Research Digest Free every fortnight Issue 158 Contents: 1. CBT-based self-help books can do more harm than good
2. Shiny, swanky car boosts men’s appeal to women, but not women’s appeal to men
3. Why we tip and how to get a bigger tip
4. What kind of Internet user are you?
5. Time flew by … I must have been enjoying myself
6. I’m not lying: Brain stimulation boosts people’s deception skills
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Subscribe free at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog Research Digest Free every fortnight CBT-­based self-­help books can do more harm than good
Self-help books based on the traditional principles of CBT, including popular titles like 'CBT for Dummies', can do
more harm than good, according to a new study. The risks were highest for readers described as 'high ruminators' those who spend time mulling over the likely causes and consequence of their negative moods.
The new research focuses on the use of self-help books as a preventative intervention for people at risk of
developing depression. Gerald Haeffel identified 72 undergrads at risk and allocated each of them randomly to
work through one of three self-help books. A third of the students spent four weeks working through a traditional
self-help CBT-based book, of the kind typically found in book stores, which involved learning the links between
thoughts, behaviour and mood, as well as identifying negative thoughts and re-evaluating them. Another group of
students followed a 'non-traditional' CBT-based self-help book, similar to the first but modified so that the task of
identifying and challenging one's own negative thoughts was removed. The final group followed a book that taught
academic skills such as time-management and memory aids.
Here’s the bottom line - among students who tended to ruminate and who had suffered an increase in stress, those
who followed the traditional CBT book displayed more depressive symptoms after the four-week study period than
those who followed either of the other two books. At four-month follow-up, the traditional CBT study group as a
whole tended to have more depression symptoms than the other groups, although high ruminating and stressed
students in the traditional group remained the biggest losers.
Haeffel sounded some notes of caution - the findings may not generalise to non-student participants, the samples
were fairly small, and the outcomes were based on depression symptoms, not clinically diagnosed depression. That
said, the stressed, high ruminators in the traditional CBT group ended up scoring on the 'moderate' range of the
depression scale at four-month follow up.
'The current results suggest that cognitive work-books as traditionally operationalised (and sold in stores) may not
work for individuals who ruminate,' Haeffel said. 'For these individuals, a modified form of cognitive skills training
that does not rely on identifying and disputing negative cognitions may be more effective.'
This latest warning about self-help comes after a study published in 2009 that showed use of positive mantras such
as 'I'm a lovable person' can actually be harmful to people with low self-esteem.
_________________________________
Haeffel, G. (2010). When self-help is no help: Traditional cognitive skills training does not prevent depressive
symptoms in people who ruminate. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 48 (2), 152-157 DOI:
10.1016/j.brat.2009.09.016
Subscribe free at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog Research Digest Free every fortnight Shiny, swanky car boosts men's appeal to women, but not women's appeal to men It's a widely held, if much derided, belief that ownership of a prestige sports car can increase a man's sex appeal to
women. Indeed, there's a scene in the American sit-com Friends in which Joey dons a ridiculous Porsche-branded
costume of peak cap, gloves, jacket and trousers, so determined is he to convince female passers-by that he owns a
fast, shiny car. Now Michael Dunn and Robert Searle have tested the shiny car effect scientifically, looking at the
influence of apparent car ownership on both male and female perceived attractiveness.
Hundreds of passers-by in Cardiff city centre were asked to rate the attractiveness of a young man or woman
portrayed in a photograph sitting in a car. Male participants all rated the same woman, and female participants all
rated the same man. Crucially, half the participants saw the man or woman sat at the wheel of a Ford Fiesta whilst
the other half saw the man or woman sat at the wheel of a Bentley Continental (worth a cool £75000,
approximately, at the time of testing).
Pilot research had established that, against a blank background, the photographed man and woman were perceived
as equally attractive by the opposite sex (both scoring approximately mid-way on an attractiveness scale) and also
that male and female participants didn't differ from each other in the aesthetic ratings they gave to the two models
of car. The stand out message from the research proper, however, is that the man was rated as significantly more
attractive when he was seen sat in the Bentley rather than the Fiesta, whereas the woman's perceived attractiveness
was unaffected by the car she happened to be sitting in.
