http://www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/news/department/ News and Information en-us http://www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/news/department/news/?id=442 FIONA MACRAE, Daily Mail 2012-02-10 If you're down to your last chocolate, it's not all bad news. For it will probably taste better than any of the previous ones, a study has found. Psychologists discovered that knowing something is about to end makes us enjoy it all the more. The U.S. researchers fed men and women five small chocolates of different flavours and asked them to rate their enjoyment of each as they ate it. The flavours were given in different orders and some were told when they were on their last chocolate, while others were not given any warning. Those that were pre-warned found the last sweet much more tasty than the others, the journal Psychological Science reports. Asked which chocolate was their favourite, those who knew when they were on their last chocolate plumped for that one 66 per cent of the time. In contrast, those who were unaware the sweet treats were going to end rated it top in only 22 per cent of cases. The fact that the chocolates were rated one by one, rather than all together at the end of the experiment, means the results cannot be explained by difference in recall.
Pugh University of Michigan researcher Ed O'Brien said: and lsquo;Endings affect us in lots of ways and one is this "positivity effect". It is something motivational. You think, "I might as well reap the benefits of this experience even though it is going to end" or, "I want to get something good out of this while I still can".' It is also possible that we have become used to expecting endings to be happy. Mr O'Brien said: and lsquo;Many experiences have happy endings and ndash; from the movies and shows we watch to dessert at the end of the meal and ndash; and so many people may have a general expectation that things end well, which could bleed over into these unrelated or insignificant judgments.' He said the effect could also have negative consequences. For instance, the candidate who interviews first for a job may be viewed less favourably than the last in the room. And exam candidates may suffer from having their papers at the top of the pile for marking. en-us http://www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/news/department/news/?id=441 MATT RICHTEL, The New York Times 2012-02-08 Workers in the digital era can feel at times as if they are playing a video game, battling the barrage of e-mails and instant messages, juggling documents, Web sites and online calendars. To cope, people have become swift with the mouse, toggling among dozens of overlapping windows on a single monitor. But there is a growing new tactic for countering the data assault: the addition of a second computer screen. Or a third. This proliferation of displays is the latest workplace upgrade, and it is responsible for the new look at companies and home offices - they are starting to resemble mission control. For multiscreen multitaskers, a single monitor can seem as outdated as dial-up Internet. "You go back to one, and you feel slow," said Jackie Cohen, 42, who uses three 17-inch monitors in her home office in San Francisco, where she edits a blog about Facebook. Her center screen shows what she is writing or editing, along with e-mail and instant messages; the left and right monitors display news sites, blogs and Twitter feeds, and she keeps 3 to 10 tabs open on each. One monitor recently broke, and she felt hamstrung. "I don't want to miss seeing something," Ms. Cohen said. Her computer seemed to work a bit faster with one monitor fewer, she said. But her brain was a different matter. "I can handle it," she added. "I'm sure there are people who can't." Certainly more people are trying. Tech firms sold 179 million monitors worldwide last year and only 130 million desktop computers - meaning "more screens per desk," said Rhoda Alexander, who heads monitor and tablet research at IHS iSuppli. Monitors are bigger, too. The average monitor sold worldwide is 21 inches, up from 18 inches five years ago, according to iSuppli. NEC Display, a major supplier of monitors, said 30 to 40 percent of the employees of its corporate customers now used more than one monitor, up from 1 percent four years ago. There are many reasons for the spike in sales: monitors are much cheaper ($200 to $300 for a 24-inch display today compared with $700 five years ago); they are slimmer, too, so desks can accommodate more of them; and there are more communication tools - instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook - that workers have to keep an eye on (or at least feel they should). More and bigger screens can convey bragging rights, too. Tech companies use them as recruiting tools, said Chuck Rossi, 45, who uses three monitors (27-inch, 30-inch and a 17-inch laptop) to toggle among dozens of tabs for his engineering job at Facebook, where he checks hundreds of software updates to the site each day before they become public. "Companies will pitch it" to job candidates, Mr. Rossi said. "They know real estate is important. It shows they are serious about their engineers." And the engineers do care about the screens, he said, noting that someone might tell a friend about a new job by adding, "They're giving me a 30 right off the bat," which is shorthand for a 30-inch monitor. The main rationale for a multimonitor setup is that it increases productivity. But that notion is not simple to prove or measure, partly because it depends on the kind of work people do and whether they really need to be constantly looking at multiple data streams. Another theory holds that people have just grown so addicted to juggling that having more monitors simply creates a compulsion to check them. One study, by the University of Utah, found that productivity among people working on editing tasks was higher with two monitors than with one. The study was financed with about $50,000 by NEC Display, which had hoped to find evidence that companies should buy more monitors to increase productivity. (Other tech companies also promote multiple displays - one Hewlett-Packard ad declares that "two is better than one.") The author of the study, James A. Anderson, a professor of communication, said he had not been influenced by NEC's financing. He said he uses three monitors himself, but also said that it was hard to generalize about whether more monitors are better. At the very least, Professor Anderson said, more monitors cut down on toggling time among windows on a single screen, which can save about 10 seconds for every five minutes of work. If you have more than one monitor, he said, "You don't have to toggle back and forth. You can take in everything with the sweep of an eye." David E. Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan whose research has found that multitasking can take a serious toll on productivity, said he buys the logic about toggling. But he also warned that productivity can suffer when people keep interrupting their thoughts by scanning multiple screens rather than focusing on one task. "There is and lsquo;thought-killing' going on," Professor Meyer said. "Rome crashed and burned because it got too big. Go past that scale and you're going to wind up like Rome." Matt Alfrey, 39, said he can handle not just two monitors, but six. He is a trader at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Ore., and his wall of monitors is a blur of messages, headlines, charts, graphs and stock tickers that he watches to help predict patterns in the market. But there are downsides, Mr. Alfrey acknowledged, like the fact that even though he sits at a long table with other traders, he feels isolated by his monitors. "You're sitting behind a wall," he said. On the other side of the table is a colleague who lives in Mr. Alfrey's neighborhood and who is surrounded by monitors, too. "We joke that I'm more likely to see him in the neighborhood," he said. Ian Blaine, 42, chief executive of thePlatform, a video software company in Seattle, counts himself in the more-monitors-are-better camp. He uses two himself and buys two for employees who want them. They tend to use one for programming and the other for communications, and Mr. Blaine said the extra monitor can save time on toggling. "It's probably milliseconds, but if you're in the groove, it throws you off your game," Mr. Blaine said, then added with a laugh, "Maybe I'm making that up and I've been duped into buying monitors because they want to look at the Internet while they're doing work." "But for now," he said, "I'm buying it." en-us http://www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/news/department/news/?id=440 International Business Times 2012-02-07 M.I.A. not only bounced on stage with Madonna and Nicki Minaj during Sunday's Super Bowl halftime show, she shocked the audience by giving them the middle finger. The crude gesture came from the Sri Lankan rapper during her solo spot in the halftime show where M.I.A. and American rapper Minaj acted as Madonna's cheerleaders. Before Sunday's incident that upstaged Madonna's much-hyped halftime show, M.I.A. was known for her 2007 hit "Paper Planes." Viewers speculated whether M.I.A.'s gesture - accompanied by her telling viewers "I don't give a (explicative) - was a provocation to gain attention for her forthcoming album or rebellion against looking like she had sold out to mainstream audiences. Like us on Facebook NBC, the network that aired the Super Bowl, and the NFL apologized after the incident. "The NFL hired the talent and produced the halftime show," NBC spokesman Christopher McCloskey said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. "Our system was late to obscure the inappropriate gesture and we apologize to our viewers." "The obscene gesture in the performance was completely inappropriate, very disappointing and we apologize to our fans," Brian McCarthy, spokesman for the NFL, which produced Madonna's halftime show, told The Associated Press. The middle finger is a way of telling someone off without saying a word. Psychologists found that flipping the bird can bring hostile feelings not only for the person being flipped, but unintentionally lifting the middle finger can bring hostility to flippers themselves. Psychology professors Jesse Chandler and Norbert Schwarz at the University of Michigan looked at the connection between emotions and the middle finger in a study published in 2008. Chandler and Schwarz recruited 58 students and had the volunteers read a story that included a fictional character Donald, who was portrayed as a difficult tenant. The psychologists showed the students which finger to extend while reading the story and after surveyed the volunteers on their feelings about the fictional character Donald. The psychologists were careful not to use the loaded term "middle finger" and instead relied on the students following a more neutral pictorial free of language. In general, the volunteers who stuck out their middle finger harbored more hostility in general and towards the Donald character. "Making the middle-finger gesture brings hostile thoughts to mind," Chandler told Time in 2009. "In our studies, participants were not even aware that their finger movements resembled 'the finger,' and they nevertheless perceived an unrelated other as a more hostile person." The study appeared in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The middle finger isn't the only digit that communicates wordlessly - a thumbs up indicates good job or well done. Chandler and Schwarz delved into this upbeat gesture and found that in a similar experiment with 74 other student volunteers, thumbs up gave more positive feelings. Women reported becomgin more positively affected by the gesture than men, a difference that the researchers did not observe with the middle finger. Though M.I.A. flipped the bird for a worldwide audicence, psychologist Chandler said that even giving the gesture in secret can have an impact. "Even when nobody sees the gesture, it may have an adverse effect," Chandler said, "leaving us more convinced that other people are nasty and hostile. This may lead to additional hostile acts down the road." The M.I.A. incident harked back to the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show when Justin Timberlake ripped off Janet Jackson's bustier and exposed her right breast. The Federal Communications Commission that regulates U.S. airwaves fined CBS $550,000, a fine later thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court. en-us http://www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/news/department/news/?id=439 Amy Glaspie, Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) 2012-01-30 SRA is pleased to announce the winners of the 2012 SRA Election. Thank you for all who participated in the election of the new SRA Representatives. To read the entire news release, see the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) website at http://www.s-r-a.org/announcements/2012-01-26-sra-2012-election-winners?utm_source=SRA+Membership and amp;utm_campaign=e592e26f64-SRA_Connection_1_26_2012 and amp;utm_medium=email. en-us http://www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/news/department/news/?id=438 Fiona Lee, Dept of Psychology UM 2012-01-23 Edward Chang will receive the American Psychological Foundation's Theodore Millon Mid-Career Award in Personality Psychology. He is recognized for his excellent research on the structure and function of personality variables such as optimism/pessimism and perfectionism.
