That’s why millions are turning to on-line dating services, which promise to use math and science to find people dates—and often more than dates, life partners. But how reliable are these popular services, and the matchmaking algorithms they use? A new and exhaustive study of these on-line matchmakers—and of romantic prediction in general—raises real doubts about these services’ methods and results. But this critique goes beyond eHarmony and Match.com and Chemistry.com. It questions the entire enterprise of predicting lasting love for any two people who have never met.

Five psychological scientists at five universities spent a year distilling and analyzing more than 400 scientific studies related to dating and romance and marriage, to determine what traits are measurable and valuable in successful matchmaking. The effort was headed up by Eli Finkel of Northwestern University, and the resulting analysis is discouraging for anyone who is gambling on these Internet dating services. But the bottom line of the study, published this week in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, is that no third party—not your sister or best pal or the matchmaker of yore—would do much better in finding you your soul mate.

The scientists identify three broad categories of information that matchmakers might use to match people up for lifelong relationships: Quality of personal interaction, life circumstances, and individual traits and attitudes. All three are important in determining whether a romantic relationship thrives or fails, the scientists say, but in reality much of this vital information is inaccessible or ignored.

Take personal interactions, for instance. This is everything about how two people are with each other—the way they talk, or don’t; how critical or kind they tend to be; how distant or intimate; how good at resolving disputes. Clearly this is important stuff in any relationship—arguably the most important—but as Finkel and colleagues point out, it plays no part at all in on-line matchmaking. Think about it. These matchmaking formulas are designed to predict romantic outcomes for two people who have never met—complete strangers—so how could they possibly factor in such interactive qualities? The short answer is that they don’t, but neither do other, more traditional matchmakers. Your sister may have seen you and a potential partner in action, independently, so she can at least imagine the two of you together and make an educated guess about your dynamic—but it’s just a guess.

Traditional matchmakers also have a slight advantage over computers when it comes to weighing life circumstances. Some of the best predictors of romantic and marital success are things beyond our control—social and economic status, for example. Some of this could in theory be known ahead of time—before two people meet—and factored into a prediction. But the fact is, on-line matchmakers don’t pay much attention to economic and financial issues. Nor do they factor in crucially important life stresses—including unanticipated stress from losing a job, or chronic illness, infertility, a flood or cyclone. These things are unknowable in advance, and even things that are knowable—life alcohol abuse or family pathology—are hidden from on-line matchmakers. Traditional matchmakers have a better chance of knowing some of these circumstances in advance, but even your sister can’t predict a factory closing or the onset of cancer.

So that leaves individual traits, which is really all that these on-line matchmakers have to work with. These traits include not only personality—outgoing, shy, daring, gloomy—but also views and attitudes and values. Do Ron Paul’s politics resonate for you? How about Thai food? Long walks in the woods? On-line services are well equipped to gather a lot of this kind of information and to match up strangers who share such interests and values.

But how important are these things really? Does matching up on tastes and preferences predict long-term satisfaction as a couple? Probably not, the scientists conclude. Most of the on-line matchmaking services match people up based on the assumption that similarity is important to relationship success, but the existing studies of this theory are mixed in their findings and not easily interpretable. For one thing, it’s not at all clear which dimensions of similarity are important. You may both like those long walks in the woods, but have very different tastes in food or politics. What trumps what in the search for compatibility?

Electronic matchmaking’s preoccupation with compatibility may itself be a problem, these scientists conclude. More important than compatibility, they suggest, is something called relationship aptitude. Aptitude is the constellation of traits, preferences and personal history that makes a person more likely to have good relationships in general—not necessarily with a specific other person. One of the most robust findings from relationship science is that the capacity for intimate relationships is a relative stable quality in individuals—regardless of partner—as is the incapacity. That all-important trait may not show up in preferences for Thai food, libertarian politics or autumn strolls. That’s what used to be called good character, which no matchmaking algorithm can possibly capture.

Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought, is available in paperback. Excerpts from his two blogs—“We’re Only Human” and “Full Frontal Psychology”—appear regularly in The Huffington Post and in Scientific American Mind.

Check out this photograph. That’s aurora borealis, or the northern lights, as seen from the upper regions of Norway earlier this week. This spectacular display was fueled by one of the most potent solar storms in a decade. One can only imagine what it must have been like to actually witness this event. It must have been truly awesome.

