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I think that perhaps Google Plus is a better format for this kind of thing. It allows easy and quick sharing of links, thoughts, etc. amongst friends. If anyone wants/needs an invite to try it out, let me know.

Chi-Square With Studs Terkel

A Chi-Square Test of Independence With Studs Terkel’s American Dreams: Lost and Found

In American Dreams: Lost and Found, historian Studs Terkel interviewed 98 different individuals and asked them to talk about their conception of the American Dream. The interviewees ranged from wealthy to poor, urban to rural, famous to unheard of, and are meant to offer a diverse survey of people as well as a unique perspective into how Americans understand their country and their dreams. The interviews also varied as to the focus of their content. Some people spoke more of their family’s accomplishments while others spoke more directly of their own. Some spoke of broader issues, such as unions or social justice, and used “we” language while others typically relied on a first-person narrative. Further, many people exhibited certain self-concepts, in which they revealed whether they felt positive or negative about themselves. In an attempt to determine whether the focus of an interview (either self- or family/we-focused) was related to someone’s self-concept (positive, negative, or neutral/ambivalent), I conducted a textual analysis of each interview and placed each one in a cell. To determine whether the two nominal labels were independent, I then conducted a Chi-Square Test of Independence:

χ^2=∑(O_i- E_i)^2/E_i

Where O_i is each total number of observations for a specific cell and E_i is the expected total for each cell. E_i is calculated, in this case, by taking the sum of a column, multiplying it by the sum of a row, and dividing the product by the total sample size, or:

E_i=(R_i C_j)/N

After calculating the obtained χ^2, I compared it to a χ^2 critical value. The degrees of freedom are calculated by multiplying the number of rows minus one by the number of columns minus one:

df=(r-1)(c-1)

The χ^2 obtained in this case was 3.10 and the χ^2 critical value was 5.99, leading to a failure to reject the null hypothesis that interview focus and self-concept are independent. This leads to the conclusion that there is not enough evidence to determine whether or not the two variables are related or not. It could be the case that these variables are indeed independent, but further analysis should be conducted first before drawing that conclusion.

Gender Differences in Smiling Frequency

The frequency of smiles is greater in women than in men. Women are also expected to smile more often than men. Studies have found that low rates of smiling lead to more negative evaluations of women than of men. Men's smiles are also taken to be more indicative of their personality traits than women's, perhaps because of their relative rarity in men. Men's positive expressions are also perceived as more intense than women's, even when objective intensity is held constant.

Briton & Hall, 1995

Deutsch, LeBaron, & Fryer, 1987

Hall, Carney, & Murphy, 2002

Hess, Adams, & Kleck, 2004, 2005

Hess, Blairy, & Kleck, 2000a

LeFrance, Hecht, & Levy Paluck, 2003

Krumhuber, Manstead, Kappas, 2007

Idealism!

A short little clip of Viktor Frankl from 1972:

http://www.ted.com/talks/viktor_frankl_youth_in_search_of_meaning.html

Lateral and Vertical Movement in Psychological Reserach

Research and science are both predicated on vertical movement. By this, I mean that they are social enterprises that advance as new studies are constructed on top of older studies, using similar methods and past findings to guide new research so as to understand natural phenomena more thoroughly. As Newton famously remarked, "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." Is this the way psychological research works, though? In some cases, certainly. There are methods that are commonly used in different labs (e.g., visual perception research, fMRI research, etc.) so that ideas may stack on top of one another and higher understanding can be reached. In many instances, however, this is obviously not the case. Dr. Kevin King, a researcher at the University of Washington, is doing some fascinating work with the construct of "impulsiveness" and how it relates to alcohol use (just ask Rachel Kramer!) He is examining how different psychologists operationalize the impulsiveness and whether those working definitions across studies really examine the same thing or not. In many cases, the answer is a resounding no.

This is pretty damning if the field hopes to progress. If psychology does not move vertically by using the same methods to study constructs, then it moves laterally. The notion that scientific inquiry of a psychological nature is situated within and upon past research is a bit of a falsity, since past studies were not necessarily examining the same construct. That is, findings sit next to each other, but their stacking upon one another is merely an illusion. Other sciences use precise and similar ways of carrying out research. This constitutes a move in the vertical direction, which allows us to better understand the true state of nature. Psychology will remain hindered to the extent that it does not follow this trend.

"Are you not entertained?!?"

But seriously, are you? Because if not, or even if you are but wouldn't mind a little more...

The musical "Next to Normal" is at the 5th Avenue Theatre and comes highly recommended (both by a psychologist and a non-psychologist). It is a rock musical about a family dealing with a bipolar mother--intriguing, right? The musical was on Broadway for three years, and won a few Tony's during its run there (for best leading actress, best orchestration, and best score, if I'm not mistaken). It also won a Pulitzer. Apparently the play is fantastically intense, emotional, and...musical. I figure it may interest the fellow psych-enthusiasts out there. Here is the link:

http://www.5thavenue.org/show/nexttonormal1011/

And, for the under-25 crowd, tickets are discounted (I'm not sure by how much) if you buy them day-of-show. Ahhh, to be young!

