We know that some people tend to define themselves by their possessions, but did you know the level of uncertainty a person feels can influence whether they behave in materialistic ways?

That’s the conclusion of new research by Kimberly Rios Morrison and Camille S. Johnson. The researchers also found that uncertainty does not trigger materialism uniformly across people; it selectively influences individualists rather than people who tend to see themselves as members of a social group.

In a puzzle, posted as always on The Hidden Brain’s Facebook page, I asked

European and Asian Americans were recently asked whether their jeans reflected who they were. Which group felt defined by their clothes?
A) Asian Americans feeling confident
B) Asian Americans feeling uncertain
C) European Americans feeling confident
D) European Americans feeling uncertain

The correct answer is D. Morrison and Johnson found that European Americans, who tend to see things in individualistic terms, were more likely to identify with their personal possessions when their self-concept was threatened and they were made to feel uncertain.

In a paper published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, they write about a possible implication of the research in the real world:

“Imagine a member of an individualistic culture who is experiencing a midlife crisis or who feels uncertain about her coworkers’ perceptions of her abilities. Assuming that the midlife crisis (or uncertainty about coworkers’ perceptions) instigates feelings of self-uncertainty, this person would likely cling to the objects that best convey her personal characteristics. For example, she might choose not to donate her favorite but worn-out pair of jeans to charity or not to relinquish her old car that no longer functions properly …”

Share your thoughts about this research (or how you feel about your old pair of jeans) here or at www.facebook.com/hiddenbrain

Anger can make people want things more, according to a counterintuitive new study which found that when people associate a product with anger, they desire it more.

Henk Aarts of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and his colleagues showed people a number of objects such as pens and mugs. Before the picture of the object appeared on a screen, Aarts subliminally primed his volunteers with an angry, fearful or neutral face. He found that people later reported wanting the object more when they had been primed with the angry face rather than the fearful face. They also exerted more physical effort in acquiring the object in a subsequent test.

Aarts thinks there is an evolutionary reason for the phenomenon: In a statement issued via Psychological Science, where the paper was published, he said, that in competitive environments such as the struggle over a limited food supply or in battle, “If the food does not make you angry or doesn’t produce aggression in your system, you may starve and lose the battle.”

In a recent puzzle posted on the Hidden Brain’s Facebook page, I asked:

You have to decide whether to buy something. You are most likely to make the purchase when
A) You are angry
B) You are fearful
C) You are angry and fearful
D) You are neither angry nor fearful

The correct answer is A.

Does this theory explain the behavior of all those angry couples we see in movies who patch up fights by having sex?

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Sorry John, Ringo, George and Paul. Apparently, love isn’t all you need. To make a relationship work longterm, self-discipline apparently outscores love.

Love and warm feelings prompt people to make promises of fidelity to one another. The stronger the emotion we feel, the bigger the promises we make. But new research by Johanna Peetz and Lara Kammrath published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that the people who keep promises are neither the ones who have the most positive feelings toward their partners nor the ones who make the biggest promises, but those who have the greatest internal self-discpline.

“People who had the most positive relationship feelings and who were most motivated to be responsive to the partner’s needs made bigger promises than did other people but were not any better at keeping them. Instead, promisers’ self-regulation skills, such as trait conscientiousness, predicted the extent to which promises were kept or broken,” the researchers write.

In the most recent Hidden Brain puzzle, posted first as always on The Hidden Brain’s Facebook page, I asked

Lovers make promises because they feel an emotional connection to one another. The lovers who KEEP their promises are
A) Those who make the biggest promises
B) Those who make the smallest promises
C) Those who are the most emotionally connected to the other person
D) Those with the most internal discipline

The correct answer is D.

A considerable number of people got the answer right on the Facebook page, which either means this puzzle was way too easy or lots of people have been in longterm relationships and are past the romantic illusions of the Fab Four!

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In a study of 2,447 residents in five provinces at the epicenter of a 2008 earthquake in China, researchers found that residents who were hardest hit were more generous with their help than people who were slightly affected or not affected at all. The study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, was co-authored by Li-Lin Rao, Ru Han, Xiao-Peng Ren, Xin-Wen Bai, Rui Zheng, Huan Liu, Zuo-Jun Wang, Jin-Zhen Li, Kan Zhang and Shu Li.

