Your memory is like the telephone game, altered with each retelling

ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2012) — Remember the telephone game where people take turns whispering a message into the ear of the next person in line? By the time the last person speaks it out loud, the message has radically changed. It's been altered with each retelling.

Turns out your memory is a lot like the telephone game, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study.

Every time you remember an event from the past, your brain networks change in ways that can alter the later recall of the event. Thus, the next time you remember it, you might recall not the original event but what you remembered the previous time. The Northwestern study is the first to show this.

"A memory is not simply an image produced by time traveling back to the original event -- it can be an image that is somewhat distorted because of the prior times you remembered it," said Donna Bridge, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and lead author of the paper on the study recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience. "Your memory of an event can grow less precise even to the point of being totally false with each retrieval."

Bridge did the research while she was a doctoral student in lab of Ken Paller, a professor of psychology at Northwestern in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

The findings have implications for witnesses giving testimony in criminal trials, Bridge noted.

"Maybe a witness remembers something fairly accurately the first time because his memories aren't that distorted," she said. "After that it keeps going downhill."

The published study reports on Bridge's work with 12 participants, but she has run several variations of the study with a total of 70 people. "Every single person has shown this effect," she said. "It's really huge."

"When someone tells me they are sure they remember exactly the way something happened, I just laugh," Bridge said.

The reason for the distortion, Bridge said, is the fact that human memories are always adapting.

"Memories aren't static," she noted. "If you remember something in the context of a new environment and time, or if you are even in a different mood, your memories might integrate the new information."

For the study, people were asked to recall the location of objects on a grid in three sessions over three consecutive days. On the first day during a two-hour session, participants learned a series of 180 unique object-location associations on a computer screen. The next day in session two, participants were given a recall test in which they viewed a subset of those objects individually in a central location on the grid and were asked to move them to their original location. Then the following day in session three, participants returned for a final recall test.

The results showed improved recall accuracy on the final test for objects that were tested on day two compared to those not tested on day two. However, people never recalled exactly the right location. Most importantly, in session three they tended to place the object closer to the incorrect location they recalled during day two rather than the correct location from day one.

"Our findings show that incorrect recollection of the object's location on day two influenced how people remembered the object's location on day three," Bridge explained. "Retrieving the memory didn't simply reinforce the original association. Rather, it altered memory storage to reinforce the location that was recalled at session two."

Bridge's findings also were supported when she measured participants' neural signals --the electrical activity of the brain -- during session two. She wanted to see if the neural signals during session two predicted anything about how people remembered the object's location during session three.

The results revealed a particular electrical signal when people were recalling an object location during session two. This signal was greater when -- the next day -- the object was placed close to that location recalled during session two. When the electrical signal was weaker, recall of the object location was likely to be less distorted.

"The strong signal seems to indicate that a new memory was being laid down," Bridge said, "and the new memory caused a bias to make the same mistake again."

"This study shows how memories normally change over time, sometimes becoming distorted," Paller noted. "When you think back to an event that happened to you long ago -- say your first day at school -- you actually may be recalling information you retrieved about that event at some later time, not the original event."

The research was supported by National Science Foundation grant BCS1025697 and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health grant T32 NS047987.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Northwestern University. The original article was written by Marla Paul.

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Journal Reference:

1. D. J. Bridge, K. A. Paller. Neural Correlates of Reactivation and Retrieval-Induced Distortion. Journal of Neuroscience, 2012; 32 (35): 12144 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1378-12.2012

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20 Sep, 2012

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Prejudice can cause depression at the societal, interpersonal, and intrapersonal levels

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2012) — Although depression and prejudice traditionally fall into different areas of study and treatment, a new article suggests that many cases of depression may be caused by prejudice from the self or from another person. In an article published in the September 2012 issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, William Cox of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues argue that prejudice and depression are fundamentally connected.

Consider the following sentence: "I really hate _____. I hate the way _____ look. I hate the way _____ talk."

What words belong in the blanks? It's possible that the statement expresses prejudice toward a stigmatized group: "I really hate Black people," "I hate the way gay men look," or "I hate the way Jews talk." But this statement actually comes from a depressed patient talking about herself: "I really hate me. I hate the way I look. I hate the way I talk."

