flatacre: What the Music You Like Says About You. »

Hardly anybody would disagree that the music you listen to reveals a lot about your personality. However, there hasn’t been any scientific proof. That is, until now. Professor Adrian North of Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, conducted a large study of more than 36,000 people from…

These studies, and more under way, are providing evidence for two important conclusions: (i) the social pain of ostracism is linked closely to physical pain (see Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004; MacDonald & Leary, 2005; Panksepp, 2003) and (ii) the initial painful response to ostracism is crude and illogical. It simply says, ‘Ouch, I better stop what I am doing and pay attention to this, because it could be important.’

”

— Kipling D. Williams, “Ostracism: The Kiss of Social Death” (via mister-rabbit)

PLoS ONE: Democrats and Republicans Can Be Differentiated from Their Faces »

akfishergal:

Male-on-Male Sexual Harassment on the Rise - Newsweek.com »

Rate still only increased from 8 to 16% between 1992 and 2008 (rate being percentage of sexual harassment charges filed with the EEOC by men about other men)…. but still very surprising.

Why We do Dumb or Irrational Things: 10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies | PsyBlog »

(via bibeduck)

Psychology of Heroism: From Tackling the Terrorists and Thwarting Terror to… Sales? « Psychology Applied to Life »

December 29, 2009

Psychology Of Heroism: From Tackling The Terrorists And Thwarting Terror To… Sales?

Filed under: Popular Press, Social Psychology — Tags: consumer research, marketing, evil, heroes, Zimbardo, Stanford Prison Experiment, Clinical Psychology, interview, Newsweek, foot-in-the-door, sales, optimism, pessimism — psychoflife @ 7:35 pm Edit This

Besides the always fun alliteration, I find myself drawn to bits and pieces of actual psychological research sandwiched into popular press and journalism. That said, I saw this interviewwith Phil Zimbardo on Newsweek’s web site about the psychology of heroism and how it all relates to the courageous actions of Jasper Schuringa, the man who tackled the (alleged) terrorist who was attempting to set off a bomb and was literally on fire. How did this (more or less, seemingly) normal, ordinary guy end up jumping over other passengers and seats to tackle a man who was on fire – risking his own life and safety in the process and sustaining burns? What is it that turns some people into heroes who can ignore the obvious risks to themselves in order to protect others? Is it something that turns people into characters or are heroes born rather than made?

Phil Zimbardo is one of the most famous social psychologists there is, responsible for the Stanford Prison experiment, one of the most famous experiments of the last century. He’s also written a book about the psychology of evil called The Lucifer Effect. He’s appeared on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report”; he’s a past president of the American Psychological Association; and in general, considered to be a pretty well-known psychologist who taught everyone in the field a lot about “human nature,” ethics, and social norms.

Unfortunately, the excerpts from the interview seem to be taken in order to make some generalizations and “big points” about what heroism really means. Namely, the excerpts seems to be used to show us that anyone and everyone can be a hero – it’s more about having the opportunity to be a hero rather than an innate (psychological or personality) trait. And then, of course, the natural plug for Zimbardo’s book. But there’s more here and in Zimbardo’s work – there’s a larger basis for his research and these general conclusions that warrant examination or at least a brief glance!

Zimbardo briefly mentions some principles and ideas that are the seeds that have grown into to the larger branches of research, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll only mention one here – the foot-in-the-door phenomenon (FITD). FITD holds that by asking individuals for a small request (i.e., will you talk to this underprivileged child on the phone for a few minutes?), these individuals will then be more likely to agree to larger requests (i.e., will you take this child to the zoo?). One of the the theories behind this is that people want to appear consistent (and not hypocritical) and by agreeing to the phone call, they are demonstrating their own charity and desire to help and they don’t want to appear contradictory by turning down the zoo trip.

This phenomenon is sometimes embraced by marketing gurus and salespeople – once you’re already paying for a small upgrade, maybe you’ll want a larger one and so on. Ideally it’s also used by those in the philanthropy “business,” but nonetheless, it’s a way that psychological findings have boosted the effectiveness of salespeople and marketing campaigns alike.

