̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Simone Schnall

Fervent fans keep faith with heroes even after ‘immoral acts’, study finds

fpjl2 — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 15:50:38 +0000

̽��ֱ��more that people express admiration for a public figure, the more likely they are to forgive and defend them after a 'moral violation', according to a new study analysing the posts from 36,464 YouTube followers of a famous online prankster.

̽��ֱ��findings suggest that we “resist updating our beliefs” about those we publicly support – even when they commit acts we might find appalling, say researchers.

Psychologists from Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� investigated fan reactions to online celebrity Logan Paul’s videos before and after a notorious incident in which he filmed the dead body of a man in Japan’s Aokigahara forest – tragically known as a ‘suicide site’ – and shared it with his followers.

In the video, Paul and friends make highly inappropriate jokes. At the time, the final day of 2017, he had over 15 million YouTube subscribers. ̽��ֱ��'suicide forest scandal' led to a major backlash against Paul and indeed YouTube, despite a public apology from him 48 hours later.

In a study published in the journal Social Psychological Bulletin, researchers used language-processing algorithms to assess the level of 'moral emotions' – from anger and disgust to adoration – displayed in comments by some of Paul’s army of YouTube followers over the course of the scandal.

̽��ֱ��psychologists deployed a 'concept dictionary' – lists of words associated with, for example, notions of love or forgiveness – to scan user commentary on seven Logan Paul videos prior to the scandal, and posts from those same followers on his apology video in the wake of the scandal.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that this approach allowed them to account for specific slang in their sentiment analyses, such as “logang4life”: a phrase used by Paul’s more devoted fans to demonstrate commitment.

“Imagine a celebrity or a politician you greatly admire does something you consider deeply immoral and repugnant. Would you stand by them?” said lead author Simon Karg, who conducted the work while at the Cambridge Body, Mind and Behaviour Laboratory.

“We can see that people often keep holding on to a positive character evaluation even when the admired person commits a severe transgression. ̽��ֱ��more important the person has been to us, the less likely we are willing to change our favourable opinion,” Karg said.

Cambridge social psychologist Prof Simone Schnall, the study’s senior author, said: “People often use celebrities in the construction of their social identity. A threat to the standing of a public figure can be perceived by fans as a threat to their own self-identity – something we may feel compelled to defend.”

Previous studies on how people judge moral character have been limited by small participant groups, often lab-based, as well as hypothetical scenarios. By scraping and analysing YouTube comments, the Cambridge team were able to investigate thousands of reactions to a 'real life' scandal of moral transgression.

Overall, 77% of the YouTube users who had left comments on a Logan Paul video before the scandal continued to support him afterwards, with only 16% expressing anger, and 4% disgust, after Paul mocked the dead man.

Psychologists were able to examine the link between pre-scandal attitudes and post-scandal messages of support among individual social media users.

YouTube users who commented often and positively on Logan Paul videos prior to the scandal were 12% more likely to continue to voice support for him once he had publicly disgraced himself.

Those who posted positively using Logan Paul fan language – an expression of 'social identity' – were 10% more likely to back Paul after the Aokigahara forest video.

Online behaviour predicted fan reactions beyond merely support for Logan Paul. For each one of his videos a user had commented on, their likelihood to display 'adoration' for Paul after the scandal increased by 4%.

Conversely, each pre-scandal Logan Paul video commented on by a YouTube user left them 5% less likely to express anger, and 9% less likely to express disgust, at his transgressive behaviour in Japan.

“High levels of online approval only led to the entrenchment of support when fans were suddenly faced with extremely negative information about their hero,” said Karg, who is now at Aarhus ̽��ֱ��.

“There are numerous examples of celebrities and politicians acting in less than ideal ways without much backlash from devoted partisans. It seems that fervent supporters will readily excuse deplorable actions by their heroes. ̽��ֱ��question is whether anything can break this spell of commitment,” Karg said.

Analysis of posts from thousands of social media users either side of a scandal – the dramatic fall of YouTube celebrity Logan Paul – shows how hard it is for us to update our beliefs about those we support, even when they behave in appalling ways.