The fact that the statement could have been completed in two equally plausible ways hints at a deep connection between prejudice and depression. Indeed, Cox and colleagues argue that the kinds of stereotypes about others that lead to prejudice and the kinds of schemas about the self that lead to depression are fundamentally similar. Among many features that they have in common, stereotypes of prejudice and schemas of depression are typically well-rehearsed, automatic, and difficult to change.

Cox and colleagues propose an integrated perspective of prejudice and depression, which holds that stereotypes are activated in a "source" who then expresses prejudice toward a "target," causing the target to become depressed.

This depression caused by prejudice -- which the researchers call deprejudice -- can occur at many levels. In the classic case, prejudice causes depression at the societal level (e.g., Nazis' prejudice causing Jews' depression), but this causal chain can also occur at the interpersonal level (e.g., an abuser's prejudice causing an abusee's depression), or even at the intrapersonal level, within a single person (e.g., a man's prejudice against himself causing his depression).

The researchers state that the focus of their theory is on cases of depression that are driven primarily by the negative thoughts that people have about themselves or that others have about them and does not address "depressions caused by neurochemical, genetic, or inflammatory processes." Understanding that many people with depression are not "just" depressed -- they may have prejudice against themselves that causes their depression -- has powerful theoretical implications for treatment.

Cox and colleagues propose that interventions developed and used by depression researchers -- such as cognitive behavior therapy and mindfulness training -- may be especially useful in combating prejudice. And some interventions developed and used by prejudice researchers may be especially useful in treating depression.

Using a wider lens to see the common processes associated with depression and prejudice will help psychological scientists and clinicians to understand these phenomena better and develop cross-disciplinary interventions that can target both problems.

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Journal Reference:

1. W. T. L. Cox, L. Y. Abramson, P. G. Devine, S. D. Hollon. Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Depression: The Integrated Perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2012; 7 (5): 427 DOI: 10.1177/1745691612455204

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19 Sep, 2012

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Longer exercise provides added benefit to children's health

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2012) — Twenty minutes of daily, vigorous physical activity over just three months can reduce a child's risk of diabetes as well as his total body fat -- including dangerous, deep abdominal fat -- but 40 minutes works even better, researchers report.

"If exercise is good for you, then more exercise ought to be better for you and that is what we found for most of our outcomes," said Dr. Catherine Davis, clinical health psychologist at the Institute of Public and Preventive Health at Georgia Health Sciences University.

Pediatric and adult studies have shown the metabolic benefits of aerobic activity but had yet to dissect differences in the dose response, or the amount of activity needed to elicit a given benefit. The study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at 222 overweight, previously inactive 7- to 11-year olds in the Augusta, Ga., area and found more is better.

"Obesity is a growing public health crisis that is affecting youth throughout the United States, and we know that obesity can contribute to the development of type 2 diabetes," said Dr. Michael Lauer, Director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Division of Cardiovascular Sciences of the National Institute of Health. "This research adds to the body of evidence that physical activity improves children's health, that longer periods of exercise provide a greater benefit and that increased physical activity among overweight and obese children could stave off the onset of type 2 diabetes."

A third of the study participants maintained their typically sedentary lifestyle; a third began a 20-minute heart-rate-raising, after-school exercise routine for three months; and a third exercised for 40 minutes after school.

While their primary focus was insulin resistance, a risk factor for diabetes, the researchers also measured total body fat, visceral fat and aerobic fitness over the study's course.

Children who exercised for 40 minutes had a 22 percent reduction in insulin resistance versus the controls, while the 20-minute group experienced an 18 percent reduction, said Davis, the study's lead author.

The extra 20 minutes also helped the children lose more total body fat and visceral fat while fitness, which appeared driven by intensity rather than duration, gained a similar boost from both time periods. Benefits were gained without restrictive diets and worked equally well in black and white boys and girls.

Davis' research team kept both groups moving with running and tag games and modified sports. "Regulation sports tend to have kids standing around a lot waiting for the ball. We had enough balls so everyone was moving all the time," she said. They kept it fun, giving non-food rewards, such as small toys, for children who kept their heart rates high. "It had to be fun or they would not keep coming," said Davis, noting the 94 percent retention rate of study participants.