This finding appears to support prior research showing that in cultures all round the world, heterosexual women are
attracted to men with greater status and resources, whereas heterosexual men tend to be attracted to women who
appear youthful and fertile.
'It would appear that even though recent years have witnessed dramatic increases in female ownership of prestige
luxury cars, such ownership does not enhance female attractiveness, as is the case with male attractiveness,' the
researchers said.
'Also,' they added, 'the results contradict the "structural powerlessness" hypothesis, i.e. the belief that as economic
differences diminish men and women will become more alike, as the rise in female economic fortune has not, it
would appear, emancipated them from attraction to cues that are indices of wealth and status in males.'
_________________________________
Dunn, M., & Searle, R. (2010). Effect of manipulated prestige-car ownership on both sex attractiveness ratings
British Journal of Psychology, 101 (1), 69-80 DOI: 10.1348/000712609X417319
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Why we tip and how to get a bigger tip 'I don't tip because society says I have to. All right, if someone deserves a tip, if they really put forth an effort, I'll give them a
little something extra. But this tipping automatically, it's for the birds. As far as I'm concerned, they're just doing their job.' Mr
Pink, Reservoir Dogs.
Stats from the USA suggest that $40 billion is spent on tips every year. Yet from the traditional economic perspective, which
sees us as rational agents operating in our own interest, tipping waiters, barbers, taxi drivers and other service workers is crazy.
You don't have to so why do you? That's if you do. Not everyone does. In an effort to explore our motivations for tipping,
Stephen Saunders and Michael Lynn sent out 29 fieldworkers to survey 530 South African citizens after they'd had an
encounter with a car guard. These unpaid workers are a common sight in South Africa at shopping centres, hospitals and
schools. They help with parking, protect the car from vandalism and assist drivers with loading shopping and luggage.
One explanation for why we tip is that we're trying to encourage good service in the future. However, Saunders and Lynn
found no evidence that people who used a car guard more were more likely to tip, as you'd expect if this were their true motive.
By contrast, perceived service quality was associated with both the likelihood of giving a tip and the amount tipped, thus
suggesting that participants were using tipping as a form of reward. Similarly, those who said they thought it was important to
help others in need tended to tip more (although they weren't any more likely to tip), suggesting altruism was another motive.
Finally, social norms were a key factor - participants who said their friends and relatives thought it was important to tip were
more likely to tip themselves, especially if there were more people with them at the time of questioning. Size of tip was not
associated with this factor, perhaps because it's only the act of tipping that's visible to others, rather than the amount tipped.
'Hopefully this paper will encourage more economists to look beyond the apparent irrationality of tipping and to study it from
both a behavioural economics and psychological perspective,' the researchers said.
In a separate study, based in Utah, John Seiter and Harry Weger tested the effects of ingratiation on food servers' tips. They
had two waiters and two waitresses go about their usual duties but with a twist: for half the parties they served they were
instructed to compliment the customers, telling them that they'd made an excellent choice in what they'd ordered. Counting the
tips received from 348 dinner parties showed that complimenting customers on making a shrewd order led to tips that were
three per cent greater on average than when no compliment was made - a statistically significant boost.
'A roughly 3 per cent increase may seem a small amount,' the researchers said, '[but] an additional $1 to $5 per shift could
translate into hundreds of dollars per year for each food server.'
More in-depth analysis showed that complimenting customers on their order only led to bigger tips for parties of two to three
people. It made to no difference with a party of four and actually led to smaller tips for groups larger than this (the research
involved parties of up to seven). It also turned out that one of the waiting staff had received smaller tips after complimenting
customers (even though the group average was for larger tips in this condition). Seiter and Weger surmised this could be
because she didn't come across as sincere.
This study builds on earlier research showing that use of mimicry, light touches on customers' shoulders, happy faces on the
bill and squatting to customers' eye level can all help provoke larger tips.