A threat to the standing of a public figure can be perceived by fans as a threat to their own self-identity – something we may feel compelled to defend

Simone Schnall

Logan Paul/YouTube

Screen shot from Logan Paul's controversial YouTube video filmed in Japan

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Flu season 2021: how worried should we be?

jg533 — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 15:18:55 +0000

Are we in for a bad flu season this winter? Cambridge experts who have been studying flu for decades consider the scenarios that may lie ahead.

People more afraid of catching COVID-19 are more judgemental, study finds

jg533 — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 23:01:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers say their findings are evidence that our morality is shaped by various emotions and intuitions, of which concerns about health and safety are prominent. This means that our judgements of wrongdoing are not completely rational.

̽��ֱ��study, published today in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, did not focus on behaviours relating to the pandemic itself - such as social distancing - but considered a wide range of moral transgressions.

Between March and May 2020, over 900 study participants in the USA were presented with a series of scenarios and asked to rate them on a scale from ‘not at all wrong’ to ‘extremely wrong’. This enabled the researchers to measure participants’ responses across five key moral principles: harm, fairness, in-group loyalty, deference to authority, and purity.

Example scenarios include one of loyalty: ‘You see a man leaving his family business to go work for their main competitor’; and one of fairness: ‘You see a tenant bribing a landlord to be the first to get their apartment repainted.’

People who were more worried about catching COVID-19 judged the behaviours in these scenarios to be more wrong than those who were less worried.

“There is no rational reason to be more judgemental of others because you are worrying about getting sick during the pandemic,” said Professor Simone Schnall in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, senior author of the report.

She added: “These influences on judgements happen outside of our conscious awareness. If we feel that our wellbeing is threatened by the coronavirus, we are also likely to feel more threatened by other people’s wrong-doing – it’s an emotional link.”

̽��ֱ��findings contribute to a growing body of evidence of a link between physical disgust – an emotion designed to keep us from harm – and moral condemnation.

“Disgust is an emotion we think evolved to protect us from harm – avoiding a filthy toilet that might contaminate us with disease, for example. But now we apply it to social situations too, and can feel physically jeopardised by other people’s behaviour,” said Robert Henderson, a PhD student and Gates Scholar in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology and first author of the report.

He added: “ ̽��ֱ��link between being concerned about COVID-19 and moral condemnation is about risks to wellbeing. If you’re more conscious of health risks, you’re also more conscious of social risks – people whose behaviour could inflict harm upon you.”

This research was funded by the Gates Foundation Cambridge and the Bennett Institute for Public Policy.

Reference
Henderson, R.K., & Schnall, S. ‘Disease and Disapproval: COVID-19 Concern is Related to Greater Moral Condemnation.’ Evolutionary Psychology. May 2021. DOI: 10.1177/14747049211021524

Researchers studying how we make moral judgements found that people more concerned about catching COVID-19 were more disapproving of the wrong-doings of others, whatever they were doing wrong.

There is no rational reason to be more judgemental of others because you are worrying about getting sick during the pandemic

Simone Schnall

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Loan applications processed around midday more likely to be rejected

jg533 — Tue, 04 May 2021 23:01:00 +0000

These are the findings of a study by researchers in Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, published today in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

Decision fatigue is the tiredness caused by having to make difficult decisions over a long period. Previous studies have shown that people suffering from decision fatigue tend to fall back on the ‘default decision’: choosing whatever option is easier or seems safer.

̽��ֱ��researchers looked at the decisions made on 26,501 credit loan applications by 30 credit officers of a major bank over a month. ̽��ֱ��officers were making decisions on ‘restructuring requests’: where the customer already has a loan but is having difficulties paying it back, so asks the bank to adjust the repayments.

By studying decisions made at a bank, the researchers could calculate the economic cost of decision fatigue in a specific context - the first time this has been done. They found the bank could have collected around an extra $500,000 in loan repayments if all decisions had been made in the early morning.

“Credit officers were more willing to make the difficult decision of granting a customer more lenient loan repayment terms in the morning, but by midday they showed decision fatigue and were less likely to agree to a loan restructuring request. After lunchtime they probably felt more refreshed and were able to make better decisions again,” said Professor Simone Schnall in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, senior author of the report.