Great work Ed! Ed will receive his award at the APA meetings this summer in Florida. Congratulations!! Fiona en-us http://www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/news/department/news/?id=437 Fiona Lee, Dept of Psychology UM 2012-01-23 Christopher Peterson will be recognized by the APA with the Toy Caldwell-Colbert Award for Distinguished Educator in Clincial Psychology. He was singled our for his outstanding teaching and mentoring of undergraduate students, graduate students, and junior faculty through the years. What a well-deserved recognition Chris! Chris will receive his award at the APA meetings this summer in Florida. Congratulations!! Fiona en-us http://www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/news/department/news/?id=436 Jared Wadley 2012-01-23 ANN ARBOR, Mich.-New University of Michigan research indicates that people in higher-ranked positions tend to exhibit facial expressions that are perceived by others as less cooperative, influencing how others react to them. "Our studies show that the effects of rank on cooperativeness spill over into the individual's nonverbal cues, which are not only picked up by observers, but also lead them to act differently towards the individual," said Patricia Chen, a U-M psychology graduate student and the study's lead author. The findings contribute to broader research on rankings, cooperativeness and nonverbal expressions, as well as negotiations, leadership and group dynamics. In three studies, Chen and colleagues tested the hypothesis that the higher the rank of an individual's group, the less cooperative the facial expression of that person is judged to be. They showed that these effects occur even when independent evaluators know nothing about the target's identity, group or actual rankings. One study examined the effect among top business school deans. Thirty-five U-M undergraduate students and alumni completed an online survey involving cropped photographs of the faces of deans from top business schools at other universities. Respondents, blind to the actual rankings and identities of the people they rated, viewed these photographs and then reported how cooperative the deans looked. The results showed that the higher the rank of the business school, the less cooperative the dean appeared. In a second study, the researchers manipulated the relative rankings of student participants in a quiz bowl competition. Some students were told that their competitor was from a higher-ranked university, while others were told that their competitor was from a lower-ranked community college. Photographs of these participants were taken and given to independent raters, who were blind to the manipulated ranks. The findings indicate that students assigned to positions of higher ranks were perceived as less cooperative, and vice versa. These results show that less cooperative-looking people are not necessarily selected into higher-ranked organizations. Rather, situational cues of these positions evoke hierarchical facial expressions. A final study demonstrated that the repercussions of these observations extend beyond the mere perception of cooperativeness to actual behavioral intentions. Nearly 140 participants were randomly assigned to an interaction partner, whose photograph was either that of a top-ranked business school dean or a lower ranked one. Blind to the identity and rank of their negotiation partner, who was introduced as a fictitious associate dean in charge of allocating money to student groups on campus, respondents faced a scenario in which they were asked to negotiate the annual budget for their student organization. Again, the results indicate that participants judged the higher-ranked negotiation partner as appearing less cooperative than the lower-ranked one. Furthermore, these perceptions of cooperativeness predicted how collaborative and receptive the associate dean appeared to be, and the amount of money participants requested from him for their student group. Thus, less money was requested when participants negotiated against a higher-ranked person who appeared less cooperative. "Leaders need to be aware that their ranking might spill over into their facial expressions when they interact with others in the organization, affecting what others think of their cooperative intentions," said co-author Christopher Myers, a doctoral student in the Ross School of Business. The researchers noted that if followers do not perceive the leader as cooperative, they tend to be less motivated, committed and open in their communication. They also said that the study only tested the effect of rankings on facial expressions of men, but that they would expect a similar pattern of results of rankings on women. Chen and Myers conducted the research with Shirli Kopelman, clinical assistant professor of management and organizations, and Stephen Garcia, associate professor of psychology. The findings will appear in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology.
en-us http://www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/news/department/news/?id=435 American Psychological Association 2012-01-23 Anne Berry
University of Michigan Anne Berry is a third year graduate student in the Neuroscience program at the University of Michigan, where she works with Cindy Lustig and Martin Sarter studying the neural mechanisms of attention in humans and rodent models. Berry's research assesses the degree to which neuroscientific evidence about the control of attention gained from rat studies is applicable to humans. She investigates the neural mechanisms of distinct processes of attention (distractor resistance, signal detection, and processing mode shifts) using a task validated for use in both rats and humans. The results indicate strong parallels across species in the pattern of neural activity in prefrontal cortex. Her recent research compared measures of acetylcholine release in rats (microdialysis, electrochemistry) to BOLD fMRI in humans. Her current work focuses on evaluating parallels in electrophysiological correlates of attention across species. en-us