by Adam Alter
Beautiful chess players: Dreber, A., Gerdes, C., and Gränsmark, P. (2012). Beauty queens and battling knights: Risk taking and attractiveness in chess. (Unpublished manuscript.) Available at http://ftp.iza.org/dp5314.pdf.
Skateboarders and beautiful women: Ronay, R., and von Hippel, W. (2010). Power, testosterone and risk-taking: The moderating influence of testosterone and executive functions. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 23, 439–526; Ronay, R., and von Hippel, W. (2010). The presence of an attractive woman elevates testosterone and risk-taking in young men. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1, 57–64.
Lap dancers and menstrual cycles: Miller, G., Tybur, J. M., and Jordan, B. D. (2007). Ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings by lap dancers: Economic evidence for human estrus? Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 375–381.
Martin Luther King sees a black president in twenty-five years: Interview available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUbcKCRraGs.
Black faces prime weapons: Eberhardt, J. L., Goff, P. A., Purdie, V. J., and Davies, P. G. (2004). Seeing Black: race, crime, and visual processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 876–893.
Three-frame image of gun becoming progressively clearer: Appears courtesy of the American Psychological Association, publisher of Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie, and Davies (2004). Seeing Black: race, crime, and visual processing.
“Looking deathworthy” paper: Eberhardt, J. L., Davies, P. G., Purdie-Vaughns, V. J., and Johnson, S. L. (2006). Looking deathworthy: Perceived stereotypicality of Black defendants predicts capital-sentencing outcomes. Psychological Science, 17, 383–386.
Race and the ape metaphor: Goff, P. A., Eberhardt, J. L., Williams, M. J., and Jackson, M. C. (2008). Not yet human: Implicit knowledge, historical dehumanization, and contemporary consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 292–306.
Detecting shooters by race: Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C. M., and Wittenbrink, B. (2002). The police officer’s dilemma: Using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1314–1329.
Muslim headgear and detecting shooters: Unkelbach, C., Forgas, J. P., and Denson, T. (2007). The turban effect: The influence of Muslim headgear and induced affect on aggressive responses in the shooter bias paradigm. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 513–528.
Two-frame image of shooter-detection task: Appears courtesy of the American Psychological Association, publisher of Correll, Park, Judd, and Wittenbrink (2002). The police officer’s dilemma: Using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals.
Vero Labs and Liquid Trust: Information from websites: http://oxytocinnasalspray.org/; http://www.verolabs.com/how.asp.
Oxytocin induces trust: Kosfeld, M., Heinrichs, M., Zak, P. J., Fischbacher U., and Fehr, E. (2005). Oxytocin increases trust in humans. Nature, 435, 673–676; Uvnas-Moberg, K. (1998). Oxytocin may mediate the benefits of positive social interaction and emotions. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 23, 819–835; Bartels, A., and Zeki, S. (2004). The neural correlates of maternal and romantic love. Neuroimage, 21, 1155–1166.
Oxytocin makes people more aggressive toward out-groups: De Dreu, C. K. W., Greer, L. L., Van Kleef, G. A., Shalvi, S., and Handgraaf, M. J. J. (2011). Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 108, 1262–1266. A number of other studies have similarly contradicted oxytocin’s over-simplified billing as the “cuddle chemical” or the “love hormone.” For a summary, see Yong, E. (February 11, 2012). Dark side of love. NewScientist, 39–42. See also: Declerck, C. H., Boone, C., and Kiyonari, T. (2010). Oxytocin and cooperation under conditions of uncertainty: the modulating role of incentives and social information. Hormones & Behavior, 57, 368–374; Bartz, J., Simeon, D., Hamilton, H., Kim, S., Crystal, S., Braun A., . . . Hollander, E (2011). Oxytocin can hinder trust and cooperation in borderline personality disorder. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 6, 556–563; Bartz, J. A., Zaki, J., Ochsner, K. N., Bolger, N., Kolevzon, A., Ludwig, N., and Lydon, J. E. (2010). Effects of oxytocin on recollections of maternal care and closeness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U. S. A., 107, 21371–21375; Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., Fischer, M., Dvash, J., Harari, H., Pelach-Bloom, N., and Levkovitz, Y. (2009). Intranasal administration of oxytocin increases envy and schadenfreude (gloating). Biological Psychiatry, 66, 864–870.