In a puzzle posted on The Hidden Brain’s Facebook fan page, where all puzzles get posted first, I asked:

After a natural disaster, the people most likely to behave in prosocial (cooperative) ways are
A) Those worst affected
B) Those least affected
C) Those in the middle

The correct answer is A.

The researchers wrote, “residents in more devastated areas demonstrated more prosocial behavior, but the degree of prosocial behavior declined with the passage of time. These findings suggest that prosocial behavior can be induced in individuals by being at a disadvantage. Indirect evidence for our claim includes the fact that commitment works best under harsh conditions: the more individuals are challenged by nature to survive, the more compelled they are to cooperate with each other in durable relationships.”

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Lots of people come home from work feeling upset. But it turns out there are systematic gender differences in the way heterosexual men and women bring work-related unpleasant feelings home.

Men, on average, tend to shield their families from unpleasant things that happened at work, and the more satisifed men are in their relationships, the more they seem to shield their families from work-related stressors. Whether or not these men are actually pursuing an effective strategy is questionable, however, because the data suggests that men often tend to withdraw from their emotions as a way to not bring unpleasant conversations and interactions from work to the dinner table.

Women, by contrast, tend to be more open about what happened at work, and the happier they are in their personal relationships, the more likely they are to bring work related stressors home. In a new study, researchers Zhaoli Song, Maw-Der Foo, Marilyn A. Uy, and Shuhua Sun explored the effects of the ongoing recession – and the challenge of finding work for those who are unemployed – on domestic dynamics.

One possible explanation for this is previous research that shows that men are slower than women (on average) to calm down after a stressful event, which may be why men tend to compartmentalize their lives — it’s a way to avoid dealing with painful feelings that would take a long time to process. Women on the other hand seem to be better able to deal with their feelings in an open manner, and to calm down more quickly after experiencing stressful emotions.

I recently posted a puzzle on my Facebook page – all puzzles are posted here first, so click on the “Like” button at www.facebook.com/hiddenbrain to hear about new puzzles: At the end of a long, hard and stressful day, couples often bring their problems home from work. Among heterosexuals, the group most likely to vent anger that is brought home from work are
A) Men in satisfied relationships
B) Men in dissatisfied relationships
C) Women in satisfied relationships
D) Women in dissatisfied relationships

The correct answer is C.

In a paper in The Journal of Applied Psychology, the researchers said, “gender differences were amplified for participants with greater marital satisfaction. Women in more satisfying marriages were more likely than dissatisfied women to increase their angry behavior toward their husbands after busier workdays. By contrast, men in more satisfying marriages were less likely than their maritally dissatisfied counterparts to be angrier and more critical toward their wives after negatively arousing workdays. These gender differences in angry responses may reflect different goals in intimate relationships and different responses to negative emotional arousal. Past research suggests that men tend to disengage when negatively aroused whereas women prefer to engage with others and talk about their distress more directly. In laboratory based research on marital interaction, husbands displayed larger autonomic nervous system responses to conflictual discussions with their wives and recovered more slowly from this physiological arousal than wives did. This gender based physiological difference might lead men to rely more on strategies such as withdrawal and avoidance of angry interactions to facilitate their recovery from negative affective arousal after a difficult workday. Women may not be compelled to “compartmentalize” their affective workday experience in this way and, in fact, may be more likely to want to engage with and talk about their stressful day with their partners. The existence of these gender patterns is supported by previous research showing that men were more likely than women to attempt to prevent their job distress from entering the marital relationship.”

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Have you ever noticed when you are sad or angry that doing something mentally difficult — solving a puzzle or remembering a poem — tends to make you temporarily “forget” to be sad or angry? The moment you finish the difficult and engrossing task, the negative emotion often comes right back.

New research suggests that this phenomenon occurs because emotions are mentally taxing; they take up brain resources. When you focus your brain on something challenging, mental resources that were being previously devoted to producing and experiencing the negative emotion are now being pulled away to solve the puzzle or remember the poem. This is why you experience less of the emotion.

Here is a puzzle I posted recently on The Hidden Brain’s Facebook page, which is where all puzzles get their first airing. (Navigate over and click on the LIKE button if you want to be alerted about future puzzles — you’ll have to login to Facebook first.)

