Psych-O-Babble                         

                                The Schreiner University Psychology Department Newsletter

                                                                   Issue #1, Spring, 2008

 Why politicians cannot tell fibs

A politician can never fib flawlessly because their body language will always give them away, psychologists say.

No amount of coaching or media training can co-ordinate the hand gestures and facial expressions to fully cover up what a person knows not to be true. The bite of the lip, a movement of the eyebrow or simply where they walk on the ceremonial carpet can betray what a politician really thinks and feels. Researchers explained how to read the signs at a science meeting in Norwich. "Nobody can escape the eye of the psychologist," Dr Peter Collett, formerly of Oxford University, told the British Association's Science Festival. Psychologists compare the silent language of politics to poker "tells" - tiny unintentional behaviours that card players use to work out the strength of their opponent's hand. These can be particular gestures, movements of the mouth or merely how an individual holds their body. For example, each politician has their own signature tells which a trained eye can use to detect moments of stress during a speech or press conference, claims Dr Collett.

The smile

Tony Blair unconsciously fiddles with his little finger whenever an opponent makes him anxious. He also touches his stomach when he feels under threat - a gesture that harks back to childhood, the psychology panel at the BA asserted. George Bush, on the other hand, bites the inside of his cheek at anxious moments. The famously uncomfortable relationship between Mr Blair and his Chancellor Gordon Brown was also full of "body language fibs", the scientists said. "At one level, Brown is desperate to show his support for Blair; but if you freeze the smiling you can see the emotions underneath," explained Professor Geoffrey Beattie of the University of Manchester. "It's a kind of grimaced smile." "When you look at a genuine smile, it rises upwards and all the bits come together. Brown has a flashbulb smile," added Dr Collett.

The 'bodybuilder'

Dr Collett also claims that dominant relationships are given away by who looks at whom. By gazing away into the distance when another person is speaking, a politician can indicate that they do not think the speaker is important enough to deserve attention. Politicians also used intentional movements to try to manipulate the audience's perception of their story, the panel stated. In some cases, the politician may be aware of the effect of the movement itself. For example, Bill Clinton tended to bite his lip when he wanted to appear emotional, Dr Collett said. Clinton bit his lip 15 times in two minutes during his apology to the American nation over his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Others instances may be less contrived, but occur when the person wants to appear powerful or friendly. George Bush walks like a body builder, hanging his palms to the rear as though laden down by huge muscle, to imply that he's larger than he actually is, says Dr Collett. Mr Blair raises his eyebrows when he wants to appear non-threatening, a submissive gesture. But try as they might, politicians can never have complete control over these signals. And if a politician told an outright lie, their body language would almost certainly give the game away, the psychologists claimed. "You can teach people to smile of course, but a genuine smile? It's a different bit of the brain to these masking smiles and you can't fake it," said Professor Beattie. "It's just too difficult."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/5316916.stm

Published: 2006/09/05 13:49:28 GMT

© BBC MMVI

Busted! Researchers upend stereotype of women and math

By Richard Morin
The Washington Post
Published September 6, 2006

Strange but true: Women score much lower on math tests if they are first asked unrelated questions about gender issues. The phenomenon is called "stereotype threat" -- a kind of performance anxiety discovered in 1995 when psychologists found that black students at Stanford University did significantly worse on intelligence tests if they were first asked to identify their race on the test form. Since then, dozens of other experiments have confirmed that cuing women or minorities to think subconsciously about their sex or race causes them to do poorly in areas where the stereotype suggests they are weak.
University of Texas psychologist Matthew S. McGlone wondered: What if you prompted people to think about their strengths rather than their stereotypical weaknesses -- would that be enough to improve performance in areas where they weren't supposed to do well? McGlone, working with Joshua Aronson of New York University, found the answer is yes. The study involved 90 students, half men and half women, at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. The students filled out a questionnaire that first asked them general questions about campus life. In a second section, researchers varied the questions in slightly different ways. One group of students were asked whether they lived in a single-sex or coed dorm. Another group answered questions about why they chose to attend a private liberal arts college. The goal was to nudge these young women and men into thinking how smart and accomplished they were. The remaining students, the control group, were asked to write about their experience living in the northeastern United States. The students then took the Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test, a standard test of visual-spatial abilities linked to math performance in which objects are shown at different angles and the test-taker has to pick the identical pair. Previous studies found that men are three times as likely as women to do well on this test, McGlone and Aronson wrote in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. When they analyzed the data, they found that men in the control group did, indeed, perform 15 to 20 percent better than the women on the Vandenberg test, in line with previous studies. Among those who had been subtly cued to think about their gender, the gap was even wider -- guys did "25 percent to 30 percent better than the women," again consistent with previous research, McGlone said. The surprise came among those who were primed to think about their status as students at an exclusive private college. The gender gap closed dramatically, as women's scores improved while men's stayed the same.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

                                           Humorous Definitions (just for fun; do not use these answers on a test)

Statistics: Branch of mathematics used to predict how we generally behave without the need to discover how we specifically behave. Statistics can be used to justify any conclusion you want, from the virtue of eating your broccoli to the reality of UFO's. In psychology, statistics is used to give that special veneer of intellectual sophistication and cryptic buzz to the otherwise plain results of simple questionnaires, thus assuring a steady supply of journal articles and tenured psychology professors.

Psychology: The science of mind that may or may not involve science or mind, may or may not involve behavior, may or may not be theoretical, empirical, ethological, or logical, and may or may not be simplistic, incomprehensible, or downright obvious. Psychology, by being all definitions for all people, is an all encompassing discipline that gives us clues to our behavior and keeps us clueless about behavior at the same time.

                                                                                                                                                                     Submitted by Dr. Gary Biel

This is the first edition of this publication. If you wish to submit any article, information piece, classified notice, or personal reflection for a future edition, please do so by contacting Dr. Gary Biel at gabiel@schreiner.edu or by calling 830-792-7453.

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