She hopes the evidence of the solid health benefits of a fun, vigorous and relatively short exercise routine will be used to design public health interventions for a society in which one-third of elementary school children are overweight.

"It's practical in the sense that we were able to quantify the dose required to make these changes," Davis said. "If you are able to get kids active for 20 minutes every day in school, whether through physical education or taking a running break during lunch, that can make a real difference." She noted that while schools are a great place to start, jam-packed curricula likely mean a 40-minute exercise routine will require after-hours programs as well.

"You can reach a lot of kids by making changes at school," Davis said. "We don't want this to just be for athletic or coordinated kids but for all kids, especially the ones who are less likely to be on a sports team."

Childhood obesity rates in the United States have been climbing for more than a decade. While they seem to be plateauing, the unprecedented levels have serious consequences for children's health and longevity, Davis said. A primary example is the emergence of type 2 diabetes, previously considered an adult, lifestyle-related problem with serious implications for cardiovascular health and more. One of the first indications of trouble is increased insulin resistance, how much insulin the pancreas must produce to enable glucose circulating in the blood to become energy for the cells. In this study, researchers showed a benefit of 40 minutes of daily exercise on the disposition index -- the ratio of insulin resistance to the body's ability to secrete insulin -- a proven predictor of diabetes development in adults.

"When your body is no longer able to secrete enough insulin to overcome your body's resistance to it, that's when it becomes diabetes," Davis said, noting that in insulin resistance, pancreases must work overtime producing extra insulin to convert excess blood glucose to usable energy. Without sufficient insulin, a vicious cycle results as energy-starved cells increase the appetite and people eat more creating even more glucose to convert. "Exercise basically gives the pancreas a break and could prevent or delay type 2 diabetes as long as people remain active," Davis said. Longer-term and follow-up studies are needed to find out what happens with these children over time and how to help them sustain a healthy lifestyle.

In 2005, a federal panel, co-chaired by Dr. William B. Strong, a pediatric cardiologist and retired Professor at the Medical College of Georgia at GHSU, recommended 60 minutes or more of daily vigorous physical activity for school-age children. The supervised 40-minute exercise sessions in the study likely resulted in a similar amount of cumulative activity, Davis said. "And, unfortunately 40 minutes is a lot more activity than many children are getting these days."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Georgia Health Sciences University.

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Journal Reference:

1. Davis CL, Pollock NK, Waller JL, Allison JD, Dennis BA, Bassali R, Melendez A, Boyle CA, Gower BA. Exercise dose and diabetes risk in overweight and obese children: A randomized, controlled trial. JAMA, 2012

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

18 Sep, 2012

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Pacifiers may have emotional consequences for boys

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2012) — Pacifiers may stunt the emotional development of baby boys by robbing them of the opportunity to try on facial expressions during infancy.

Three experiments by a team of researchers led by psychologists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison tie heavy pacifier use as a young child to poor results on various measures of emotional maturity.

The study, published September 18 by the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology, is the first to associate pacifiers with psychological consequences. The World Health Organization and American Academy of Pediatrics already call for limiting pacifier use to promote breast-feeding and because of connections to ear infections or dental abnormalities.

Humans of all ages often mimic -- unwittingly or otherwise -- the expressions and body language of the people around them.

"By reflecting what another person is doing, you create some part of the feeling yourself," says Paula Niedenthal, UW-Madison psychology professor and lead author of the study. "That's one of the ways we understand what someone is feeling -- especially if they seem angry, but they're saying they're not; or they're smiling, but the context isn't right for happiness."

Mimicry can be an important learning tool for babies.

"We can talk to infants, but at least initially they aren't going to understand what the words mean," Niedenthal says. "So the way we communicate with infants at first is by using the tone of our voice and our facial expressions."

With a pacifier in their mouth, a baby is less able to mirror those expressions and the emotions they represent.

The effect is similar to that seen in studies of patients receiving injections of Botox to paralyze facial muscles and reduce wrinkles. Botox users experience a narrower range of emotions and often have trouble identifying the emotions behind expressions on other faces.