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For a free-er and faster form of musical entertainment, here's a really awesome and semi-psychology-related song. It uses samples from something like 37 films and spoken word records.

"Frontier Psychiatrist" by The Avalanches:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8BWBn26bX0

Statistics, I love you, but you are bringing me down

After giving this issue some thought, I have come to the conclusion that statistics are currently serving the unfortunate purpose of preventing psychology from developing into a mature science. I will not go so far as to claim that psychological research is unscientific, just under developed when compared to its older siblings biology, chemistry, and physics.

I believe that science has two primary epistemological modes: observation and theory. Observation involves simply watching. There is a precise and accurate way to watch, and this is what science tries to do. Due to cognitive biases, however, people tend to see patterns in what they watch that may not represent actual differences in nature. Thus, we have developed what some people call "social control" (see: Dr. Laura Little) so that our tendencies to see what is not there may be kept in check. This social control exists in the form of the null hypothesis significance test. This way, differences are held to a commonly agreed upon standard and if the differences appear likely to be "real" (i.e., not due to chance) then we may state they we have observed a phenomenon in nature.

Theory involves trying to understand and predict the phenomenon that we have observed. It goes beyond simply seeing if something is really there, and it attempts to look at the underlying causal mechanisms that explain or precipitate the phenomenon we are interested in. If statistics is the language of knowing whether something is actually there or not, then mathematics is the language of theory. This means that, after conducting null hypothesis significance tests, we should create parsimonious math models that explain and predict phenomena. This is not completely unheard of in psychology: it is often done in the fields of perceptual psychology, and math modeling has been used to accurately predict divorce in a social-psychological context (see: Dr. John Gottman). Yet, this type of analysis is sorely lacking in psychology as a whole.

Why is this? I believe it is because as psychologists, we have become too attached to statistics. We have worked hard (and brilliantly) to use the most advances methods to detect differences in populations, but we are highly unaware of the fact that other sciences use math modeling to create powerful theories on top of and in conjunction with statistics. Although statistics are crucial to observation, scientists should be bilingual: they must speak a language that accurately distinguishes between spurious and real phenomena (i.e., statistics) and they must speak one that is descriptive and prescriptive of both current and future events (i.e., mathematics). Psychologists need to learn to speak this second language in order to advance their science from nascence into maturity.

Psych Stories: The Coolidge Effect

As the story goes...

...President Calvin Coolidge and his wife were being toured around a government farm when Mrs. Coolidge inquired about the ratio of roosters to hens in the hen house. "Surely, one rooster could not mate with all these hens," she asked. "Indeed, it mates dozens of times each day, day after day." A smirk on her face, Mrs. Coolidge suggested that her guide impart this knowledge to Mr. Coolidge. Upon receiving this message, President Coolidge examined the hen house for a moment before responding, "This rooster, does it mate with the same hen each time?" When the guide responded, "No, sir. A different hen each time," the President asked his guide to tell that to his wife.

Based on this story, the name "Coolidge Effect" has been applied to the phenomenon, observable in nearly all mammalian species, of both sex's boost in sexual performance when introduced to new partners. This frenzy of copulation is thought to be explained by a rush of the neurochemical dopamine, which controls motivation and reward in the limbic system.

Life coach, anyone?

A family friend who has a private practice sent me this as encouragement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZaLipDgFZQ

Assessment Adventures and Anxieties

As a couple of you may already know, I am working in Marsha Linehan’s lab doing clinical assessments for one of her grad students. Marsha Linehan, for those of you who are unfamiliar, combined traditional cognitive behavior therapy with skills training in emotion regulation and mindfulness techniques to create a highly effective therapy for people with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) called Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). The study I am assessing for is trying to determine the effectiveness of DBT in treating Axis I disorders (specifically anxiety and depression) in people without BPD. A couple weeks ago, I had the distinct pleasure of doing an assessment on a man (whom we shall call Ted) who has complete Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum (ACC). This means, ladies and gents, that he was born completely without a corpus callosum. Woah. Curious as to how this would affect his behavior, I did a little research before seeing him. With regards to emotion, it seems that people with ACC have difficulties in processing faces, and as a result, frequently get misdiagnosed with Asperger’s or Autism. Also common are cognitive and motor disabilities.