Decisions on loan restructuring requests are cognitively demanding: credit officers have to weigh up the financial strength of the customer against risk factors that reduce the likelihood of repayment. Errors can be costly to the bank. Approving the request results in a loss relative to the original payment plan, but if the restructuring succeeds, the loss is significantly smaller than if the loan is not repaid at all.

̽��ֱ��study found that customers whose restructuring requests were approved were more likely to repay their loan than if they were instructed to stick to the original repayment terms. Credit officers’ tendency to decline more requests around lunchtime was associated with a financial loss for the bank.

“Even decisions we might assume are very objective and driven by specific financial considerations are influenced by psychological factors. This is clear evidence that regular breaks during working hours are important for maintaining high levels of performance,” said Tobias Baer, a researcher in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology and first author of the report.

Modern work patterns have been characterised by extended hours and higher work volume. ̽��ֱ��results suggest that cutting down on prolonged periods of intensive mental exertion may make workers more productive.

Reference
Baer, T. & Schnall, S. ‘Quantifying the Cost of Decision Fatigue: Suboptimal Risk Decisions in Finance.’ R. Soc. Open Sci. May 2021.

Bank credit officers are more likely to approve loan applications earlier and later in the day, while ‘decision fatigue’ around midday is associated with defaulting to the safer option of saying no.

This is clear evidence that regular breaks during working hours are important for maintaining high levels of performance

Tobias Baer

By Tayeb Mezahdia from Pixabay

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‘Stay Safe Cambridge Uni’ public health campaign launched

sc604 — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 08:49:37 +0000

̽��ֱ��‘Stay Safe Cambridge Uni’ campaign has been developed by ̽��ֱ��, College and student representatives, and is based on the latest public health guidance. Additionally, Dr Simone Schnall from the Department of Psychology surveyed students and staff from across the ̽��ֱ�� and Colleges to determine which messages were most effective.

A variety of resources, including ̽��ֱ��-specific guidance, and videos, are being made available to new and returning students and staff, to support them in keeping themselves, the ̽��ֱ�� and the city as safe as possible during the pandemic.

Most of the measures being put in place by the ̽��ֱ�� and Colleges will be familiar as part of a plan to reduce the risk of community spread of the coronavirus. Face coverings will be required in most buildings, and social distancing for people from different households will be encouraged. For most Colleges, a household will be classified as students living together and sharing communal facilities, such as toilets and showers. ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� and Colleges will also advise students of their responsibilities while out and about in Cambridge and keep them up to date on the latest public health guidance.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� has its own dedicated COVID-19 testing capacity, which is free to any member of the ̽��ֱ�� displaying symptoms, along with members of their household. Testing is currently available at either Addenbrooke’s Hospital or the Department of Engineering.

“This year’s group of students – whether they are coming to Cambridge for the first time or returning to continue their studies – have been through an incredibly stressful few months, both because of the disruption caused by the pandemic and the confusion around exam results,” said Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen Toope. “This academic year will be unlike any other, and it will be challenging for all of us, but we will do everything we can to make sure our students feel safe and supported while they are here.”

“We don’t yet know how long we will all be living with COVID-19, but we do know that our success in controlling the virus will depend on everyone playing their part,” said Professor Graham Virgo, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education. “We all have a responsibility to minimise the spread of COVID-19. We are members of a wider community and take our responsibility to others in Cambridge and beyond very seriously.”

̽��ֱ��‘Stay Safe Cambridge Uni’ campaign has been developed to complement Cambridge City Council’s ‘Stay Safe Cambridge’ campaign, which was introduced following the relaxation of lockdown in early July.

Cllr Lewis Herbert, Leader of Cambridge City Council, said: “ ̽��ֱ��successful and safe return of students and university staff to Cambridge this autumn is vital for them and for our whole city. We have, as councils, been working in close partnership with our universities, so that everything is in place to protect people and to share sound advice to newcomers.

“Ensuring younger people keep safe as well as have fun and make the most of their time in Cambridge will boost our local fight to beat coronavirus and avoid the ongoing risks of both a fresh surge and the need for a lockdown in Cambridge. This is why we unequivocally endorse the efforts of our two ̽��ֱ�� #StaySafe campaigns and the considerable thought and planning taking place, so that we and everyone in Cambridge can successfully deliver our #StaySafeCambridge campaign.”