"That work got us thinking about critical periods of emotional development, like infancy," says Niedenthal, whose work is supported by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche. "What if you always had something in your mouth that prevented you from mimicking and resonating with the facial expression of somebody?"

The researchers found six- and seven-year-old boys who spent more time with pacifiers in their mouths as young children were less likely to mimic the emotional expressions of faces peering out from a video.

College-aged men who reported (by their own recollections or their parents') more pacifier use as kids scored lower than their peers on common tests of perspective-taking, a component of empathy.

A group of college students took a standard test of emotional intelligence measuring the way they make decisions based on assessing the moods of other people. Among the men in the group, heavier pacifier use went hand-in-hand with lower scores.

"What's impressive about this is the incredible consistency across those three studies in the pattern of data," Niedenthal says. "There's no effect of pacifier use on these outcomes for girls, and there's a detriment for boys with length of pacifier use even outside of any anxiety or attachment issues that may affect emotional development."

Girls develop earlier in many ways, according to Niedenthal, and it is possible that they make sufficient progress in emotional development before or despite pacifier use. It may be that boys are simply more vulnerable than girls, and disrupting their use of facial mimicry is just more detrimental for them.

"It could be that parents are inadvertently compensating for girls using the pacifier, because they want their girls to be emotionally sophisticated. Because that's a girly thing," Niedenthal says. "Since girls are not expected to be unemotional, they're stimulated in other ways. But because boys are desired to be unemotional, when you plug them up with a pacifier, you don't do anything to compensate and help them learn about emotions."

Suggesting such a simple and common act has lasting and serious consequences is far from popular.

"Parents hate to have this discussion," Niedenthal says. "They take the results very personally. Now, these are suggestive results, and they should be taken seriously. But more work needs to be done."

Sussing out just why girls seem to be immune (or how they may compensate) is an important next step, as is an investigation of what Niedenthal calls "dose response."

"Probably not all pacifier use is bad at all times, so how much is bad and when?" she asks. "We already know from this work that nighttime pacifier use doesn't make a difference, presumably because that isn't a time when babies are observing and mimicking our facial expressions anyway. It's not learning time."

But even with more research planned to further explain the new results, Niedenthal is comfortable telling parents to consider occasionally pocketing the pacifier.

"I'd just be aware of inhibiting any of the body's emotional representational systems," Niedenthal says. "Since a baby is not yet verbal -- and so much is regulated by facial expression -- at least you want parents to be aware of that using something like a pacifier limits their baby's ability to understand and explore emotions. And boys appear to suffer from that limitation."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison. The original article was written by Chris Barncard.

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19 Sep, 2012

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Psychologists study the effects of diagram orientation on comprehension

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2012) — The orientation of a diagram on the page of a textbook may seem inconsequential, but it can have a significant impact on a reader's ability to comprehend the information as presented, according to a team of researchers at UC Santa Barbara, Vanderbilt University, and West Carolina University. Their findings appear in a recent issue of the journal Bioscience.

Focusing on variously formatted cladograms -- also known as phylogenetic trees -- the researchers found that two diagrams may contain the same information, but they aren't necessarily equivalent in terms of how the information is interpreted. "In Western culture, we read from left to right, so we naturally come to a diagram with that behavior," said Andrew T. Stull, a researcher in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at UCSB and an author of the paper. "The important point in this research, however, is that how efficiently a student comprehends the information presented in the phylogenetic tree depends on how the tree is angled."

As it turns out, when a diagonal tree extends from tips on the left to the root on the right, and the trunk angles downward to the right-hand side, the information is more easily accessible. "The way we interrogate the tree is first culturally based -- left to right -- and the strong diagonal line tends to make us flow one way or another," said Stull. "But that combined effect influences the accuracy, or how we're able to use the tree effectively."

However, most textbooks depict the diagonal cladogram in the upward orientation, Stull noted. "Many artists draw the diagram in an inefficient and potentially confusing way," he said. "Artists have a tendency to draw it at the upward angle, not realizing they'd communicate the information better if they angled it downward."