Looking at partner’s photo reduces physical pain: Eisenberger, N. I., Master, S. L., Inagaki, T. I., Taylor, S. E., Shirinyan, D., Lieberman, M. D., and Naliboff, B. (2011). Attachment figures activate a safety signal–related neural region and reduce pain experience. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 11721–11726; Master, S. L., Eisenberger, N. I., Taylor, S. E., Naliboff, B. D., Shirinyan, D., and Lieberman, M. D. (2009). A picture’s worth: Partner photographs reduce experimentally induced pain. Psychological Science, 20, 1316–1318; Younger, J., Aron, A., Parke, S., Chatterjee, N., and Mackey, S. (2010). Viewing pictures of a romantic partner reduces experimental pain: Involvement of neural reward systems. PLoS ONE, 5, e13309.
Childhood memories promote moral behavior: Gino, F., and Desai, S. D. (2012). Memory lane and morality: How childhood memories promote prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 743–758.
Looking in the mirror prompts honesty: Diener, E., and Wallbom, M. (1976). Effects of self-awareness on antinormative behavior. Journal of Research in Personality, 10, 107–111; Batson, C. D, Thompson, E. R., Seuferling, G., Whitney, H., and Strongman, J. A. (1999). Moral hypocrisy: Appearing moral to oneself without being so. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 525–537.
Chapter 6: Culture
The Müller-Lyer illusion: The illusion was originally published in Müller-Lyer, F. C. (1889). Optische Urteilstäuschungen. Archiv für Physiologie Suppl., 263–270.
WEIRD people: Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., and Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 61–83.
Cultural differences in the Müller-Lyer illusion: Segall, M. H., Campbell, D. T., and Herskovits, M. J. (1963). Cultural differences in the perception of geometric illusions. Science, 193, 769–771; for more on why these differences emerge, see Howe, C. Q., and Purves, D. (2005). The Müller-Lyer illusion explained by the statistics of image-source relationships. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102, 1234–1239.
Chinese and American students remember photos differently: Masuda, T., Gonzalez, R., Kwan, L., and Nisbett, R. E. (2008). Culture and aesthetic preference: Comparing the attention to context of East Asians and European Americans. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1260–1275; Chua, H. F., Boland, J. E., and Nisbett, R. E. (2005). Cultural variation in eye movements during scene perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102, 12629–12633; Ji, L., Peng, K., and Nisbett, R. E. (2000). Culture, control, and perception of relationships in the environment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 943–955; Kitayama, S., Duffy, S., Kawamura, T., and Larsen, J. T. (2003). A cultural look at New Look: Perceiving an object and its context in two cultures. Psychological Science, 14, 201–206. Other relevant papers: Miyamoto, Y., Nisbett, R. E., and Masuda, T. (2006). Culture and physical environment: Holistic versus analytic perceptual affordance. Psychological Science, 17, 113–119; Masuda, T., and Nisbett, R. E. (2001). Attending holistically vs. analytically: Comparing the context sensitivity of Japanese and Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 922–934; Nisbett, R. E., and Masuda, T. (2003). Culture and point of view. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100, 11163–11175.
Context in emotion perception for American and Japanese students: Masuda, T., Ellsworth, P. C., Mesquita, B., Leu, J., Tanida, S., and van de Veerdonk, E. (2008). Placing the face in context: Cultural differences in the perception of facial emotion. Journal of Personality and Socia
l Psychology, 94, 365–381.
Image of cartoon figures with happy and sad expressions: Appears courtesy of the American Psychological Association, publisher of Masuda, Ellsworth, Mesquita, Leu, Tanida, and van de Veerdonk (2008). Placing the face in context: Cultural differences in the perception of facial emotion.
Importance of harmony to East Asians: Kim, H. S., and Markus, H. R. (1999). Deviance or uniqueness, harmony or conformity? A cultural analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 785–800. For a more general discussion of individualism and collectivism, see Markus, H. R., and Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253.
Asch’s conformity experiment: Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs, 70, Whole No. 416.
Cross-cultural differences in Asch’s conformity result: Bond, R., and Smith, P. B. (1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch’s (1952b, 1956) line judgment task. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 111–137.
