Bad judgments about people can affect memories of them, Cornell study finds
By Susan S. Lang

Viewing a person as dishonest or immoral can distort memory, a Cornell study suggests. So much so, that when we attempt to recall that person's behavior, it seems to be worse than it really was.

"In other words, our study shows that morally blaming a person can distort memory for the severity of his or her crime or misbehavior," said David Pizarro, assistant professor of psychology at Cornell.

Pizarro and three colleagues gave 283 college students a story about a man who walked out on a restaurant bill, including what the man ate and drank and the amount of his bill. Half the participants read that the man walked out on the bill because he "was a jerk who liked to steal," and half read that the man left without paying because he received an emergency phone call.

"One week later the people who were told he was a jerk remembered a higher bill -- from 10 to 25 percent more than the bill actually was. Those who were told he had an emergency phone call remembered a slightly lower-than-actual bill," said Pizarro, the first author of a study to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Memory and Cognition. His co-authors include University of California (UC)-Irvine's Elizabeth Loftus, whose groundbreaking work put memory distortion on the map in the late 1980s when she showed that subjects viewing a film clip of a car accident estimated the speed of the cars differently depending on whether such words as hit, collided or mashed were used in the question.

Previous studies have found that leading questions can influence memory of an incident, and that thinking that someone is good (or bad) in one area tends to influence judgments about them in other areas.

"But this is the first study that we know of that looked at how blame might affect memory regarding objective facts, which you usually think of as less susceptible to distortion," Pizarro said. "It suggests that negative evaluations are capable of exerting a distorting effect on memory as well."

The findings have particular implications for eyewitness testimonies, Pizarro noted. "Spontaneous evaluations made by an eyewitness about a defendant may influence their memories about the event in question -- memories that often serve as the very data that judges and juries use as input into their judgments of guilt."

In addition, eyewitnesses who hear information about the moral character of a defendant, "even long after the events have occurred," may misremember the events in question, such as the severity of the crime, putting perpetrators at greater risk.

Cornell Chronicle Online
13 March 2006

Teenage girls with symptoms of depression may have a higher risk of subsequent physical abuse by their partners than those who don't have symptoms of depression, according to a study in the March issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Major depressive disorder affects about 21 percent of girls and women aged 15 to 24 years, and an additional 10 percent experience minor depression, according to background information in the article. Depressive symptoms and disorders during adolescence have been linked to a number of negative outcomes later in life, including low self-esteem, interpersonal difficulties, divorce, impaired social functioning and problems at work. Depression is understood to often occur as a consequence of partner violence, but few studies have examined whether depression early in life puts women at an increased risk for subsequent exposure to such violence. [read more]

EurekAlert
6 March 2006

Do you think using a hands-free device makes it okay to talk on a cell phone while driving? Despite the well-intended laws requiring the use of hands-free devices, a driver's performance is impaired when distracted by even the simplest tasks, whether or not both hands are on the steering wheel.

Until now, the slowing of reaction time under multitasking conditions, referred to as the psychological-refractory-period (PRP) effect, has been studied mainly with simple tasks in laboratory settings. But a new research study presents a unique perspective of how the PRP effect pertains to driving, perhaps the most ubiquitous real-world task where non-optimal performance can have serious consequences.

EurekAlert
9 March 2006

First evidence for altruistic behaviours in human infants and chimpanzees

According to a Yiddish proverb, ‘if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm’. A new study from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany offers another place to find one - children and chimpanzees. Researchers developed several helping scenarios in which an adult was struggling with a problem and needed help. In one such scenario, an adult accidentally dropped objects on a floor and was unable to reach them. Human infants at 18 month of age helped spontaneously in several of the tasks. Also, chimpanzees displayed similar helping behaviours, although only in easier tasks. These new findings show that rudimentary forms of altruistic behaviours are present in our closest evolutionary relatives. As recent findings by other researchers from the same institute show, these seem to be restricted to particular situations.

2 March 2006

Chimpanzees recognized when collaboration was necessary and chose the best collaborative partner
    
In the animal kingdom cooperation is crucial for survival. Predators hunt in prides and prey band together to protect themselves. Yet no other creature cooperates as successfully as we do. But where did this ability come from, and is it uniquely human? In a new study to be published in Science on 3 March 2006, Alicia Melis and co-authors from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany show that our close relatives, chimpanzees, are much better cooperators than we thought.

2 March 2006

Debate simmers over popular antidepressant ad claims
28 February 2006

Summary: Despite claims by pharmaceutical companies and contrary to popular belief, there is no research evidence that depression is caused by serotonin deficiency in the brain. In fact, there are numerous reasons to question this "chemical imbalance" theory of depression altogether:

• There is currently no way to measure levels of neurochemicals in the living brain, so chemical imbalance theories are speculative;
  
• Research indicates that psychotherapy, particularly cognitive therapy, is as or more effective as meds in treating depression and preventing relapse, and does so without the side effects associated with medications;
  
• Research also demonstrates the benefits of exercise in improving mood;
  
• Just because SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors] can alleviate some depressions doesn't necessarily mean low serotonin levels caused the depression to begin with. "The fact that aspirin cures headache does not prove that headaches are due to low levels of aspirin in the brain," researchers note. The same may be true for SSRIs and depression.

Nonetheless, pharmaceutical companies' various direct-to-consumer ads, specifically Pfizer's Zoloft ad, have convinced the general population of this oversimplified biochemical explanation for depression, which may be preventing people from getting the "more comprehensive care" they need.

See also:
Advertisements for SSRIs May Be Misleading