I know. I know. Awesome is a tired, overused word these days, when everything from breakfast to a pair of sneakers can be described as awesome. Awesome is no longer connected to awe, that rare and overwhelming emotion inspired by vast and moving events. Sneakers aren’t life-altering, but awe-inspiring events and vistas and personal experiences really can alter the way we think about the world. We need to put the awe back in awesome.

Psychological scientists think so, too, and indeed there has been burgeoning interest in this powerful but neglected emotion. One team of scientists—Melanie Rudd and Jennifer Aaker of Stanford and Kathleen Vohs of Minnesota—have come to believe that experiencing awe may have all sorts of tonic effects, including a better sense of perspective on time and priorities, more patience and charity toward others, and generally more satisfaction with life.

It all has to do with time perception, these scientists believe. Modern life is plagued by what’s been called “time famine”—the sense that we have way too much to do and way too little time to do it. Everyone seems to feel this sometimes overwhelming sense of having too few minutes, hours and days—and it leads to all sorts of untoward consequences. Perceived time scarcity has been shown to disrupt sleep, to sap our self-discipline and ability to delay rewards. It undermines health, leading to more fast food consumption and skipped medical exams. Rationing out our precious time leads inevitably to self-centered disregard for others. The list goes on.

These scientists were wondering if there might be a way to shift this common misperception of time—and counter these damaging consequences. The fact is, most of us do have enough time, but it’s maddeningly difficult to keep perspective on this. These scientists suspected that stopping time—somehow keeping people in the moment—might alter overall perceptions of time scarcity. And how do we go about stopping or expanding time? With jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring experiences.

At least that’s their theory, which they tested in a series of experiments. All of the experiments were basically the same, with slight variations to explore different nuances of the idea. Each used an experimental manipulation to prime some volunteers’ sense of awe; they watched, wrote or read about an awe-inspiring experience, while others focused on neutral or merely happy (but not awe-inspiring) events. Then afterward, the volunteers answered questions about their perceptions of time: Is time plentiful? Is it slipping away? Am I pressed for time? The idea was, first, to establish the link between awe and time perception. And indeed, those who were primed to feel awe—those volunteers also saw time as much more expansive, less constricted. They felt free of time’s pressure.

And what were the downstream results of this new time perspective? There were several, which the scientists describe in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science: Those who felt they had more available time were less impatient; they were more willing to volunteer their time to help others; and they were less materialistic, preferring new experiences like a Broadway show over new goods, like a watch. Overall, the awe-inspired volunteers were much more satisfied with their lives.

Importantly, the scientists ran the experiments in a way that verified the order of psychological events: That is, experiencing awe diminished time pressure in the volunteers’ minds (not the other way around), and this freedom from time’s constraints in turn triggered the other positive outcomes. It’s notable that the awe-inspired volunteers became more likely to volunteer, but not more likely to donate cash—underscoring the importance of time perception in these changes.

Awe-inspiring experiences do not need to be as cosmic as the northern lights. The birth of a child can stop time in its tracks, as any parent can attest, as can listening to a beautiful symphony. And even smaller things: As these studies demonstrate, even exposure to brief video images and stories and short walks down memory lane can help us right-size our sense of time and life. We can’t order up awesome experiences on demand—at least not the heavenly kind—but we can stay mindful of such common opportunities for awe, which might alter the pervasive time-starved perspective that is distorting our modern sensibilities in so many unhealthy ways.

Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought, devotes a chapter to our deep-wired affinity for nature. Excerpts from his two blogs—“We’re Only Human” and “Full Frontal Psychology”—appear regularly in Scientific American and The Huffington Post.

These are the first lines of what’s known as the Serenity Prayer, which is well known to many recovering alcoholics. It’s often recited in the rooms of AA as a reminder of the core principle of successful sobriety: Acceptance of the reality that for addicts, nothing but absolute, lifelong abstinence will lead to healthy and lasting recovery.

As simple as that message is, it’s very difficult for many alcoholics to embrace, at least at first. Most resist the finality of an absolute prohibition, hoping and looking instead for half measures and temporary fixes to the problem—or putting off abstinence for another day. These lukewarm efforts often end in relapse.

What’s actually going on in the mind of an alcoholic as he or she goes through the process of recovery? What are the cognitive mechanics underlying the initial, angry rebelliousness and, later, the genuine commitment to a sober life?