Microbe levels and individualism and collectivism: Fincher, C. L., Thornhill, R., Murray, D. R., and Schaller, M. (2008). Pathogen prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in individualism/collectivism. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 275, 1279–1285.
Mathematics and children in Brazil: Saxe, G. B. (1988). The mathematics of child street vendors. Child Development, 59, 1415–1425.
What makes art appealing in different countries: Masuda, T., Gonzalez, R., Kwan, L., and Nisbett, R. E. (2008). Culture and aesthetic preference: Comparing the attention to context of East Asians and European Americans. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1260–1275.
Culture of honor in the American south: Cohen, D., Nisbett, R. E., Bowdle, B., and Schwarz, N. (1996). Insult, aggression, and the southern culture of honor. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 945–960; Cohen, D., and Nisbett, R. E. (1997). Field experiments examining the culture of honor: The role of institutions in perpetuating norms about violence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 1188–1199.
Accidents, violence, and the culture of honor: Barnes, C. D., Brown, R. P., and Tamborski, M. (2012). Living dangerously: Culture of honor, risk-taking, and the nonrandomness of “accidental” deaths. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3, 100–107; Cohen, D. (1998). Culture, social organization, and patterns of violence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 408–419.
Cultural maladies: Dzokoto, V. A., and Adams, G. (2005). Understanding genital-shrinking epidemics in West Africa: Koro, juju, or mass psychogenic illness? Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 29, 53–78; Iwata, Y., Suzuki, K., Takei, N., Toulopoulou, T., Tsuchiya, K. J., Matsumoto, K., . . . Mori, N. (2011). Jiko-shisen-kyofu (fear of one’s own glance), but not taijin-kyofusho (fear of interpersonal relations), is an East Asian culture-related specific syndrome. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 45, 148–152. A compendium of similar ailments: Bering, J. (July 11, 2011). A bad case of the brain fags. Slate. Available at http://www.slate.com/id/2298453. Note that koro affects Southeast Asians as well. In particular, epidemiologists have reported several prominent “outbreaks” in Malaysia and China.
Andrew Lam and growing up bicultural: PBS interview with Andrew Lam, available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/daughter/sfeature/sf_cultures.html.
Frame switching and biculturalism: Benet-Martinez, V., Leu, J., Lee, F., and Morris, M. W. (2002). Cultural frame switching in biculturals with oppositional versus compatible cultural identities. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 33, 492–516; Hong, Y., Morris, M. W., Chiu, C., and Benet-Martinez, V. (2000). Multicultural minds: A dynamic constructivist approach to culture and cognition. American Psychologist, 55, 709–720. Frame switching is mentally taxing: Hamilton, R., Vohs, K. D., Sellier, A., and Meyvis, T. (2011). Being of two minds: Switching mindsets exhausts self-regulatory resources. Organizational Behavior and Decision Processes, 115, 13–24.
Necker Cube as biculturalism metaphor: Necker, L. A. (1832). Observations on some remarkable optical phenomena seen in Switzerland; and on an optical phenomenon which occurs on viewing a figure of a crystal or geometrical solid. London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 1, 329–337.
Beverly Hills, 90210 and changing names in France: Disdier, A.-C., Head, K., and Mayer, T. (2010). Exposure to foreign media and changes in cultural traits: Evidence from naming patterns in France. Journal of International Economics, 80, 226–238.
Multiculturalism, weather, and stock prediction: Alter, A. L., and Kwan, V. S. Y. (2009). Cultural sharing in a global village: Extracultural cognition in European Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 742–760.
Chapter 7: Colors
Blue streetlights prevent crime and discourage suicide: Yomiuri Shimbun (December 11, 2008). Blue streetlights believed to prevent suicides, street crime. Seattle Times, available at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008494010_bluelight11.html.
Blue lights help sawmill workers: Sasseville, A., and Hebert, M. (2010). Using blue-green light at night and blue-blockers during the day to improve adaptation to night work: A pilot study. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry, 34, 1236–1242.
Kurt Goldstein’s early work in color science: Goldstein, K. (1942). Some experimental observations concerning the influence of colors on the function of the organism. Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation, 21, 147–151; Birren, F. (1978). Color psychology and color therapy. New York: Citadel.