Many postgraduate students, especially those whose research is lab-based, have already returned to Cambridge. Most undergraduate students will return at the start of Michaelmas term, which begins on 8 October. Many Colleges will be staggering student arrivals, so that social distancing can be maintained, especially for Colleges based in the city centre.

In advance of the new academic year, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has launched an information campaign, webpages and a series of short films to help students and staff minimise the risks to themselves and others from the COVID-19 pandemic.

This academic year will be unlike any other, and it will be challenging for all of us, but we will do everything we can to make sure our students feel safe and supported while they are here

Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen Toope

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Cambridge takes major role in initiative to help solve UK ‘productivity puzzle’

fpjl2 — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 05:37:06 +0000

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is one of the partners in a major new £32.4m Productivity Institute, announced today by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. It is the largest economic and social research investment ever in the UK.

Productivity – the way ideas and labour are transformed into products and services that benefit society – has been lacklustre in the UK over recent decades, with limited growth stalled further by the global financial crisis of 2008-9 and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

To address the urgent challenge, the new Institute will bring together institutions and researchers from across the country to tackle questions of job creation, sustainability and wellbeing, as the UK looks to a post-pandemic future full of technological and environmental upheaval.

Professor Diane Coyle, co-director of the ̽��ֱ��’s Bennett Institute for Public Policy will be one of the new Institute’s Directors and leading one of its eight major research themes. She will be heading up the strand on Knowledge Capital: the ideas that drive productivity and progress.

Professor Anna Vignoles from Cambridge’s Faculty of Education will helm another of the main research strands, on Human Capital: the cultivation of people’s skills and abilities. Both lead academics will be supported by a host of other Cambridge researchers from a variety of departments, including POLIS, Psychology, Economics, and the Institute for Manufacturing.

̽��ֱ��Productivity Institute will be headquartered at the ̽��ֱ�� of Manchester, and, along with Cambridge, other members of the leading consortium include the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and the universities of Glasgow, Sheffield, Cardiff and Warwick. ̽��ֱ��new Institute is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (part of UK Research and Innovation).

“Productivity is economic jargon for something fundamentally important,” said Professor Coyle. “This is the question of what will enable people’s lives everywhere to improve sustainably over time, ensuring new technologies, along with business and policy choices, bring widespread benefits.”

“Productivity is key to the creation of decent work and the provision of high quality education and healthcare. Its growth offers people sustainable improvements in their standard of living,” she said.

̽��ֱ��Knowledge Capital theme, led by Coyle, will investigate the way that ideas and know-how – “intangible assets” not easily defined or measured – permeate our society and the economy.

“We want to understand better the links between productivity and things that are important but hard to pin down, whether that’s how businesses adopt new technologies and ideas or the role of social networks in determining how well different areas perform,” said Coyle.

Professor Vignoles will lead a team considering the importance of individuals’ wellbeing and productivity, which will include Cambridge psychologist Dr Simone Schnall. It remains an open question as to whether greater wellbeing can increase the productivity of individuals, and what the implications of this might be for both national policy and firms’ strategies.

“Increasing productivity is a pressing priority for the UK and understanding whether policies to improve individuals’ wellbeing are also likely to improve their productivity is crucial,” Professor Vignoles said.

̽��ֱ��fulcrum for Cambridge’s involvement in the new Productivity Institute will be the ̽��ֱ��’s recently established Bennett Institute for Public Policy, where Professor Coyle is based.

Since its launch in 2018, the Bennett Institute has been concentrating on the “challenges posed by the productivity puzzle” in the UK, says the Institute’s Director Professor Michael Kenny, with a focus on ensuring notions of “place” are brought to the fore.

“We are delighted to be contributing to this major new initiative,” said Kenny. “Under the leadership of Professor Coyle, we have been working to understand the many different factors and dynamics which explain the well-springs of, and obstacles to, productivity growth.”

Professor Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “I am thrilled that the ̽��ֱ�� will be playing a pivotal role in the new Productivity Institute.”

“ ̽��ֱ��knowledge generated by universities such as ours is a fuel for productivity, and will be fundamental to the resilience of the United Kingdom, and the opportunities afforded its citizens, in a post-pandemic world.”