_________________________________
Saunders, S., & Lynn, M. (2010). Why tip? An empirical test of motivations for tipping car guards. Journal of Economic
Psychology, 31(1), 106-113 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2009.11.007
Seiter, J., & Weger, Jr., H. (2010). The Effect of Generalized Compliments, Sex of Server, and Size of Dining Party on
Tipping Behavior in Restaurants. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 40 (1), 1-12 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.15591816.2009.00560.x
Subscribe free at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog Research Digest Free every fortnight What kind of Internet user are you? Before Kraft's Executive Board had even heard of Cadbury's, there used to be an advert on British television that
showed people eating Cadbury's cream-eggs in a number of odd and inventive ways. The tag-line was 'How do you
eat yours?' Now a pair of researchers based in Turkey, Leman Tosun and Timo Lajunen, have taken a similar tack
with Internet use, asking hundreds of undergrad students how they use their time on the global interweb.
More specifically, the researchers were interested in whether the students used the Internet for the benefit of their
existing face-face relationships - for example for arranging meet-ups and sharing photos - and how much they used
it for establishing new friendships or conducting Internet-only relationships. The researchers also wanted to know
whether the students found it easier to express their true selves online than in the flesh. The point of all this was to
see whether people with certain personality types tend to use the Internet in particular ways.
Using Eysenck's classic personality test, Tosun and Lajunen found that students who scored high on extraversion
(agreeing with statements like 'I am very talkative') tended to use the Internet to extend their real-life relationships,
whereas students who scored high on psychoticism (answering 'yes' to statements like 'does your mood often go up
and down?' and 'do you like movie scenes involving violence and torture?') tended to use the Internet as a substitute
for face-to-face relationships. Students who scored high on psychoticism were also likely to say that they found it
easier to reveal their true selves online than face-to-face. The personality subscale of neuroticism (indicated by 'yes'
answers to items like 'Do things often seem hopeless to you?) was not associated with styles of Internet use.
'Our data suggest that global personality traits may explain social Internet use to some extent,' the researchers
concluded. 'In future studies, a more detailed index of social motives can be used to better understand the relation
between personality and Internet use.'
_________________________________
Tosun, L., & Lajunen, T. (2010). Does Internet use reflect your personality? Relationship between Eysenck’s
personality dimensions and Internet use. Computers in Human Behavior, 26 (2), 162-167
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2009.10.010
Subscribe free at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog Research Digest Free every fortnight Time flew by ... I must have been enjoying myself Have you ever been in the cinema and felt the time drag? It's happened to me. A glance at my watch and then the thought that I
can't be enjoying the film all that much or else the time would surely have flown. My experience matches the findings from a
series of studies by Aaron Sackett and colleagues. The folk psychology belief 'time flies when you're having fun' is so powerful
and ubiquitous, the researchers say, that whenever we feel an event has passed more quickly than we expected, we infer that
we must have been enjoying ourselves, and vice versa for events that drag.
The researchers first had dozens of undergrads look through passages of text and underline any words with adjacent repeats of
a particular letter. Crucially, the researchers told the participants that the task would last ten minutes, but in reality it lasted
either five minutes or twenty minutes, thus creating the illusion of time flying or dragging, respectively. A sneaky switch of
stop-watches helped create the illusion. Afterwards, the participants who'd experienced the sense of the time flying rated the
task as far more enjoyable than did the participants who'd experienced the sense of time dragging.
Further experiments showed that provoking the feeling of time flying led participants to be more tolerant of an irritating noise,
and led them to enjoy their favourite song more than usual. This last finding was important because there was a possibility that
it would feel unpleasant for a pleasurable activity to end earlier than expected.
If people really do use the 'time flies when you're having fun' adage to evaluate their own enjoyment, then challenging or
encouraging the truth of the adage ought to affect the kind of findings described above. That's exactly what Sackett's team
found. When participants read a scientific article challenging the 'time flies' adage, speeding up their subjective sense of time
no longer increased their enjoyment of a word-based task.
It was a similar story when participants were given an alternative explanation for why time might have raced by. Participants
were given ear plugs, which they were told could speed people's time perception. Again, the illusion of time flying didn't lead
these participants to enjoy a task more, presumably because they attributed the sense of time flying to the ear plugs rather than
to their enjoyment.