There are a number of interesting connections between this scholarly research and real life – from sales to thwarting terrorist attacks – but this is also a line of research that demonstrates both the incredible highs and terrifying lows of humans. Because just as anyone can become a hero, Zimbardo’s prison experiment demonstrated that anyone could become an abusive leader, brutalizing fellow humans as such behavior becomes a new sort of social norm. But just as we can see the glass as half-full or half-empty, we can choose to focus on the fact that anyone can become one of the most admirable and respectable members of society. We can all be heroes. We can all do bad things. The bottom line in Zimbardo’s research seems to say that the largest difference between the (alleged) terrorist and the man who tackled him is situational rather than a fundamental evil or goodness. And while we may not have a lot of control over the situations we are born into and placed in, we can all work to help others become heroes, just as Zimbardo pilots studies (via the Heroic Imagination Project)  to increase the likelihood that children will take heroic actions when faced with a situation and a choice to become one.

But then again, maybe I’m just influenced by the Christmas afterglow…

[Link to the original Newsweek article from 12.29.2009 by Mary Carmichael entitled “The Making of a Hero” here.]

Observations: Finally: Social science data that could be all about you »

Early next year, 350 or so Penn State students and staff, as well as local retirees and others, will wander around State College, Pa., for three weeks, pausing intermittently to drop their heads down as they tap on smart phonesto answer detailed questions about how they feel immediately after nearly every social interaction they have.

The potential for Nittany collisions aside, the tappers will be engaging in a novel $1-million research project designed to paint a rich, nearly real-time picture of how people experience their everyday interactions and maybe teach them how to be happier. Rather than aiming for a random sample to generate tedious trend results or one model that only describes the average behavior of all subjects or subsets of them (how bored I am of people protesting, “Not me!” when told of population results), the researchers plan to use the data to generate 350 models—one for each individual in the study.

So if you’re a subject in this study, it’ll be the sociological or psychological equivalent to having your genome sequenced. You’re going to know the excruciating details of how irrationally you respond to life, minute-by-minute, scenario-by-scenario.

The smart phones will be loaded with software that prompts subjects to regularly describe what happened in an interaction and their perceptions of their general, cardiovascular and gastrointestinal health, as well as whether specific interaction made them feel angry, happy, sad, etc., and whether they perceived the others involved as cold or friendly, dominant or submissive.

Study leader Nilam Ram, trained in quantitative psychology, studies longitudinal change in humans. “I come from a tradition of life-span developmentalists who started promoting change rather than stability in the 1970s, well, really it goes further back than that, but we’re promoting a closer look at individual-level changes rather than population-level changes,” he explains. “New technology is allowing us to push that perspective to the limit, and even in a mind exercise, consider that there is only one individual. How would you study that individual?”

Large-scale surveys have revealed a great deal in the past several decades about typical interpersonal relations. And observations of family dynamics in the laboratory, where subjects are hooked up to devices that read their physiology during play activities or heated discussions have revealed some fine-grain details of what goes on in our bodies and minds when we engage in life’s recurring dust-ups. 

In between are the highly non-linear social spaces where people actually experience their daily lives, and it has been hard for social scientists to find acceptable methods in today’s environment of clenched-jaw human subjects committees to collect rich data on “in vivo” subjects in uncontrived settings. Smart phones are a technological solution to that problem, as they can be carried with us at all times—no lab-coated technician need wait behind a two-way mirror. 

In a future iteration of this study, Ram plans for subjects also to wear small, quarter-sized monitors that record heart rate and other physiological functions. They would transfer the data via Bluetooth to a smart phone that then sends the data, along with information about the environment, wirelessly to a server. There, the data could be analyzed instantaneously and “an appropriate intervention message,” Ram says, would be prepared and sent right back to the subject—real-time coaching.

So as well as gaining stronger scientific insights into a specific individual’s day-to-day experiences, the findings could also be applied to improving individuals’ overall health and well-being. 

“Engineers have developed a whole set of methodology that takes in information in real time, say from a plane that is flying, models how the plane moves, and suggests adjustments that can be made, a little turn left, a little turn right, to keep the plane on track,” Ram says. “We think the same ideas can be applied to human behavior. Our objective is to model how individuals ‘fly’ along, and then make suggestions for adjustments.”