The researchers used a phylogenetic tree for their research because it is very important for a process called tree thinking. "It's the idea that from an evolutionary perspective, there is a distinctive relationship between taxa," said Stull. "It's not just that things line up together on a tree, but you can infer certain biological, physiological, and pharmaceutical commonalities that might be relevant. There are a lot of things you can do in knowing how all of life is organized, and each organism's relation to everything else."

Drawing them in tree form, Stull continued, should help teach students the relationships between organisms, and to anticipate the valuable information those relationships can provide.

The researchers used eye-tracking technology to carry out their research. They showed test subjects one tree, and then another, and asked them to determine whether or not they were the same. "In order to answer the question, they had to interpret the two images," Stull explained. "Then we took all the eye positions. What we found is that when people studied the tree with the upward diagonal trunk, they were less accurate than when the tree followed the downward diagonal."

Why the directional angle makes a difference may have to do with how organisms represented by the individual branches relate to their closest common ancestor and to those with a more distant common ancestor. "With upward angled trunks, it may be because they [students] are thinking of it from the root up," Stull said. "But it's more efficient to think of it from the branches down. So, from an artistic perspective, it makes more sense to build it that way. With that orientation, the user doesn't have to deconstruct it in order to access the information."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Santa Barbara, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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19 Sep, 2012

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Late-night comedy television increases political discussion

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2012) — The jokes, critiques and issues raised by late-night comedy television hosts may have a significant impact on how much people talk about the upcoming political election, based on a new study from the University of Michigan.

The study, which was just released electronically and due out soon in print in the September 2012 issue of Mass Communication and Society, found that the political satire can be just as effective as regular political news in encouraging discussion among audience members. The research also discovered that while both late-night comedy television and hard news engaged audiences, late-night audiences were more likely to use online interaction as a way to comment on political issues.

"The constructive role of comedy shows evidenced in this study suggests that political entertainment may serve as an important catalyst for revitalized civic life," Hoon Lee, the article's author said. "This is an important finding, because then political candidates may be willing to use comedy programs to enhance their images."

Over 700 individuals participated in an online experiment and survey. The author broke the individuals into groups, and participants either watched The Daily Show with Jon Steward, NBC Nightly News or a clip about a Walt Disney World resort, comparing scores on political participation and discussion between these groups.

The ability to spoof political figures on these television shows, such as Tina Fey's impersonation of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live in 2008, might raise questions about the power of show producers to influence the political agenda. This study doesn't tell us how the audience's voting decisions will be changed, but does suggest that such portrayals will make people talk about the portrayed issues with other people. This highlights the importance that late-night television comedy can have on politics.

"Political comedy can play a significant role in the public realm," Lee said. "The results from the experiment and survey demonstrate that exposure to late-night satire can enrich deliberative and participatory democracy."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Taylor & Francis, via AlphaGalileo.

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Journal Reference:

1. Hoon Lee. Communication Mediation Model of Late-Night Comedy: An Examination of the Mediating Role of Structural Features of Interpersonal Talk between Late-Night Comedy Viewing and Political Participation. Mass Communication and Society, 2012

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19 Sep, 2012

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Women speak less when they're outnumbered

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2012) — New experiments in group decision making show that having a seat at the table is very different than having a voice.

Scholars at Brigham Young University and Princeton examined whether women speak less than men when a group collaborates to solve a problem. In most groups that they studied, the time that women spoke was significantly less than their proportional representation -- amounting to less than 75 percent of the time that men spoke.

The new study is published by the top academic journal in political science, American Political Science Review.

"Women have something unique and important to add to the group, and that's being lost at least under some circumstances," said Chris Karpowitz, the lead study author and a political scientist at BYU.

There is an exception to this rule of gender participation, however. The time inequality disappeared when researchers instructed participants to decide by a unanimous vote instead of majority rule.

Results showed that the consensus-building approach was particularly empowering for women who were outnumbered by men in their group. Study co-author Tali Mendelberg of Princeton says these findings apply to many different settings.

"In school boards, governing boards of organizations and firms, and legislative committees, women are often a minority of members and the group uses majority rule to make its decisions," Mendelberg said. "These settings will produce a dramatic inequality in women's floor time and in many other ways. Women are less likely to be viewed and to view themselves as influential in the group and to feel that their 'voice is heard.'"