'Taken together, these findings have important implications for understanding and changing hedonic experience,' the
researchers said. The Digest got in touch with lead author Aaron Sackett, Marketing Professor at the University of St. Thomas,
to ask him how this might apply in the real world. He said the first thing to do is minimise people's access to accurate time
cues. Next, alter their subjective time perception. There are numerous ways to do this. For example, physiological arousal
speeds time perception so a free coffee at the start of a long queue could work (as long as no clocks were in sight). Even music
that's incongruent with the context (e.g. Chinese music in an English restaurant) has been found to speed time. Finally, you
need the surprise moment, when people are alerted to the true passage of time. That provokes in people the sensation of time
having flown, followed by the gratifying inference that they must therefore have been enjoying themselves.
_________________________________
AM Sackett, LD Nelson, T Meyvis, BA Converse, & AL Sackett (2010). You're having fun when time flies: The hedonic
consequences of subjective time progression. Psychological Science :
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2009/11/25/0956797609354832
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I'm not lying: Brain stimulation boosts people's deception skills
There's been so much excitement and hyperbole surrounding the promise of brain imaging as a lie detection
technique, but what about the needs of the cads, thieves and vagabonds of this world? Has contemporary cognitive
neuroscience nothing to offer them? It has now. In an exciting development for fibbers everywhere, Ahmed Karim
and his team have shown that the application of transcranial direct current stimulation over the anterior prefrontal
cortex - the front bit of the brain - improves people's lying skills.
Twenty-two participants role-played stealing money from an office before being interrogated by a researcher acting
the role of police detective. The participants were given extra incentive to deceive the 'detective' with the promise
that they could keep the money if they succeeded. Crucially, the participants answered some questions with a mild
electric current applied over their prefrontal cortex via scalp electrodes. The effect of this 'cathodal' stimulation,
which lasted about 13 minutes, was to inhibit brain activity in the affected area, thus creating a kind of temporary,
'virtual' lesion. By contrast, they answered other questions in a 'sham' condition, involving all the same kit but with
the current switched off after just thirty seconds. The interrogator and participants couldn't tell whether they were
in the stimulation or sham condition.
Past brain imaging research has shown that some forms of lying are associated with increased activity in the
anterior prefrontal cortex, and one prediction was that inhibiting this region would impair people's lying skills. In
fact, compared with the sham condition, the stimulation improved participants' lying ability: they lied more
skillfully in terms of only lying when they needed to; lied more quickly; and remained calmer whilst lying, as
reflected by their sweating less.
A second study used 'anodal' stimulation, which unlike 'cathodal' stimulation, excites rather than inhibits
underlying brain cells. This had no effect on the participants' lying ability. A third study showed that 'cathodal'
stimulation had no effect on the famous Stroop task, which requires participants to name the ink colour that a
colour word (e.g. blue) is written in. In other words, the effect of the stimulation appears to be specific to
deception, not to cognitively demanding tasks in general.
So why does knocking out prefrontal cortex activity improve people's deception skills? The researchers can't be
sure, but stated crudely, one possibility is that the stimulation puts the conscience to sleep, freeing the mind to lie
without the usual inconvenience of moral conflict. This would appear to tally with research suggesting that
psychopaths have reduced grey matter in the anterior prefrontal cortex and also with a recent study showing that
people with brain damage to this region make more utilitarian moral decisions.
'If neuroscience research can demonstrate that deceptive behaviour and moral cognition are not only associated
with the activation of specific brain areas, but may even be modulated by noninvasive stimulation of these areas,
what implications will such findings have on our concept of personal responsibility?' the researchers asked.
_________________________________
Karim, A., Schneider, M., Lotze, M., Veit, R., Sauseng, P., Braun, C., & Birbaumer, N. (2009). The Truth about
Lying: Inhibition of the Anterior Prefrontal Cortex Improves Deceptive Behavior. Cerebral Cortex, 20 (1), 205-213
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhp090
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