“For example, if we find in the stream of data we collect that an individual has a tendency to withdraw every time he or she meets with his or her boss, we can begin providing some guidance that may help those interactions go more smoothly. Ideally we might even be able to deliver those ‘micro-interventions’ right on the cell phone—with a text message appearing that says, “Okay, just take a couple of deep breaths and be assertive.’”

Will subjects be willing to divulge all this private information and do all the required data entry? Ram says the initial subjects will be highly motivated people who are interested in interpersonal issues and like contributing to scientific discovery.

“It’s a pretty demanding study and over the course of one and a half years these people will learn a lot about themselves,” Ram says.

The When Harry Met Sally Question | Psychology Today »

The last posting on the differences between men’s and women’s friendships leads me to comment on whether men and women can be friends. The following is taken from Buddy System: Understanding male friendships (Oxford University Press, 2009). I am citing from the middle of the book - some of the men have already talked about other issues and are being quoted here on their view of non-sexual friendships with women.

Can Men and Women Be Platonic Friends?

Can men have friendships with women that are nonsexual in nature—the When Harry Met Sally question? Opposite-sex friendships are relatively recent. Before the 20th century, platonic friendships between men and women were rare given the rigidity of gender roles, segregation of the sexes, andreligious customs that forbade certain kinds of cross-gender contact. Even today, these friendships can have ambiguous sexual boundaries. Common sense says that platonic friendships are possible. Men often feel more comfortable disclosing intimacies to women than to men because many were raised, particularly at an early age, primarily by mothers and women teachers and because of the way men are socialized to compete with other men. For a man, talking openly with another man about what is bothering him could be seen as giving the other man a competitive edge, if the speaker feels made vulnerable by what he is discussing.

Three-quarters of the men in this study said that they have platonic friendships with women, and one-quarter said they do not. Take, for example, Barry, a 44-year-old white married electrician, who seeks out women to avoid the world of male competition, “I am more comfortable with women. I don’t have to prove anything to them, especially if I am not in a dating situation with them. They give better advice than guys. They are easier to talk to. Guys are always trying to figure out who’s the big dog. Whatever it is, the guys are always competing. They compete about how much money you make, what college you went to, what your skills are. They try and ‘one up’ each other. Women don’t do that.”

This second quote, from Leland, a 40-year-old married, African-American bank manager, focuses more on the positives of a female friendship, rather than on what he is avoiding in male friendships, “I have a lot of female friends that are nonsexual in nature. To maintain those, I’m open and honest with them. When they want to talk about their relationships, I can tell them from the male perspective about how a man is thinking or how they should be treated, and I’m proud of that because a lot of men don’t have platonic relationships.”

Casey’s observations of his sister have clearly affected his understanding of the possibilities of platonic friendships between women and, ultimately, between women and men. He has a platonic relationship with a female. “I think females are cool. My very best friendship now is with Diane. I go to her house and sometimes I see her boyfriend there. The first time he was mad at me. I said, ‘Listen, I’ve known her for many years. It never crossed my mind to ask her to go to bed with me.’ Even my wife thought I was dating her. It’s normal for people to think that about a close relationship. I can go to her house, and she is wearing whatever she wants. I don’t see her as a woman, but as a friend. She sent me a birthday card that said, ‘I never had a friend like you: A man who will hug me as a friend without wanting something.’ We laugh, drink. I can stay at her house late. I sleep on her bed. We have no sex. She talks to me about her boyfriend, and I talk about my girlfriend.”

David spoke of not being able to be friends with a female when he was younger but that now he has developed the capacity for such a relationship. “By drawing the boundary-and I couldn’t until a few years ago-I was never able to have a close friendship with women because I didn’t equate them as people, which was horrible. In my early years, it was more like a trophy, more physical of ‘I want the hot chick.’ They were not really human but actually now I draw healthy boundaries for myself because I want to be able to respect a woman as a person. If you don’t make them a friend then, by having sex, you could lose a beautiful relationship. I can do this now because I did all my partying when I was young.”

