaviour inflicting terror into the audience’s hearts. After all, who wouldn’t be afraid of a remorseless killer who finds enjoyment from others’ suffering? Unfortunately, many movies distort the image of the psychopath and blend in various other mental health disorders such as psychosis into the character. Sometimes psychopaths are even sensationalised, being described as an antihero.

It is true that many serial killers turn out to be psychopaths, but physical violence is not necessarily a feature of all psychopaths. A subset of “successful” psychopaths differentiate themselves by being less physically violent, appear to follow the social norm and succeed in challenging fields such as business, finances, law or even medicine. However, they will also have a pervasive disregard for others and will only care about having their way. Their lack of empathy allows them to act immorally, stabbing people in the back and lying, cheating and manipulating their way to the top. It is not some sick sexual perversion or power trips that motivate psychopaths, but impulsivity, egocentricity and gratification. To psychopaths, the aim of the game is to win, no matter the cost.

This makes you wonder. How many people around you are secretly a psychopath – one who would take advantage of you without a shred of guilt? How many people around you hide behind the mask of sanity?

(NB: Just putting it out there, Sherlock Holmes is neither a psychopath nor a sociopath. If anything he probably has an autism spectrum disorder like Asperger’s syndrome.)