For their experiments, Karpowitz and Mendelberg recruited people to be part of a group and discuss the best way to distribute money they earned together from a hypothetical task. In all, the researchers observed 94 groups of at least five people.

On average, groups deliberated for 25 minutes before settling the matter. Participants voted by secret ballot, but half of the groups followed majority rule while the other half decided only with a unanimous vote.

Notably, the groups arrived at different decisions depending on women's participation -- swinging the group's stance on the level of generosity given to the lowest member of the group.

"When women participated more, they brought unique and helpful perspectives to the issue under discussion," Karpowitz said. "We're not just losing the voice of someone who would say the same things as everybody else in the conversation."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Brigham Young University.

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Journal Reference:

1. Christopher F. Karpowitz, Tali Mendelberg, Lee Shaker. Gender Inequality in Deliberative Participation. American Political Science Review, 2012; 106 (03): 533 DOI: 10.1017/S0003055412000329

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19 Sep, 2012

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When TV and marriage meet: TV's negative impact on romantic relationships

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2012) — The status of a romantic relationship could be in jeopardy if the couple or an individual in the relationship are frequent television watchers, according to a study from Albion College.

The study, just released electronically and soon to be published in the September 2012 issue of Mass Communication and Society, found that the more an individual believed in television portrayals of romance, the less likely they were to be committed to their relationships. In August 2012, several of the most-watched television shows (Burn Notice, True Blood, The Big Bang Theory, and Two and a Half Men) featured romantic relationships prominently throughout their episodes. This research is especially important at helping individuals understand the impact that television viewing can have on their relationships.

"In this study I found that people who believe the unrealistic portrayals on TV are actually less committed to their spouses and think their alternatives to their spouse are relatively attractive," Dr. Jeremy Osborn, the article's author said. "My hope would be that people would read this article and take a look at their own relationships and the relationships of those around them. How realistic are your expectations for your partner and where did those expectations come from?"

Over 390 married couples participated in the study. The participants responded to questions about their satisfaction with their current romantic relationship, relationship expectations, relationship commitment, belief in television portrayals of romantic relationships, viewing frequency, and several others that focused on their spousal relationship. The research also discovered that the more an individual believed in the television romance, the higher people believed their relationship costs were. Relationship "costs" include a person's loss of personal freedom, loss of time, or their partner's unattractive qualities.

"We live in a society that perpetually immerses itself in media images from both TV and the web, but most people have no sense of the ways those images are impacting them," Osborn said. "The rate of marriage failure in the U. S. is not dropping, and it is important for people to have a sense of what factors are leading to the failure of so many relationships."

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Journal Reference:

1. Jeremy L. Osborn. When TV and Marriage Meet: A Social Exchange Analysis of the Impact of Television Viewing on Marital Satisfaction and Commitment. Mass Communication and Society, 2012; 15 (5): 739 DOI: 10.1080/15205436.2011.618900

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

19 Sep, 2012

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How much product information do consumers want?

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2012) — A study published online in the Journal of Consumer Research finds that people can differ widely on the level of detail makes them feel they understand something. In experiments, the very same explanations that some subjects required before they would pay top dollar seemed to drive down what others were willing to pay. The natural trick for a marketer would be to figure out which customers are which. The study does that, too.

"The fact is that people differ," said Steven Sloman, professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown University and an author on the paper. "Your advertising, your marketing, and your understanding of people has to be guided by an appreciation of who you are talking to."

The particular difference that lead author Philip Fernbach, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Colorado-Boulder's Leeds School of Business, and Sloman focused on in a series of experiments was the inclination of people to consider details of how products work. Thoughtful "explanation fiends" became more motivated the more the product was explained. More intuitive "explanation foes" felt confident in their understanding when the explanation was superficial but deeper detail eroded that understanding and ultimately their willingness to pay for the product.

In an essential respect these different groups of consumers are actually the same, said Fernbach. Both kinds of consumers want to feel like they understand how a product works before it will gain their trust.

"The more they feel like they understand, the more they will be willing to pay for the product," he said. But the consumers differ sharply on the level of detail that makes them feel informed.