Greg has a nonsexual friendship with a woman but acknowledges the inherent difficulties. “I don’t get to see her that often but when we do, we pick it up again. I knew her in high school. We flirted briefly with going out in college but never did. The sexual tension passed years ago. If you act that out, then what happens to the friendship? Does it make it too complicated, so the friendship can’t survive?”

Hal also remarks about how friendships with women can have a sexual tension but how they also change with age. The second part of his response shows that he has not adjusted to the new culture of a touch-free workplace. His wife had to clue him in, although he was not happy that she did so. “I used to have a lot of friends with women-there was a sexual component to it when I was younger. I still have women friends, but there is no sexual component to it now. I tend to be touchy-feely and, when my wife came to a party here in the department, she chided me for touching people on the arm or on the shoulder. She said that level of touching in the workplace was inappropriate.”

As a gay man, the question about close nonsexual friendships with women takes on a different meaning. Isuko does say that commonalities link him and his female friends-an attraction to men. “In college, it was weird. I discovered one woman who challenged my sexual orientation. But we’ve become friends; we’ve come to an understanding that it is not going to happen. There are women who are looking for gay male friends. I don’t want to speak for them, but I think there’s a comfort level for them with a gay man and so I’m open to it. I guess we have something in common about how hard it is to maintain relationships with guys. So I have nonsexual relationships with women. I invite them because, for me, it’s easier. I don’t have to worry about stepping over the boundaries.”

How did the 122 women answer this same question? Stay tuned.

Notes: I think the picture is a very odd choice for this story as the man and woman seem to show that in fact, men and women can’t be friends without a sexual component (it looks like the woman is playfully teasing him and the man wants her, but maybe that’s just my take).

I’m always struck by this blog and the idea of this psychologist and his studies of male friendships - what must it be like to be one his male friends? Does he get ideas from interactions with them? Can he shut off the professional, intellectual side of his brain and just have a beer and watch football with them? Or does he have to analyze it?

Family support 'vital' for service members being deployed - CNN.com »

(CNN) — “You don’t do it alone,” Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday to a crowd gathered at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. “You do it with phenomenal family support. And we could not be the Marine Corps we are, the military we are without extraordinary family support.”

Mullen’s pep talk — along with a question and answer session — was geared to the new 30,000-troop surge to Afghanistan that President Obama laid out last week. He also thanked those in the audience — many of whom will soon be deployed to Afghanistan.

“I am and will be eternally grateful for your service to our country at this very, very critical time,” he said. “Everybody makes a difference. This is taking care of each other. This is taking care of all the responsibilities both here for our families as well as moving forward.”

Military families struggle when their loved ones are serving in the war theater — both economically and emotionally.

Teresa Meador offered advice to other Marine wives on what to expect.

“My one piece of advice, and I was given this advice by a Marine wife: ‘It [war] makes a weak marriage weaker, and a strong marriage stronger,’ ” Meador said. “And that’s very true. You can take it and run with it, or it can break you down. And it’s up to you.”

Her husband, Marine Capt. Eric Meador, said it’s often hard for people outside the military community to understand what families have to go through.

“I don’t think when you have X number of deployments under your belt that it makes it any easier — you just know what to expect,” he said. “You know what to expect next time as far as how you need to manage things — the stateside of things.”

According to Department of Defense statistics through September, 83,259 Marines have been deployed more than once; 300,789 soldiers (active duty, National Guard and Army Reserve) have been deployed more than once.

But will the 30,000-troop surge stretch deployments even further? No, according to top Army brass.

In a message to senior Army leaders on December 2, Army Secretary John McHugh and Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey, said the 30,000-troop surge will not affect deployment length, dwell time or the end of stop-loss, according to the Army News Service.

The message indicates that because of the growth of the Army over the past five years and the drawdown in Iraq, the Army is able to tackle the troop increase without going to 15-month deployments; going to less than 12 months at home between deployments; Halting the plan to come off stop-loss — where a service member’s tour is involuntarily extended in an effort to retain them.