Based on what I had read about ACC, I was expecting to meet someone who was visibly and/or obviously disabled in some way. I was surprised to find that I was shaking hands with a seemingly normal, albeit slightly awkward man. I was even more surprised to find, as the interview commenced, that Ted turned out to be one of most self-aware clients I’ve observed thus far. He knew exactly what his faults and inconsistencies were and had no trouble answering questions about his emotions and behaviors very precisely (typical borderline patients have poor insight into which emotions they're feeling and even poorer control over them). He discussed his “temper tantrums” at length, which had even gotten him arrested on domestic violence charges. He attributed these anger outbursts in part to his inability to recognize emotions in faces, telling me that he flat-out fails tests of facial emotion recognition. He has effectively had to actively learn the skills that most of us were born knowing intuitively—the ability to know that a smile signifies happiness or that a furrowed brow indicates concern. Ted had an uncanny ability to go over a situation in hindsight, but in the emotion-laden moment could not muster his intellectual knowledge of facial emotions enough to put it to use.

Ted also spoke of thinking completely in binaries, saying quite humorously that to him, a grey area is really just more black and white. Though he can barely add and subtract (he claims that an inability to do math is a commonality among people with ACC), he managed to struggle through enough math classes to allow him to become a computer programmer (where he can safely and happily think in binaries). Unfortunately, he met criteria for BPD and so did not qualify for the study I'm assessing for, despite the fact that the treatment seems perfect for him.

It bothered me quite a bit to have to diagnose this client with a personality disorder. Ted has an identifiable structural deficiency in his brain, so why is he being diagnosed with a disorder that uses a behavioral diagnosis and has nothing to say about the underlying biological mechanisms? This seems to be a problem with many DSM diagnostic criteria, in that a single diagnosis can be explained by a multitude of social and biological mechanisms. Is there a difference, then, between someone like Ted, with whom you can point on a brain scan to the root of his emotional difficulties, and someone who has suffered through childhood sexual abuse (typical of borderline patients) and as a result has developed problematic emotional regulation skills? Should we look at these two types of cases differently in terms of diagnosis? What about treatment?

Facial Affective Reactivity in Depression

Taken from "Patterns of Facial Affective Reactivity in Depression: A literature review of emotion elicitation using film" by Jeff Girard (in press).

Clinicians have long relied on nonverbal communication to aid in the diagnosis and assessment of psychopathological populations. Specifically, blunted or flattened displays of facial affect have long been associated with schizophrenia and depression (Marsden et al. 1975). These ratings are usually made subjectively, however, and there are many conflicting theories about how such populations respond to different types of emotion elicitation. Only careful research can properly determine what (if any) patterns of emotion reactivity can be associated with different disorders. This article will review the literature on a subset of this research. Specifically, it will focus on how patients suffering from Major Depressive Disorder differ from healthy controls in terms of facial affect when positive and negative emotions are elicited using film. Although there are many methods for eliciting emotion, film is the focus of this review because it is more naturalistic than asking participants to pose facial expressions, more immersive and engaging than pictorial stimuli, and allows for more experimental control and standardization than emotional imaginings or interviews (Gross & Levenson, 1995).

Four hypotheses about the effect of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) on facial affective reactivity have been put forth in the literature: positive attenuation (less reactivity to positive stimuli), negative potentiation (more reactivity to negative stimuli), emotion context insensitivity (less reactivity to both positive and negative stimuli), and cultural norm violation (reactivity opposite of cultural expectancy). There is strong evidence from a variety of measures in support of the Positive Attenuation Hypothesis. However, there is no evidence in support of the Negative Potentiation Hypothesis and only tentative support for the Emotion Context Insensitivity and Cultural Norm Hypotheses. More research is needed before definite conclusions can be drawn about the role of cultural norms. Reactivity to positive emotion elicitation was found to be a good indicator of prospective functioning, whereas reactivity to negative emotion elicitation was found to be a good indicator of current psychosocial functioning.

Measure	Article	Positive Attenuation	Negative Potentiation	Emotion-Context Insensitivity	Cultural Norm
Electromyography (Facial EMG)	Sakamoto et al. 1997	Yes*	-	-	No*
	Kaviani et al. 2004	No	No	No	-
	Rottenberg et al. 2005	Yes*	No	No	-
Emotion Facial Action Coding System (EMFACS)	Berenbaum et al. 1992	Yes*	No	No	-
	Tsai et al. 2003	Yes*	No	No	Yes*
	Renneberg et al. 2005	Yes*	No*	Yes*	-
	Reed et al. 2007	Yes*	-	-	-
Emotional Expressive Behavior Coding System (EEB)	Rottenberg et al. 2002	No	No	No	-
	Chentsova-Dutton et al. 2007	No	No	No	Yes*
	Chentsova-Dutton et al. 2010	Yes*	-	-	Yes*
Computer-Based Facial Action Analysis	Schneider et al. 1990	No	No	No	-
	Mergl et al. 2005	Yes*	-	-	-

We Are Half Awake

The title for this blog is borrowed from the great William James, a philosopher and one of the first American psychologists. The full quote reads, "Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake." It is a nice quote in that it captures James' perspective on human nature, something that psychologists are inherently interested in. This blog will hopefully be a place in which we can discuss fun and interesting things such as this and other enigmatic or scientific psychological issues. Enjoy!