*Yawn*

Jason Goldman at The Thoughtful Animal has a post up about a pretty fun paper on the subject of contagious yawning. We're all familiar with the phenomenon: you see me yawn, then you yawn, etc. This paper documents contagious yawning between humans and dogs. That's right, zoonotic yawning!

The yawning condition made the dogs yawn for 21 out of 29 individuals, and none of the dogs yawned in the control condition. Further, no yawns were observed in the interval between the two conditions (there was a five minute break between each of the five-minute-long conditions). During the yawning condition, dogs yawned an average of 1.9 times, and there were no sex or age differences, and there was no effect of the order in which the conditions were presented.

One of the hypotheses for contagious yawning is empathy

it actually turns out that there is a correlation between the susceptibility for contagious yawning and self-reported empathy. Converging evidence for the empathy hypothesis comes from the fact that contagious yawning is absent in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Does this mean dogs have empathy towards humans, or is it just a response to mild tension (eg. to seeing teeth baring)? Can humans catch a dog yawn?

Can you Spot a Fake?

Do you think you can tell when somebody is happy versus just faking it? Can you tell a genuine smile from a forced one? Take this test from the BBC to see how well you do. There are 20 videos of people smiling - some real, some fake - each viewable only once. The differences are subtle, and explained at the end.

How did you do?

Child torture video

If you want to learn more about this experiment and how delaying gratification of a marshmallow can predict SAT scores check out the latest radiolab podcast....

'Tis the Season

Christmas season is almost upon us - and if you're to believe the mall displays, it has been since mid October. With it comes office parties, rum-laced egg nog (marrow rum?) and gift exchanges. And with family gift exchanges, often come Santa 'wish lists'.

The Christmas list remains something of a puzzle to me. Sure it removes much of the stress of gift giving (What should I buy? Will they like it? etc.) but it seems to fly in the face of the conventional "It's the thought that counts" wisdom, since they're meant to take thought out of the equation.

But conventional wisdom is often wrong and a more fitting aphorism would be "It's the act that counts". And in fact, the act may be as (or more?) important for the giver as the receiver. Families that cut back on gift giving by doing a "Secret Santa" type exchange may be doing themselves a disservice, the New York Times reports:

But while it’s reasonable to cut back on spending during the holidays, psychologists say that banning the gift exchange with loved ones is not the best solution. People who refuse to accept or exchange gifts during the holidays, these experts say, may be missing out on an important connection with family and friends.

Of course retailers are probably thrilled with that idea. Gift giving is a social interaction and by not participating either by not giving or declining gifts you miss out on social cues and opportunities to strengthen bonds

“[Not participating in gift exchange] doesn’t do a service to the relationship,” said Ellen J. Langer, a Harvard psychology professor. “If I don’t let you give me a gift, then I’m not encouraging you to think about me and think about things I like. I am preventing you from experiencing the joy of engaging in all those activities. You do people a disservice by not giving them the gift of giving.”

Psychology Today explains further. Giving a gift forces the giver to reflect on the relationship (at least subconsciously). It focuses the giver on who their important relationships are, and the nature of those connections (the nature of the gift, the effort willing to be made, etc.) and answering these questions is satisfying. And gift giving reinforces itself through these feelings in a sort of feedback loop:

We usually think that the more we care about someone, the more we want to give to them. This is probably true. But what is even more interesting is that the more we give, the more we come to care about the person to whom we are giving. We feel alive in the activity. And it is the receiver who has provided the opportunity for us to feel this good, so we feel loving in return. Moreover, as social psychologist Daryl Bern, Ph.D., has taught us, we deduce our attitudes from our behavior. "I must really care or else why would I have given such a meaningful gift?"

A recent paper in Science supports the idea that giving is good for the giver. The authors show, through both survey and field study, that spending money on others is predictive of happiness. While one might think that happier people are more prone to giving (which may be true), the authors also showed that people randomly assigned to give to others reported more happiness compared to those told to spend on themselves.

So on that count the old wives may have got it right: It is better to give than to receive.

Experimental Physics a la Canadien (or Canuck Anthropology?)

OK, so we don't always get the calculations right. But you can't say we don't give it our all. This video of Kenny Powers' attempted cross-border "Superjump" over the 1 mile wide St. Laurent river is classic Canadiana all the way. As are the sweet custom mods on his pimped-out, jet-powered, Lincoln Continental. You can bet this idea was conceived after way too many cases of Labatt's 50. And it's certainly a cultural relic you won't find the likes of in post-NAFTA Canadia!

Popular Science has a breakdown of the physics:

"If, as the narrator informs us, the car achieves a takeoff speed of 280 mph, then using the equations of projectile motion, we can easily calculate that without air resistance (estimating a launch angle of about 30 degrees) the maximum distance the car could achieve is around 1500 meters, or just short of a mile. (I'll leave it to those of you with a little physics background to confirm this is true.) However, at speeds of this magnitude, air resistance will have a major effect on the flight of the car. The force of air resistance is proportional to the square of the velocity, so if you double the speed you quadruple the air resistance. Incorporating the effect of air drag into the calculations we find that Kenny won't even make it a quarter of a mile before falling ignominiously into the river."

Ooo. A little harsh. Come on guys, hind-sight's 20-20 right? Anyway, check out the video and judge Kenny's physics for yourself:



Further reading: For those unfamiliar with the psychology of the male Canadien and/or interested in further exploring Canadian anthropology through the miracle of YouTube Video, see also The Best Of Ron Hextall, Canadiens vs Nordiques 'Good Friday brawl' 1984, The Never-Ending Bench Clearing Brawl of Canada vs Russia 1987 at the World Juniors, the seminal National Film Board of Canada mockumentary "FUBAR", and Canadian television favorite "The Trailer Park Boys".

The Psychology of Obvious

The human brain is an excellent pattern-recognition machine. When it comes to an 'obvious' detector, it can fall short - tricking a person into thinking something is obvious when it's not. How a toilet works seems obvious, until you're asked to explain it, for example. The idea that the obvious isn't necessarily so is an important one in science. After all, why test for something if it's a forgone conclusion? This seems particularly true for psychology - a field where many conclusions seem obvious after the fact. (I've been guilty of accusing a psychology-major roommate that "It's all just common sense" in my undergrad days. After all, it's not *real* science, right?) There's a nice little article in The Psychologist discussing the nature of obviousness, some examples of non-obvious findings and the importance of testing 'obvious' ideas. If you're interested in reading other examples of counter-intuitive science, Lim at Freshbrainz has been running a series on his blog.