Brig. Gen. Jeff Mathis — the acting commander of Fort Lewis in Washington state — said troops will continue to feel the stress.

“So are we going to continue to see stress? If we continue these deployments, will there be stress on the force? Absolutely,” he told CNN’s John King.

Mathis, who meets with families regularly, said there are consultants that work with families “trying to do everything we can to ensure we are alleviating that stress in every way.”

He admits that he’d like to see longer stretches at home in between deployments, but ultimately, the military is going to do what “our nation asks us to do.”

Soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, meanwhile, know all too well about the tough strain of deployments.

Obama’s decision directly affects those at Fort Bragg, some of who will soon depart for the mission to Afghanistan. But the president gave families something they haven’t seen before: a timetable.

In announcing the surge of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, Obama said he intended “to begin the transfer of our forces out ofAfghanistan in July of 2011” in a responsible transition that considers “conditions on the ground.”

For Maribelle Meno, a Fort Bragg spouse, those words were “reassuring to hear.”

“It’s been hard as a military spouse, having to hear deadlines but it’s never fulfilled. … In this case, he [Obama] gave a strong background for his need to have a deadline.”

Ms. CEO: A Rare Commodity : College Candy »

December 2, 2009 - 11:00 am By Melanie - Northeastern University

Working on Fifth Avenue at New York City is nothing short of glamorous. Every day, I walk to work on one of NYC’s most famous streets, cutting through Central park, walking by the Plaza, passing Saks and finally entering the headquarters of one of the largest beauty companies in the world to work on photoshoots and press kits while bumping into celebs (and their stylists) in the process.<

Finally being dropped into the “9-5” has me thinking a lot more about my future. What if I want to be the chief executive one day? How feasible is that? What would my income be?

Although it is possible for a woman to become a CEO, out of the “Fortune 500” (the USA’s 500 biggest publicly traded companies), only thirteen of those CEOs are female. That’s only 2.6%.

We’ve had our first female presidential and vice-presidential candidate in the past year and higher education for women is on the rise, yet women are still not holding top positions in companies. The cherry on top of all of this? Even the women who have managed to make their way to the top are still the worst paid out of all CEOs.

Aside from the incredible income disparities, the issue we should be focusing on is why women CEOs are such a rare commodity, not necessarily the size of the paychecks. In 2005, Sheila Wellington was interviewed by Anne Fisher (CNN Money) on this exact issue. Wellington was no stranger to gender discrimination; she was forced to sign an agreement when she accepted her first position after graduating from Radcliffe that stated that she must not get pregnant for at least her first two years.

Wellington went on to become the president of Catalyst, a non-profit research group and is now a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. When confronted with the question of the lack of female executives, Wellington stated, “I think we are in the midst of a cycle right now where there is a widespread perception that women aren’t fully committed to their careers. It tends to happen every time the spotlight is on a high-ranking woman who flames out, like [former Hewlett-Packard CEO] Carly Fiorina. You start hearing all kinds of people analyzing ‘what women are doing wrong.’”

Wellington goes on to say that the corporate perception of women must alter before women can reach high levels. She blames sexist perceptions such as, “women don’t like to travel” or “women don’t take risks” as platitudes that cloud judgment when hiring female executives. The antiquated mindset that females won’t succeed because of familial obligations, emotional reactions, high drama and lack of critical thinking hinders women from succeeding. Don’t think those perceptions are still out there? Just ask Neil French who resigned as WPP Group worldwide creative director after saying women in advertising “don’t make it to the top because they don’t deserve to.” This sentiment is common according to Wellington.

Does this mean that I can’t become a CEO one day? Working for a Fortune 500 has pushed my desire to do just that. But when I do get that position, do I have to give up my femininity, desire to have a family in the future, penchant for emotional outbursts once in a while, and indulging in guilty pleasures like Gossip Girl? I think not. The mentality around females in executive positions needs to be changed, not the female executives themselves.

Once the archaic stereotypes of women have left the workplace, then companies will realize that women are valuable assets in executive positions. It’s up to Gen Y to break those stereotypes, put much more than just cracks in the glass ceiling and finally finish construction on that bridge to somewhere.