Auroratone therapy: Rubin, H. E., and Katz, E. (1946). Auroratone films for the treatment of psychotic depressions in an army general hospital. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2, 333–340. Restored snippet from an Auroratone film available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFXku4MntpY.
Felix Deutsch’s tachycardiac patient: Deutsch, F. (1937). Psycho-physical reactions of the vascular system to influence of light and to impression gained through light. Folia Clinica Orientalia, Vol. I, No. 3–4.
The Hawthorne effect as an alternative explanation: Roethlisberger, F. J., and Dickson, W. J. (1939). Management and the worker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Red and color shock: James, W. T., and Domingos, W. R. (1953). The effect of color shock on motor performance and tremor. Journal of General Psychology, 48, 187–193; Gerard, R. M. (1958). Color and emotional arousal. American Psychologist, 13, 340.
Cerebellar disease: Goldstein, K. (1942). Some experimental observations concerning the influence of colors on the function of the organism. Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation, 21, 147–51; Birren, F. (1978). Color psychology and color therapy. New York: Citadel.
How Japanese students use crayons: Imada, M. (1926). Color preferences of school children. Japanese Journal of Psychology, 1, 1–21.
Color preferences across countries: Madden, T. J., Hewett, K., and Roth, M. S. (2000). Managing images in different cultures: A cross-national study of color meanings and preferences. Journal of International Marketing, 8, 90–107; Palmer, S. E., and Schloss, K. B. (2010). An ecological valence theory of human color preference. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 8877–8882; Miller, E. G., and Kahn, B. E. (2005). Shades of meaning: The effect of color and flavor names on consumer choice. Journal of Consumer Research, 32, 86–92.
OkCupid data: Available from OkCupid blog at http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/online-dating-advice-exactly-what-to-say-in-a-first-message/.
Female hitchhikers appeal to male drivers when they wear red: Guéguen, N. (2010). Color and women hitchhikers’ attractiveness: Gentlemen drivers prefer red. Color: Research and Application, 37, 76–78.
French women and T-shirt color on dating profiles: Guéguen, N., and Jacob, C. (2012). Color and cyber-attractiveness: Red enhances men’s attraction
to women’s internet personal ads. Color: Research and Application, in press.
Biology behind the appeal of red, and studies showing red appeals: Kayser, D. N., Elliot, A. J., and Feltman, R. (2010). Red and romantic behavior in men viewing women. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 901–908; Elliot, A. J., and Niesta, D. (2008). Romantic red: Red enhances men’s attraction to women. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1150–1164; Elliot, A. J., Kayser, D. N., Greitmeyer, T., Lichtenfeld, S., Gramzow, R. H., Maier, M. A., and Liu, H. (2008). Red, rank, and romance in women viewing men. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 139, 399–417. Another explanation for this effect, proposed by Adam Pazda and his colleagues, is that men perceive red-clad women as more sexually receptive: Pazda, A. D., Elliot, A. J., and Greitmeyer, T. (2012). Sexy red: Perceived sexual receptivity mediates the red-attraction relation in men viewing women. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 787–790; Elliot, A. J., and Pazda, A. D. (2012). Dressed for sex: Red as a female sexual signal in humans. PLoS ONE, 7, e34607.
Color scenes are more memorable: Spence, I., Wong, P., Rusan, M., and Rastegar, N. (2006). How color enhances visual memory for natural scenes. Psychological Science, 17, 1–6.
Red pen banned in Queensland: ABC News article, available at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-12-03/qld-govt-slams-tasteless-red-pen-debate/228210.
More mistakes found when graders use red pen: Rutchick, A. M., Slepian, M. L., and Ferris, B. D. (2010). The pen is mightier than the word: Object priming of evaluative standards. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 704–708.
Red pen hampers intellectual performance: Elliot, A. J., Maier, M. A., Moller, A. C., Friedman, R., and Meinhardt, J. (2007). Color and psychological functioning: The effect of red on performance attainment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136, 154–168; Elliot, A. J., and Maier, M. A. (2007). Color and psychological functioning. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 250–254; Elliot, A. J., Maier, M. A., Binser, M. J., Friedman, R., and Pekrun, R. (2009). The effect of red on avoidance behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 365–375.