Testing the test

Each of the study's four experiments measured the subjects' tendency to deliberate before responding to a question with a simple, standard quiz called the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT). The test asks three questions that have intuitive, but wrong, answers. The correct answer requires a little more thought. Fernbach and Sloman thought it might predict each subject's inclination to consider detail. Sure enough, in each experiment the CRT accurately predicted whether the subject would be an explanation fiend or foe.

The first experiment assessed how 127 people who were recruited online rated their understanding of four products as they read four different levels of detail about how the products worked, presented in random order. Then they took the CRT. A low score indicated an intuition-oriented person while a high score indicates someone who thinks deeply.

The result? CRT low-scorers rated their understanding as higher when presented with less detail. High scorers on the CRT said they understood best when they read the greatest level of detail.

"The effect of mechanistic detail on judged understanding was moderated by cognitive reflection," wrote the authors of the study, which began when Fernbach was a postdoctoral researcher in Sloman's group at Brown. In addition to Fernbach and Sloman, the study's other authors are Brown undergraduates Robert St. Louis and Julia Shube.

The second experiment assessed what level of detail would motivate 223 new online volunteers to pay for a premium product with a special feature, compared to a less expensive generic competitor without that feature. The level of explanatory detail for the premium feature varied.

Low CRT scorers were most motivated to buy the premium product when given superficial detail, while high scorers showed an increasing degree of preference for the premium product as the level of detail increased.

The third experiment confirmed that only details explaining how a product works are pertinent to the dichotomy between explanation fiends (CRT high scorers) and explanation foes (CRT low scorers).

The money experiment

For marketers of consumer products, including funders of the research at Unilever, the big question is whether any of this psychology matters to what people will pay. The last experiment found that it can make a big difference and helped explain why.

The researchers again presented subjects with products and explanations of how they worked, but this time they broke them into two groups. Some were shown only a shallow explanation of each of four products and then rated their understanding. Then they indicated what they'd be willing to pay.

The researchers asked the other group to do extra work. After showing the volunteers explanations of two products, they asked them to generate their own explanation, to re-evaluate their level of understanding, and then to say how much they'd be willing to pay. By asking those subjects to explicitly explain the products, the authors forced them to confront whether they really understood or only felt they did.

The idea that people often feel they understand things better than they really do is called "the illusion of explanatory depth." Fernbach and Sloman's hypothesis was that explanation foes are especially prone to this illusion, even after encountering only a superficial explanation. Forcing them to confront their lack of understanding would dispel it, ultimately undermining what they'd be willing to pay.

That's exactly what happened.

"Low CRT participants began with a high feeling of understanding, which was subsequently shattered when they attempted to explain," the authors wrote. "High CRT participants were more conservative initially [about their level of understanding] and their judgments did not change after explanation."

What did change was how much fiends and foes of explanation were willing to pay before and after they were asked to explain how the products worked. Averaged over the two products, foes dropped their prices from $8 to less than $6 after their illusions were shattered. Explanation fiends, however, raised what they were willing to pay to about $8.50 from less than $6 after being asked to explain the products.

Sloman said he was struck by how strongly explanation foes harbor illusions about their understanding.

"We were actually shocked by how powerfully the data came out, that the effect really is almost entirely carried by the low CRT scorers," he said. "The people who do think before they respond don't seem to suffer from this illusion."

Fernbach said the lesson from the study for marketers -- how to vary the level of detail for different customers -- is particularly important for companies seeking to introduce novel products.

Getting it right could make a real difference in what customers are willing to pay.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Brown University.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Philip M. Fernbach, Steven A. Sloman, Robert St. Louis, Julia N. Shube. Explanation Fiends and Foes: How Mechanistic Detail Determines Understanding and Preference. Journal of Consumer Research, 2012; [link]

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

18 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/b-YeWDjSCwA/120918113425.htm
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Higher levels of BPA in children and teens significantly associated with obesity

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2012) — Researchers at NYU School of Medicine have revealed a significant association between obesity and children and adolescents with higher concentrations of urinary bisphenol A (BPA), a synthetic chemical recently banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from sippy cups and baby bottles. Still, the chemical continues to be used in aluminum cans, such as those containing soda.