Notes: My thesis was semi-inspired by some of these numbers and shocking realizations about the social context. While the salary and CEO numbers might be increasing, there are still VERY real and very different expectations about what women should do and the roles that a woman can take on (simultaneously and in order to do well in/at both). Basically, the numbers might support people who believe that gender is no longer an important issue worthy of study, but only if you ignore the psychological side and any statistics that really attempt to slice into the phenomena and explore where women are CEOs, how they got to those positions, and the so-called mommy track…

The Chameleon Effect | PsyBlog »

Does mimicking other people’s body language really make them like us?

Self-help books, persuasion manuals and glossy magazine articles often advise that mimicking body language can increase how much others like us. But is it really true that mimicry causes others to like us, or is mimicry just a by-product of successful social interactions?

Although it had long been suspected that copying other people’s body language increases liking, the effect wasn’t tested rigorously until Chartrand and Bargh (1999) carried out a series of experiments. They asked three related question:

1. Do people automatically mimic others, even strangers?
2. Does mimicry increase liking?
3. Do high-perspective-takers exhibit the chameleon effect more?

(And, fourthly, what does all this have to do with hypnotism? On which, more later.)

Do people automatically mimic others, even strangers?

The set-up: Testing what they call ‘the chameleon effect’, in their first study 78 participants were sat down to have a chat with an experimental insider or ‘confederate’ who had been told to vary their mannerisms in systematic ways. Some did more smiling, others more face touching and still others more foot waggling.

Result: Yes, participants did naturally copy the confederate (who they’d only just met) as measured by face touching, foot waggling and smiling. Face touching only went up 20%, but rate of foot waggling went up by an impressive 50% when participants were inspired by another foot waggler.

Does mimicry increase liking?

In the second experiment Chartrand and Bargh wanted to see if all this foot waggling and face touching has any actual use, or whether it is just a by-product of social interactions.

The set-up: 78 participants were sent into a room to chat with a stranger (another experimental confederate) about a photograph. With some participants the confederate mimicked their body language, with others not. Afterwards participants were asked how much they liked the confederate and rated the smoothness of the interaction, both on a scale of 1 to 9.

Result: Mimicry did indeed work to increase liking. When their body language was copied, participants gave the confederate an average mark of 6.62 for liking (and 6.76 for smoothness). When they weren’t being mimicked participants gave the confederate an average of 5.91 for liking (and 6.02 for smoothness). Not a huge difference you might say, but still a measurable effect for a change in behaviour so subtle most people didn’t even notice it.

Do high-perspective-takers exhibit the chameleon effect more?

Since we’re all different, some people will naturally engage in mimicry more than others. But what kinds of psychological dispositions might affect this? Chartrand and Bargh looked at perspective-taking: the degree to which people naturally take others’ perspectives.

The set-up: Fifty-five students filled out a perspective-taking questionnaire, along with a measure of empathy, then they were sat opposite an experimental confederate, doing the same old face rubbing and food waggling routine from before.

Results: Participants who were high in perspective-taking increased their face-rubbing by about 30% and foot waggling by about 50% compared with the low-perspective-takers. Differences between people in empathic concern, however, had no effect on mimicry suggesting it was the cognitive component of perspective-taking that was important in encouraging mimicry rather than the emotional.

Hypnosis and the chameleon effect

So the ‘chameleon effect’, far from being the preserve of cold-blooded reptiles, is actually a warm response facilitating social interactions. This experiment suggests most of us do it automatically to varying degrees and, just as the glossy magazine advice goes, it does encourage other people to like us.

But what’s this connection between social mimicry and hypnotism that I mentioned at the top? Well, one influential theory of hypnosis says that in the hypnotic state the conscious will is weakened so that suggestions from the hypnotist are carried out automatically (Hilgard, 1965).

This is actually an extreme version of what happens when we mimic other people’s body language. In some senses, when two people are really getting along, their feet-waggling and face-touching in perfect harmony, it’s like they’ve hypnotised each other.

