O BEHAVE!Issue 18 • September 2015

A Neuroscientist’s Guide to Happiness 3

Bias of the Month 4

A Mere Reminder to be Healthy 5

Investigating Dehumanisation 6

Framing as Social Information Leaks 7

Real Life Nudge of the Month 8

Upcoming Events 8

CONTENTS

A NEUROSCIENTIST’S GUIDE TO HAPPINESSWe are all looking for what makes us happy. The self-help industry has made billions out of us all asking this question and seeking advice wherever we can get it. But who should we really be seeking advice from? One reliable source might be the people who actually study our brains and understand how they work: neuroscientists. According to neuroscientist Alex Korb, there are four specific rituals we can all do on a daily basis which will in fact make us happy.1) Ask “What am I grateful for?”Do you ever feel that your brain doesn’t want you to be happy and all it wants you to do is feel guilt and shame? This is because pride, shame and guilt all activate the brain’s reward centre which explains why it can be so appealing to heap guilt and shame on ourselves, but this is not a good long term coping strategy. A feeling of gratitude boosts the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin, the same neurotransmitters that antidepressants such as Prozac are designed to increase. Additionally, gratitude towards others increases activity in social dopamine circuits, which makes social interactions more enjoyable. But what happens if you have nothing to be grateful for and a feeling really low?2) Label the negative feelings In one fMRI study, participants viewed pictures of people with emotional facial expressions. Predictably, each participant’s amygdala responded to the emotions in the picture, but when they were asked to name the emotion, the ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex was activated and reduced the emotional amygdala reactivity. In other words, consciously recognizing the emotions reduced their impact. Describing an emotion requires you to activate your prefrontal cortex, which reduces the arousal in the limbic system.

3) Make that decision Making a decision helps you feel in control, makes you create intentions and set goals - all of which are part of the same neural circuit and engage the prefrontal cortex in a positive way, reducing worry and anxiety. Deciding also boosts pleasure and increases rewarding dopamine activity. It is important we make decisions that are “good enough” rather than seek “perfect” decisions: brain studies show that trying to be perfect overwhelms your brain with emotions and makes you feel out of control.4) Touch people One of the primary ways to release oxytocin is through touching, which makes you more persuasive, increases team performance and reduces feelings of anxiety. Touching does not have to be a long hug (although hugging is extremely effective); even holding hands and a pat on the back have all been found to have positive effects on our oxytocin levels.

Korb, A. (2015). The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time. New Harbinger Publications.

BIAS OF THE MONTH

Inaction Inertia Effect

van Putten, M, et al. (2013) How consumers deal with missed discounts: Transaction decoupling, action orientation and inaction inertia. Journal of Economic Psychology, 38, 104-110.

We have all experienced what is known as “counterfactual” or “what-if” thinking, whereby we reflect on past decisions and choices and imagine how things would have been if we had made an alternative choice. We also look back on some choices with regret when we missed an attractive opportunity, such as a product on sale.

When we have missed an opportunity and feel regret, we become unwilling to engage in the opportunity again if it is slightly less attractive. For example, if we missed an opportunity of purchasing a product on sale and we regret this, we are unlikely to purchase the item full price once it becomes available again, even if we really want it. The discount has reduced the perceived value of the product, and our expectation over its value is set at a new, lower baseline. Knowing this information and faced with the choice of buying it at full price, studies shows it’s highly unlikely that we’ll bite.

Our decision of not purchasing and doing nothing in the first instance has impacted our decision in the second instance, and this is known as the inaction inertia effect.

A MERE REMINDER TO BE HEALTHY

Overconsumption of calories relative to energy expenditure typically leads to weight gain, and as obesity levels rise, policymakers are searching for ways to address this imbalance. There are a myriad of factors that lead people to make unhealthy choices, often arising from self-control conflicts. Self-control can be thought of as a muscle that, with use, loses strength; over the course of a day, all of the small (or large) exertions of self-control can leave us depleted, meaning we’re much less likely to be willing or able to make considered, healthy choices for dinner. There are also issues like convenienceand portion sizes, which have led to high-calorie foods being in greater supply than ever.

Goswami, I., & Urminsky, O. (2015). The 'Mere-Reminder' Effect of Salient Calorie Labelling. Chicago Booth Research Paper, No. 15-19.

Given the relationship between calorie intake and weight, many interventions have focused on increasing awareness with calorie and nutritional labelling on food. This has had mixed results; people are generally accurate at estimating the relative calorie content of different food items, so simply quantifying this information may not always be enough to change behaviour.

A new paper by Goswami and Urminksy (2015) at Chicago Booth suggests that the effectiveness of nutritional information relies on the mere-reminder effect: prompting the thought of calories is enough of a disruption to remind people to eat healthily. In the first experiment, the authors offered participants a choice of chocolate bars as a reward for completing a survey. These were given no label (control), industry-standard calorie information, salient calorie information or salient exercise-equivalent information (how long one would have to exercise to burn the same amount of calories). They found the industry-standard label had no significant effect on calorie consumption relative to the control, while both the salient conditions significantly decreased consumption, because they were more attention-grabbing.

However, when participants were asked to estimate calorie amounts in different foods in the survey, this mere reminder had the same effect on calorie intake as the salient nutritional labelling. In a second study, participants chose from a hypothetical menu online, with the same four conditions of calorie information. The salient labelling decreased the calorie choice by 12%, while participants who were asked to estimate how many calories were in the dishes (mere-reminder) chose 9% fewer calories, both significantly lower than the industry-standard labelling condition. Interestingly, in both experiments this effect was more pronounced for overweight participants or those with high weight-loss goals. This has important implications for policy around displaying nutrition information, as it may be enough to use reminders to think about calorie consumption, rather than having detailed labels on each item.

