Comments for Psychology In Action

Comment on More money more problems? Rich teens, drugs, and other mental health issues by viktoryian

viktoryian — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:39:11 +0000

Very interesting article!
ViktoryiaN

Comment on The Ethics of Neuroenhancement by khumphreys

khumphreys — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:38:22 +0000

Certainly if the medications are iatrogenic they should be discontinued. To date, the side-effects of stimulant medications are known to include decreased appetite, trouble sleeping (if taken too late in the day), and in some cases increased anxiety. Any potential users should be aware of these side-effects and the possible implications for mixing “neuroenhancers” with other substances before initiation of use.

Comment on Drug memories and relapse: A light at the end of the tunnel? by thevinyard

thevinyard — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:48:52 +0000

talk to me… i have led a life of addiction…triggers get easier with time…

Comment on Social Cognitive Neuroscience under attack! by Elliot Berkman

Elliot Berkman — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:43:14 +0000

Thanks for the post, Tage. It turns out that the voodoo paper that criticizes SCN for committing sampling bias and non-independence errors is replete with…sampling bias and non-independence errors. Read the full reply here:

http://www.scn.ucla.edu/pdf/LiebermanBerkmanWager(invitedreply).pdf

Comment on Gossip by Tage

Tage — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:18:19 +0000

Its weird that the front half of the article puts all of the emphasis on the information gaining aspects of gossip and its use as a tool for improving social status. Although that’s certainly true, these could just be byproducts of the original process, and just from intuition it seems more likely that gossip evolved b/c of its use as safe, low cost punishment. This seems particularly likely when we think about power dynamics between genders and how attentive to gossip women are.

Comment on Are there differences at the neural level in the ways that liberals and conservatives process information? by Tage

Tage — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 06:52:14 +0000

Adi,
I need to preface this by saying that I still haven’t read the paper and so I don’t know if there actually was a difference in task performance between liberals and conservatives. So consider this to be my academic ideological response to the potentially hypothetical scenario of task performance being the same across groups, as you asked me about. You asked what I would do if I “found a difference in the way members of two groups performed a task, though both groups scored the same on the task.” I don’t like this analogy b/c in a behavioral experiment, I can be sure about the causal chain (i.e. the ‘way members performed a task’) whereas in brain scanning, all I have is a correlation between activation and performance. The answer to how I interpret this brain study is that I don’t dismiss it, but I am fairly critical, and as its a sensitive topic, I think we should be very careful about our claims.

Why? I think your response highlights the issue- “I read the above post as reporting differences in the way people with a more, or less, conservative political orientation use brain resources to solve the go-no go task.”

The problem is that I don’t think that’s how most people read the study, I don’t think that’s how the study is sold, and I don’t think that’s how we presented the study on our site. The inspiration for the study was proposed personality differences between conservatives and liberals in their cognitive styles such as need for structure and acceptance of ambiguity. The researchers assumed that these differences would be reflected in a go-no go task. Thus, although emily mentioned the researchers don’t make conclusive claims, the power of the paper is in its implications, which go beyond your point. If there is no performance difference between liberals and conservatives on the task, then connecting the task (and by association, the ACC) to phenomena like cognitive consistency and need for structure is problematic b/c those are phenomena where there is a proposed difference between liberals and conservatives. Rather, my conclusion from these results would be that on a behavioral level, the go-no go task doesn’t seem to be reflective of more or less structured and flexible cogntive styles. Now, if the researchers picked the go-no go task b/c previous research had shown a correlation between task performance and cogntive style, then you have a whole other level of problem either in those studies that reported the relation, this study that didn’t find the relation, or the studies that reported the relation between political orientation and cogntive style.

Comment on Correlation, causation, or association – What does it all mean??? by DrPsych

DrPsych — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 02:10:09 +0000

Hey there Stat,
your point regarding the additional forms of assessing associations is well taken, though for the most part, I try to simplify things a bit on here
Also, it is definitely true that temporal relationship strengthen correlational findings.
Thanks for taking the time to read and even more so for taking the time to leave a comment!

Have a great day

Comment on Correlation, causation, or association – What does it all mean??? by statchat

statchat — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 02:00:18 +0000

This is a great article. A couple additional points. You did go out of your way in the other post to state that the study showed an association, but perhaps you didn’t need to go that far. I’m not an expert in this, but I do know that time order is often used to support the causal direction of associations.

True, perhaps an unmeasured variable leads people to both smoke marijuana as a teenager and have relationship problems in their twenties (say, lack of coping skills?), but we at least know in this case that it isn’t bad relationships in adulthood causing the marijuana use.

And correlation and association are not entirely synonymous, technically speaking. Correlation is one way of measuring association. Other methods (such as a chi-square) can also measure association where correlation doesn’t make sense.

Comment on Are there differences at the neural level in the ways that liberals and conservatives process information? by AlexM

AlexM — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:07:04 +0000

Your blog is interesting!

Keep up the good work!

Comment on Abortion does not cause mental illness by Emily

Emily — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:25:15 +0000

Hey Adi,
I completely agree that the work is worth doing initially, but my reaction was more to the tone of the NYT article which seemed to suggest that the results are not yet believable. I am all for strong methods and replication, but my read of the coverage was that despite two large reviews by big scientific bodies, the author was still not convinced, whereas if there had even been even a suggestion in the other direction, my sense is that people would freak out.

Furthermore, consider the paradoxical effect that sometimes processing information has the opposite effect than what is intended. So, if I give present some information framed in the negative (“John is not a murderer”; “Abortion does not cause mental illness”) under certain reading conditions (like when people aren’t devoting full attention), the reader might keep the association but lose the negation (“Maybe John is a murder”; “I seem to remember some connection between abortion and mental illness”)? Check out Houston and Wegner (1993) for examples of when people do or don’t take the real meaning from a message, and Wegner (1994) for some other interesting, ironic effects when trying to exert mental control.