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Advances in the History of Psychology has just alerted me to a fascinating short article on the work of the influential 18th-century physician Samuel Tissot, who wrote a book arguing that concentrating on books for too long damaged the mind.
The 18th century was when books were becoming cheap enough to be widely available to the middle classes and it’s interesting that this new cultural development produced a similar pseudo-medical concern about damage to the mind that we often hear today, but in a completely different direction.
While modern day technological doom-sayers suggest that technology damages the mind because it interrupts concentration, 18th century technological doom-sayers suggested that reading damaged the mind because it required too much concentration.
Neither have an evidence base, but I maintain a morbid interest in medicalised concerns about new technology and cultural innovations, which often take the same basic form but cite a cause which is always curiously in line with the authors’ prejudices.
It turns out Tissot, like many of this medical contemporaries, was also obsessed with masturbation, which he cited as the cause of madness and a host of other psychological problems.
Catholic church aside, it seems an ridiculous view to us now, but it was widely held by some of the most prominent and influential medical men of the time.
Link to Guardian ‘Beware: studying can make you ill’.
Link to AHP on ‘Read Till You’re Crazy’.
The new edition of Scientific American Mind is out an it has an excellent cover article on the psychological effects of humour and laughter.
It’s a remarkably wide-ranging article, covering everything from the effect on the immune system, to laughter’s pain killing properties to its beneficial effect on mental health.
There’s also an interesting aside on the role of humour in attraction:
In 2006 psychologists Eric R. Bressler of Westfield State College and Sigal Balshine of McMaster University in Ontario reported that women are more likely to consider a man in a photograph a desirable relationship partner if the picture is accompanied by a funny quote attributed to the man. In fact, the women preferred the funny men despite rating them, on average, less intelligent and less trustworthy.
Although the men in Bressler and Balshine’s study did not prefer witty women as partners, other research indicates that both men and women value a “sense of humor” when choosing a partner. Either way, males do seem to like ladies who laugh at their jokes. A 1990 study suggests that when women and men chat, the amount of laughing by the woman indicates both her interest in dating the man and her sexual appeal to the man. (The man’s laughter did not relate to attraction in either direction.)
The issue also has freely available online articles on ‘brain training’, the psychological effect of architecture and personality disorder with many more in the print edition.
Link to April’s SciAmMind.
Have you ever been in conversation with someone who had no idea what they were talking about? Maybe you were at a party, in a meeting, or just standing in line for a burger. And someone starts talking about a topic and they are 100% wrong. And you know it’s wrong.
(For the record, I’m not talking about differences of opinion here. I’m talking about being wrong on well-established subjects that have verifiable facts, not opinions. )
Here’s the interesting part of their blathering. They don’t realize they are wrong In fact, they truly believe they know what they are talking about. Sounds odd, right? Surely someone can’t go on endlessly without realizing they are wrong. They must have some idea that they are wrong, or at least off by a little. Right?
A Cornell University study set out to prove just that point. And, as it turns out, people who scored lower on tests results about a topic had an interesting idiosyncrasy. In addition to their low scores, they didn’t realize their own low scores. They over-estimated their ability on the tests.
The study compared 3 groups and ran tests on their expertise in humor, logical reasoning, and grammar. The low scorers and high scorers were asked to gauge their own performance. In all cases, the low scorers in the groups all significantly overestimated their performance. Every time.
Fascinating.
The explanation for this overestimate is hidden within the low scores. Because the lower percentile doesn’t have knowledge in the field, hence the low scores, they also lack the capacity to accurately evaluate their performance. They lack the metacognitive ability to asses themselves.
What does this mean for you? It means next time you hear someone spouting off on a topic and they don’t know what they are talking about, take pause before correcting them. They earnestly believe in what they are saying. You correcting them probably won’t lead anywhere except an argument, since they don’t have the capacity to correctly assess your argument.
Source article: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments
William James is one of the founding fathers of psychology. Well before psychology reached the mainstream discipline as we know it today, William James was making significant contributions on emotion, pragmatism, and religious theories.
Read more about William James.
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