INVESTIGATING DEHUMANISATION

As humans, we are naturally inclined to form in-groups with our peers, and, as a result, anyone who doesn’t fit this mould must be in the outgroup. This can be based on almost anything: Tajfel (1970) arbitrarily told participants they preferred one artist over another, and they then acted much more altruistically towards the others who shared their favourite artist, and in a prejudiced manner towards those who didn’t. When these group divisions occur over more emotionally-charged lines, like religion or ethnicity, the consequences can be much more severe.

Kteily, N., Bruneau, E., Waytz, A., & Cotterill, S. (2015). The Ascent of Man: Theoretical and Empirical Evidence for Blatant Dehumanization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming.

In a new study into this phenomenon, Kteily et al (2015) examined participants’ attitudes to other ethnic groups, particularly focusing on US citizens’ attitudes to Arab and Muslim people, where the strongest effects were found. Participants used a sliding scale to indicate how ‘evolved’ they felt certain ethnicities were, and this rating was correlated with advocating violence, such as bombing an entire nation or using torture on prisoners, supporting reduced immigration from Arab countries and a lack of sympathy towards a delinquent Arab teen being treated unjustly. Evidence of dehumanisation increased significantly following the Boston Marathon bombing, suggesting that these views are exacerbated when the in-group feels under threat. Interestingly, while measures of infrahumanisation were correlated with dehumanising views before the tragedy, these measures did not change and therefore did not reflect the more extreme views observed afterwards. This suggests that infrahumanisation occurs in a more ‘everyday’ setting; a subtle prejudice in normal situations, rather than in response to such events.

Dehumanisation of people perceived as ‘other’ was studied at length after the Second World War, when the Nazi campaign to dehumanise the Jewish community led to the atrocities committed against them. Dehumanisation can also occur in a more mild form: known as infrahumanisation, people withhold human essence from those they perceive to be in the outgroup by selectively denying them the most sophisticated, human emotions, like embarrassment and compassion, but still imagining them to be capable of primary emotions we share with animals, such as fear and excitement. This is particularly relevant during the Syrian refugee crisis, where on some level people may find it easier to think of those seeking help as ‘others’, rather than fully allowing themselves to empathise with the plight of people forced to leave their homes and risk their own and their families’ lives in the pursuit of safety.

FRAMING AS SOCIAL INFORMATION LEAKS

The framing effect occurs when a person’s choice differs depending on how two logically equivalent statements are framed. This effect feeds one of the core ideas for many behavioural economists; that people behave irrationally. If we all acted according to rational economic theory, it wouldn’t matter how the choice was framed, we should all still make the same choice. Whether a doctor frames a statement as “Five years after surgery, 90% of patients are alive” or “Five years after surgery, 10% of patients are dead”, the number of people choosing to go ahead with it should not be affected, but it is. Significantly more people choose surgery after the “90% are alive” framing than the “10% are dead” framing.

According to Thaler and Sunstein in Nudge, “Framing works because people tend to be somewhat mindless, passive decision makers” and so it offers a “brief glimpse a human fallibility”. Psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer, who is not of the belief that people are irrational creatures, reports in a fascinating new paper that this conclusion is unfair on humans, and instead suggests that this effect occurs due to the social intelligence of humans. He states that frames “leak” information to us andour social intelligence picks up on the implicit recommendation. By saying “90% of people survive”, the doctor is leaking information that it is the “survive” aspect that we should concentrate on, whereas by stating that “10% of people die”, the doctor is implicitly saying that it is the “die” aspect we should concentrate on, therefore implicitly recommending no surgery. This means that logically equivalent frames are not necessarily informationally equivalent.

Gerd backs his argument by stating that when people are given the full information, “After surgery 90% of people survive and 10% die,” the framing effect disappears. The leaking of information has disappeared and therefore there are no subtle recommendation clues being given to the patient.

In conclusion, he states that speakers rely on framing in order to implicitly convey relevant information and make recommendations that listeners pay attention to. In these situations, framing effects clearly do not demonstrate that people are “mindless passive decision makers”, but demonstrate the social intelligence of people being able to read between the lines and make intelligent decisions based on the information given.

Gigerenzer, G. (2015). On the Supposed Evidence for Libertarian Paternalism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 6 (3), 361-383.

Spotted: Incentives to reduce littering from Hubbub

You may have seen this innovative solution to reduce litter from cigarette butts by our friends at Hubbub, when it went viral earlier this month when they asked, “Who is a better footballer, Messi or Ronaldo?” This voting system incentivises people to bin their butts to support their favourite sports team or player, a particularly emotive subject for sports fans. It also acts as a social norm, as people can see how many others have also deposited their cigarettes in this way, rather than dropping them to the ground. We can only hope people won’t start smoking more in order to cast more votes!

REAL LIFE NUDGE OF THE MONTH

UPCOMING EVENTSFiNWELL SUMMITMonday 5th OctoberEscalator, 69-89 Mile End Road

Shock Room: How Stanley Milgram got it wrong on obedienceFriday 9th October, 6.30-8.30pmWolfson Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE

Behavioural Boozeonomics with the London Behavioural Economics NetworkMonday 12th October, 6.30-11pmThe Comedy Pub, Piccadilly

Cíosa Garrahan@CiosaGarrahan

ciosa.garrahan@ogilvy.com

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

Juliet Hodges@hulietjodges

juliet.hodges@ogilvy.com