I find research on this particular phenomenon insanely fascinating because, unlike the (seeming) majority of psychological research, I’ve been able to do little experiments and test this out a bit in my own life and see effects. In a lot (if not the strong majority) of psychological experiments, the effect sizes are tiny and essentially, these effects are true across a large random sample of people - so you wouldn’t necessarily be able to demonstrate them in your own life all that easily. But, along with some of the memory and learning/conditioning research that I feel I’ve been able to apply and try with a surprising amount of success, I can see the chameleon effect. I can see it in people that seem to adapt to others’ personality in subtle ways - picking up the occasional mannerisms, etc.

Obviously there are a number of confounding effects, but it’s interesting to see that this can go too far - if it’s too obvious, it appears fake and the other person likes the chameleon less. But try smiling when the other person smiles and see what happens… I swear the other person feels we’re more connected, more “in sync” with each other. When I’ve tried to do this on purpose, one person even told me how I was an awesome listener! It’s similar to ideas behind active listening and summarizing another person’s argument or thoughts rather than offering your own opinion.

Maybe it’s just the focus on ourselves that we like, but even knowing this and occasionally wondering if the other person is doing this doesn’t necessarily decrease how connected you might feel to the other person or reduce this effect…

Why Getting Revenge Isn't Worth It | Psychology Today »

Recently, an editor at PT asked me to dig up some good juicy stories about revenge. Most of the ones I found dealt with how the scorned practiced retribution against their (ex) lovers’ bodily appendages à la Lorena Bobbit.

Reading about these unique crimes of passion got me thinking about my own style of revenge, which surprisingly, is NADA. But why? Is it because I’m a Leo—so self absorbed that I’m not willing to invest the energy and finesse required into seeking meticulously planned retribution? Perhaps, it is simply because I’ve never been hurt so badly… no wait, not true either.

I had a cheating boyfriend too. Like these newsworthy women, I was also enraged, but my rage never turned into a breaking news segment on the 6’oclock news. Instead, I locked myself in the bathroom for hours, trying to talk to my best friend, hoping she would tell me why this happened? I was so busy trying to understand the dynamics of the situation, I didn’t know what to do. Was revenge a healthy response?

Related Articles

• Strength is in. Power is out.
• From a Single Man – and Fetching Writer – Who Lost Everything in a California Blaze
• Get a life: Should it mean understand a life or just move on?
• Retaliation Self-efficacy: Lessons in Cool from a Streetfighter
• Advice: Consensual Affair

According to social psychologist Kevin Carlsmith of Colgate, the reason for revenge is to achieve catharsis. However, his recent study suggests that revenge is, in fact, counterproductive to achieving that goal. The study explains that those who seek to punish continue to think about the perpetrator, keeping the pain and the anger very much alive in their minds, while those who “move on” or “get over it” think less about the perpetrator. Carlsmith’s team tested this theory by staging an interactive game where players could earn money if they all cooperated with one another. However, if a player did not cooperate, he could earn more at the expense of the others. Researchers planted certain “free riders” who would encourage everyone else to cooperate, but would later not cooperate himself. Two groups were tested—one that could punish the “free rider” (and they all did), and one that could not punish.

Interestingly, the results showed that revenge was not as sweet as it sounds. The punishers reported feeling worse than the non-punishers, but also predicted that they would have felt far worse if they hadn’t been able to punish. On the other hand, the non-punishers, the happier group, believed that they would have been happier if they had the opportunity to seek revenge against the “free rider.”

What does this all mean?

Carlsmith says, “Rather than providing closure, it does the opposite: It keeps the wound open and fresh.”

He suggests that when we don’t get revenge, we can trivialize the event. We are able to tell ourselves that because we didn’t go crazy (hacking away our boyfriend’s body parts), it wasn’t the end of the world, after all. That way, it’s easier to move on.

The verdict?

Studies say no to revenge. It only hurts yourself. Still, love, hate or hurt can drive any woman crazy, so men out there, please be on your best behavior.

Main Reference:

Carlsmith, Kevin M., Wilson, Timothy and Gilbert, Daniel, The Paradoxical Consequences of Revenge (September 29, 2008). Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN:http://ssrn.com/abstract=1277905

Jen Kim is a PT intern