Science Minister Amanda Solloway said: “Improving productivity is central to driving forward our long-term economic recovery and ensuring that we level up wages and living standards across every part of the UK."

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� is to be a key partner in a new national effort to boost British productivity, bringing together expertise to tackle questions of job creation, sustainability and wellbeing, as the UK looks to its post-pandemic future.

Productivity is key to the creation of decent work and the provision of high quality education and healthcare

Diane Coyle

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Feeling powerless increases the weight of the world… literally

fpjl2 — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 09:27:16 +0000

Scientists have found that people who feel powerless actually see the world differently, and find a task to be more physically challenging than those with a greater sense of personal and social power.

Eun Hee Lee - a researcher working with Dr Simone Schnall at Cambridge’s Department of Psychology - carried out a series of tests in which volunteers were surreptitiously surveyed about their own social power, then asked to lift boxes of varying weights and guess how heavy they were. Those who felt powerless consistently perceived the weight of the boxes as much heavier than those who felt more powerful.

̽��ֱ��study is the first demonstration that power – a ‘psychosocial’ construct relating to the control of resources – changes peoples’ perception of objects; that how you feel about your social standing in a situation can influence how you see the physical environment.

̽��ֱ��researchers say this overestimation of weight may be an adaptive strategy when faced with a lack of resources: when in a position of powerlessness, it would be ‘advantageous’ to have an overly cautious approach to the world in order to preserve your existing limited resources.

Experiencing perceptual attributes of the world – such as the weight of objects - in an “exaggerated fashion” when feeling powerless might be symptomatic of this instinctive resource conservation.

̽��ֱ��study is published this week in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

“Although many psychological studies have been conducted on power not much was known about how power influences actual perceptual experiences in everyday life,” said lead researcher Eun Hee Lee.

“This research demonstrates that people’s social role, as indicated by a sense of social power, or a lack thereof, can change the way they see the physical environment.”

To measure a person’s sense of their own social power, Lee and Schnall conducted three separate studies – all disguised by cover stories so that participants were unaware of what was being tested.

In the first, 145 participants were asked to rank how strongly they felt a series of statements applied to them – such as “I can get people to listen to what I say” – to measure beliefs about their power in social relationships. They were then tasked with lifting a number of boxes and guessing the weight, before taking a final test to gauge their mood. Researchers found that the lower a person’s feelings of social power, the more they thought the boxes weighed.

In the second test, the researchers manipulated the sense of power by asking 41 participants to sit in either an expansive, domineering position – with one elbow on the arm of their chair and the other on the desk next to them – or a more constricting one, with hands tucked under thighs and shoulders dropped.

Prior to manipulation, most participants overestimated the weight; after manipulation, those who sat in the more powerful pose gave more accurate estimates, while those in the submissive condition continued to imagine heavier weight.

In the final test, 68 participants were asked to recall an experience in which they had felt either powerful or powerless, and then repeatedly estimate the weights of various boxes - under the guise of studying the effect of exercise on autobiographical memory. Those who focused on the powerful incident became more accurate at guessing the weight, while those recalling a powerless situation continually overestimated the heaviness of the boxes.

While previous research has shown that various physical and emotional states can influence perception of the environment – such as perceiving a hill slant to be steeper when wearing a heavy backpack, or threatening objects, such as a tarantula, appearing to be further from your face when feeling good about yourself – this is the first study to show that a sense of power can now be added to that list.

Giulio Andreotti, the former Italian Prime Minister who was nicknamed ‘Il Divo’ after the epithet for Julius Caesar, famously once said that “power tires only those who do not have it”. Lee and Schnall write that this comment is “no longer an unsubstantiated conjecture”, and that their data suggests the world of the powerless “is indeed full of heavy burdens”.

Added Lee: “Power plays a role when it is present in a given moment, but also when it comes to people’s personality. We find that personality, which determines how people interact with the social world, also shapes how people interact with the physical world.”

New research shows that the more personally and socially powerless you feel the heavier objects appear to weigh.

People’s social role, as indicated by a sense of social power, or a lack thereof, can change the way they see the physical environment

Eun Hee Lee

United States Marine Corps

Heave, Ho!

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