Getting your attention
Merely Possessing a Placebo Analgesic Reduced Pain Intensity: Preliminary Findings from a Randomized Design
Victoria Yeung, Andrew Geers & Simon Man-chun Kam
Current Psychology, February 2019, Pages 194-203
Abstract:
An experiment was conducted to examine whether the mere possession of a placebo analgesic cream would affect perceived pain intensity in a laboratory pain-perception test. Healthy participants read a medical explanation of pain aimed at inducing a desire to seek pain relief and then were informed that a placebo cream was an effective analgesic drug. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to receive the cream as an unexpected gift, whereas the other half did not receive the cream. Subsequently, all participants performed the cold-pressor task. We found that participants who received the cream but did not use it reported lower levels of pain intensity during the cold-pressor task than those who did not receive the cream. Our findings constitute initial evidence that simply possessing a placebo analgesic can reduce pain intensity. The study represents the first attempt to investigate the role of mere possession in understanding placebo analgesia. Possible mechanisms and future directions are discussed.
Background music stints creativity: Evidence from compound remote associate tasks
Emma Threadgold et al.
Applied Cognitive Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Background music has been claimed to enhance people's creativity. In three experiments, we investigated the impact of background music on performance of Compound Remote Associate Tasks (CRATs), which are widely thought to tap creativity. Background music with foreign (unfamiliar) lyrics (Experiment 1), instrumental music without lyrics (Experiment 2), and music with familiar lyrics (Experiment 3) all significantly impaired CRAT performance in comparison with quiet background conditions. Furthermore, Experiment 3 demonstrated that background music impaired CRAT performance regardless of whether the music induced a positive mood or whether participants typically studied in the presence of music. The findings challenge the view that background music enhances creativity and are discussed in terms of an auditory distraction account (interference‐by‐process) and the processing disfluency account.
The power of pupil size in establishing trust and reciprocity
Mariska Kret & Carsten De Dreu
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
The eyes are extremely important in communication and can send a multitude of different messages. Someone’s pupil size carries significant social information and can reflect different cognitive and affective states that within a social interaction can prove to be particularly meaningful. In 3 studies we investigated the impact of a person’s pupil size on how others evaluate that person. In Experiment 1, participants played trust games in the role of investor. The results demonstrate that participants trusted happy compared with angry partners more, as well as those with dilating compared with constricting pupils, to whom they also assigned more positive personality traits including friendliness, attractiveness, and trustworthiness. In Experiment 2, participants played the same trust game, but this time in the role of trustee, where they had to decide to reciprocate and share a financial gain with the investor or to keep it for themselves, and act selfishly. The results show that participants reciprocated more to partners with dilating compared with constricting pupils. In Experiment 3, we found preliminary evidence that these positive behavioral changes are likely to be specifically directed to the virtual partner and do not reflect a general positivity bias. To conclude, pupil size is an important social cue that others implicitly take into account when making social decisions.
Contact Is in the Eye of the Beholder: The Eye Contact Illusion
Shane Rogers et al.
Perception, forthcoming
Abstract:
In a simple experiment, we demonstrate that you don’t need to mindfully look at the eyes of your audience to be perceived as making eye contact during face-to-face conversation. Simply gazing somewhere around the face/head area will suffice. Or to borrow a term from Mareschal and colleagues, direct gaze will suffice. For those readers who experience anxiety when gazing specifically at another person’s eyes, or when being gazed at, we expect this is welcome news.
Improving interoceptive ability through the practice of power posing: A pilot study
Felicitas Weineck et al.
PLoS ONE, February 2019
Abstract:
Interoception refers to the detection and perception of signals from the inner body. Deficits in this domain have been linked to psychopathologies, prompting the search for strategies to improve this ability. Preliminary studies have shown that interoception could be enhanced through the manipulation of subjective feelings of power. We tested the effects of adopting powerful postures on different facets of interoception. Firstly, we measured the impact of a single power posing session on interoceptive ability in 41 healthy females. Then, the same participants were randomly assigned to two conditions (daily power posing practice vs. no practice). After one week the conditions alternated. Interoceptive accuracy, measured by the heartbeat tracking task, interoceptive sensibility, measured by the Body Perception Questionnaire (BPQ) and confidence ratings, as well as subjective feelings of power were assessed at baseline, after a single power posing session and after one week of training. A single power posing session significantly increased individuals' interoceptive accuracy. Also, power posing reduced individuals' scores on the BPQ after one week of daily practice and increased subjective feelings of power after one session and one week of daily practice. These findings suggest that adopting powerful postures has the potential to increase interoceptive accuracy, as well as subjective feelings of power, and to reduce interoceptive sensibility, measured by questionnaire.