People experience less sadness, fear and other negative emotions when they …
A) Try to remember the lines of a poem memorized many years before
B) Count backward from 1 to 100 in steps of 7
C) Focus intensely on the negative emotion
D) Multiply the numbers 14 and 23 in their heads

The correct answer(s): A, B, C and D

The hidden brain mechanism involved here is that different experiences/tasks often compete for the same brain resources, and one way to diminish the effects of a negative emotion is to use up some of the resources needed to produce/experience that emotion in some difficult mental task.

I based this puzzle on new research by Assaf Kron, Yaacov Schul, Asher Cohen and Ran R. Hassin who found that “the intensity of both negative and positive feelings diminished under a cognitive load.”

One of the interesting dimensions of the research is that it showed that concentrating on the negative emotion itself — as opposed to experiencing the emotion — also decreased its effects. Concentrating (ie. thinking about) an emotion takes up mental resources. I’ve personally found that when I hurt myself — stub a toe for example — focusing intensely on the pain (thinking about whether the sensation feels like burning, tingling or pressure etc) — reduces my experience of the pain. Probably the same phenomenon at work.

Take note that the same thing holds true for positive emotions as well. What this means is that if you are experiencing a particularly lovely emotion, don’t imagine you can experience the emotion with the same intensity while typing on your blackberry at the same time!

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People who use Botox for cosmetic reasons report that they are able to use their faces in less mobile ways. That’s not surprising, given that botox impairs the muscles that produce wrinkles in the forehead and other areas. One byproduct of smoother skin is that users are not able to register emotional expressions in the way they could before. New research shows that reducing expressiveness tends to reduce the intensity of the underlying emotions, too.

I posted this puzzle recently on The Hidden Brain’s Facebook Page — all my puzzles get posted here first, so if you haven’t done so already, please subscribe to the page by logging into Facebook, navigating over to the page and clicking on the LIKE button. It’s free and fun.

Hidden Brain Puzzle #21: Botox injections tend to make the faces of cosmetics-users somewhat immobile. Limiting the full range of facial expressions tends to
A) Make users experience emotions less strongly
B) Makes no difference to the emotions users experience
C) Makes users experience emotions somewhat more strongly
D) Makes users experience emotions much more strongly

The correct answer is A.

I based this puzzle on research by Joshua Davis and Ann Senghas, who found that disabling (or limiting) the expression of an emotion reduces the emotion itself. This matches with work done in the other direction — and a staple piece of counseling advice. When you fake an emotion such as happiness by smiling a lot, the production of the expression of an emotion tends to produce the emotion, too.

In a press statement from Barnard, where Davis and Senghas work, Davis said: “In a bigger picture sense, the work fits with common beliefs, such as ‘fake it till you make it’ … with the advent of Botox, it is now possible to work with people who have a temporary, reversible paralysis in muscles that are involved in facial expressions. The muscle paralysis allows us to isolate the effects of facial expression and the subsequent sensory feedback to the brain that would follow from other factors, such as intentions relating to one’s expressions, and motor commands to make an expression. With Botox, a person can respond otherwise normally to an emotional event, (such as) a sad movie scene, but will have less movement in the facial muscles that have been injected, and therefore less feedback to the brain about such facial expressivity. It thus allows for a test of whether facial expressions and the sensory feedback from them to the brain can influence our emotions.”

One of the more interesting philosophical dimensions of this research is the questions it raises about some of our cherished assumptions about the nature of individual identity. Most of us think we would be the same person minus a hand or a leg; certainly that a new kidney or a heart makes us no different as individuals. This thesis implicitly argues that our identity is located our brains. The new research, along with a bunch of other experiments and insights, suggests that our belief is not true. Happiness and sadness do not reside only in the brain; they also reside in the body.

John Milton once said that, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” One mustn’t quibble with poets, who are in the business of artistic truth and not literal truth, but there is growing evidence that the home for emotions as well as other cognitive functions is in the body as well (as much?) as in the brain.

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When people have too many romantic choices, either on the internet or during “speed dating,” they tend to choose partners based on superficial physical characteristics. You might think that having a large number of potential mates to choose from could help you make better choices. But new research suggests the opposite happens — as the number of our choices increase, our ability to make sophisticated choices decreases.

There’s nothing wrong with valuing good looks and attractiveness, of course. But most people are also looking for something more in their mates — shared values and interests, perhaps, or similar perspectives on life and religious beliefs. Many of these criteria go out the window when people are asked to choose among a large number of potential mates, during mate searches on the internet or during speed dating.