The study appears in the September 19 issue of JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), dedicated to the theme of obesity.

"This is the first association of an environmental chemical in childhood obesity in a large, nationally representative sample," said lead investigator Leonardo Trasande, MD, MPP, associate professor of pediatrics and environmental medicine. "Our findings further demonstrate the need for a broader paradigm in the way we think about the obesity epidemic. Unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity certainly contribute to increased fat mass, but the story clearly doesn't end there."

BPA, a low-grade estrogen, was until recently found in plastic bottles labeled with the number 7 recycling symbol, and is still used as an internal coating for aluminum cans. Manufacturers say it provides an antiseptic function, but studies have shown the chemical disrupts multiple mechanisms of human metabolism that may increase body mass. BPA exposure has also been associated with cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, prostate cancer, neurological disorders, diabetes and infertility.

"In the U.S. population, exposure [to BPA] is nearly ubiquitous, with 92.6 percent of persons 6 years or older identified in the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) as having detectable BPA levels in their urine. A comprehensive, cross-sectional study of dust, indoor and outdoor air, and solid and liquid food in preschool-aged children suggested that dietary sources constitute 99 percent of BPA exposure," the investigators wrote.

Using a sample of nearly 3,000 children and adolescents, ages 6 through 19 years, randomly selected for measurement of urinary BPA concentration in the 2003-2008 NHANES, Dr. Trasande and his co-authors, Jan Blustein, MD, PhD, and Teresa Attina, MD, PhD, MPH, examined associations between urinary BPA concentrations and body mass.

After controlling for race/ethnicity, age, caregiver education, poverty to income ratio, sex, serum cotinine level, caloric intake, television watching, and urinary creatinine level, the researchers found children with the highest levels of urinary BPA had 2.6 times higher odds of being obese than those with the lowest measures of urinary BPA. Among the participants with the highest levels, 22.3 percent were obese compared with 10.3 percent of the participants with the lowest levels.

Further analyses showed this association to be statistically significant in only one racial subpopulation, white children and adolescents. The researchers also found that obesity was not associated with exposure to other environmental phenols commonly used in other consumer products, such as sunscreens and soaps.

"Most people agree the majority of BPA exposure in the United States comes from aluminum cans," Dr. Trasande said. "This data adds to already existing concerns about BPA and further supports the call to limit exposure of BPA in this country, especially in children. Removing it from aluminum cans is probably one of the best ways we can limit exposure. There are alternatives that manufacturers can use to line aluminum cans."

The researchers wrote in their study that advocates and policy makers have long been concerned about BPA exposure. "We note the recent FDA ban of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups, yet our findings raise questions about exposure to BPA in consumer products used by older children. Last year, the FDA declined to ban BPA in aluminum cans and other food packaging, announcing 'reasonable steps to reduce human exposure to BPA in the human food supply' and noting that it will continue to consider evidence on the safety of the chemical. Carefully conducted longitudinal studies that assess the associations identified here will yield evidence many years in the future."

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EDITOR'S NOTE: (JAMA. 2012;308[11]:1113-1121. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com)

About NYU School of Medicine:
NYU School of Medicine is one of the nation's preeminent academic institutions dedicated to achieving world class medical educational excellence. For 170 years, NYU School of Medicine has trained thousands of physicians and scientists who have helped to shape the course of medical history and enrich the lives of countless people. An integral part of NYU Langone Medical Center, the School of Medicine at its core is committed to improving the human condition through medical education, scientific research and direct patient care. The School also maintains academic affiliations with area hospitals, including Bellevue Hospital, one of the nation's finest municipal hospitals where its students, residents and faculty provide the clinical and emergency care to New York City's diverse population, which enhances the scope and quality of their medical education and training. Additional information about the NYU School of Medicine is available at http://school.med.nyu.edu/.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NYU Langone Medical Center, via Newswise.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Trasande L, Attina TM, Blustein J. Association Between Urinary Bisphenol A Concentration and Obesity Prevalence in Children and Adolescents. JAMA, 2012; 308 (11): 1113-1121 DOI: 10.1001/2012.jama.11461

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

18 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/srCyVXXpmjE/120918111125.htm
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