Here’s a puzzle that explores this phenomenon:  You are a single person looking for a mate with a good education and positive values. You would also like to be with someone physically attractive. You sign up for a speed-dating service, where you have brief conversations with potential partners. You (and potential partners with similar criteria) are LESS likely to focus on physical attributes, and pay more attention to intelligence and values if
A) There are 12 potential dates at the event
B) There are 24 potential dates at the event
C) There are 36 potential dates at the event
D) There are more than 36 potential dates at the event

The correct answer is A — you are less likely to focus only on physical characteristics when there are 12 potential dates at the event.

I based this puzzle on research conducted by Alison Lenton at the University of Edinburgh and Marco Francesconi at the University of Essex, who studied 84 speed dating events. Both men and women preferred dates who were taller, younger and well-educated; women preferred men who were not skinny, and men preferred women who were not overweight.

At events that featured 24 or more potential dates, however, Lenton and Francesconi found that both men and women fell back on simple heuristics, such as the physical size and weight of the people they were meeting. When potential dates numbered fewer than 24, both men and women paid more attention to other details that the men and women themselves reported were important to them. This has important implications if you are signed up with a speed dating service — you will make better choices, and your potential partners will make better choices, if the events are small rather than large.

What’s interesting about this research is that similar findings have been reported in many other domains. Human beings typically think that having more choices will help them make better decisions. That would be true if we only had conscious minds, but having more choices also brings the hidden brain into play in an unexpected way, and ends up producing less sophisticated thinking.

In a press release, Lenton said, “we look for different attributes in partners than what we look for in a chocolate, a jam or a 401(k) plan. But one of the points we’re trying to make in this article is it’s the same brain we’re carrying around. There are constraints on what our brains can do – they’re quite powerful, but they can’t pay attention to everything at once.”

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Americans turn out to have the highest self-esteem at age 60, according to new research.

There are important variables and nuances, but the basic message might be surprising to many who believe that very young people have better self-esteem than older people.

Ulrich Orth and Richard Robins surveyed 3,617 adults in the United States between 1986 and 2002, and asked them how they felt about themselves — whether they felt competent and able to carry out their goals successfully, or incompetent and helpless. Women tended to have lower self esteem than men — which to me overwhelmingly suggests the hand of sexism, both conscious and unconscious, both internalized and external — but the sexes converge in their self esteem later in life. Blacks and whites have similar self-esteem during most of life, but black self-esteem seems to drop more abruptly than among whites late in life.

While positive relationships are linked to better self-esteem, even those with positive relationships tended to experience declines in self-esteem after age 60. It’s possible the peak in self-esteem comes about at the point in many people’s lives where they have achieved some professional success, have formed good track records in personal relationships and have some leisure time. The research was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

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In the Dictator Game, a volunteer is given a certain goodie — raffle tickets, lottery tickets, money etc — and asked to divide it among a group of people that includes himself or herself. No one in the rest of the group has recourse to discussion or appeal, so the volunteer effectively plays “dictator.”

In this Hidden Brain Puzzle, you were given 100 lottery tickets and asked to share them with three other people. You could decide to keep all 100 — and improve your odds of winning the raffle — or divide the tickets equitably. No one would know what you did, so this was entirely between you and your conscience. You were then asked whether being happy or sad made it more likely for you to make a selfish decision.

I based this puzzle on an interesting experiment recently conducted by Hui Bing Tan and Joseph P. Forgas involving the Dictator Game. They measured whether volunteers reported feeling happy or sad and asked them to play the dictator game with 10 raffle tickets. They found that happy people tended to be far more selfish than sad people. Happy people were much more likely to hog the raffle tickets, rather than share them with others, whereas sad people were far more likely to think about the feelings of others. The result meshes with a growing body of work that suggests that while happiness feels great for us individually, it seems to have less than salutory effects on the hidden brain when it comes to thinking about the perspectives and feelings of others.

In an article published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the researchers write, “ The kind of mood effects on selfishness demonstrated here may have important implications for real-life behaviors in romantic relationships, organizational decisions, and many other everyday situations where decisions by one person have incontestable consequences for others. Interestingly, our results further challenge the common assumption in much of applied, organisational, clinical and health psychology that positive affect has universally desirable social consequences. Together with other recent experimental studies, our findings confirm that negative affect often produces adaptive and more socially sensitive outcomes.”

How does this research square with your own experience? Are you a more generous person when you are a sadder person?

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