Duke University psychological scientist Aaron Kay has some ideas that may clarify this mysterious transformation. The human mind, he and his colleagues say, sees all restrictions, prohibitions and bans as fundamental limits on personal freedom. Personal freedom is so highly valued, and so important to our sense of identity, that we will go to great lengths to protect it. On the most basic level, when the mind processes “no drinking ever again”—this prohibition is perceived as nothing less than a totalitarian clamp-down on personal liberty, and processed in the same way as any such edict. It’s the cognitive equivalent of “no travel allowed” or “all political speech prohibited.”

We have two ways of dealing with such unwanted restrictions on liberty. The first is what scientists call “reactance,” which really just means shouting, no! People get annoyed, indignant, outraged, defiant; they bridle at the new restriction, and inflate the value of what’s being taken away—in the case of an alcoholic, the freedom to drink without censure. Or—quite differently—people sometimes rationalize the new prohibition. They go through whatever cognitive gymnastics are needed to make this unwelcome restriction okay, to cast a positive light on the prospect of never drinking again.

These two processes are incompatible, so why does one win out over the other? Why do we jealously guard our liberty some times, and other times go through mental contortions to rationalize bans. Kay and his colleagues believe it is a single factor—the absoluteness—that shapes our thinking. When prohibitions are the least bit tentative or vague, if they allow any loopholes, then we plot to get around them and preserve what’s ours. But when restrictions have no shades of gray, and no prospect of bending, we search out ways to make them palatable. The scientists tested this theory in a couple simple experiments.

In the first one, volunteers read about how a hypothetical new city speed limit would improve public safety. Then some of these volunteers read that lawmakers had already acted to lower the speed limit; according to this news story, the law would go into effect on a prescribed date. Others read that it was likely the new law would go into effect, but that it had not been enacted yet. In other words, some were presented with a fait accompli, while others were left thinking about a likely—but not signed and sealed—restriction on their driving rights.

Afterward, all of the volunteers—including a control group—rated their level of annoyance regarding the lower speed limit. They also reported how often they drove in the city, assuming that regular drivers would be more annoyed than infrequent drivers, who might see the restriction as irrelevant.

The results, reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, supported the scientists’ theory. Those presented with an absolute, written-in-concrete restriction were much more likely to rationalize the change. They had more positive attitudes toward the new speed limit than did controls. By contrast, those who read about a likely new limitation expressed much more annoyance; it was not yet a certainty, so they wanted nothing of it. As expected, the frequent drivers were more likely to rationalize the infringement on their liberties; they were more motivated to make the infringement acceptable.

The second experiment was similar, but with some important differences. In this case, the volunteers read about the dangers of using a cell phone while driving—and a government plan to ban the practice. But the scientists introduced a new twist as well: Some read that it was a done deal; others that there was a small chance it would not be passed; and still others that there was reasonable chance it would be voted down. In other words, they introduced two different degrees of uncertainty.

Again, the volunteers rated how bothersome the new restriction would be, and they also rated how important this particular liberty—driving while talking on a cell—was to them. And again, volunteers facing the absolute certainty of a new ban were more likely to rationalize: They played down the importance of this right. Those who faced the likelihood of a new restriction had a harsher reaction. They claimed that this restricted right was very important to them, and this was the case even if there was only a miniscule chance of the new ban not being approved. These findings boil down to this: We are very reluctant to give up any bit of personal liberty, and will grab at straws before we do.

Kay and his colleagues concede that life is more nuanced than these studies suggest. Some restrictions on liberty, even when they are absolute, may be too sudden or too abhorrent to be rationalized easily. That may be the case with the alcoholic, who certainly faces a horrifying prospect. The alcoholic must also dictate his or her own prohibition and with time come to the realization—or rationalization—that freedom isn’t always liberating, and restriction isn’t always oppressive.

Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought, is available in paperback. Excerpts from his two blogs—“We’re Only Human” and “Full Frontal Psychology”—appear regularly in Scientific American and The Huffington Post.

Fusco was not the first young woman to disappear in the vicinity, and police were under tremendous public pressure to make an arrest. They eventually charged three men with the rape and murder, but the case was built largely on the confession of just one, a 21-year-old landscaper named John Kogut. Kogut steadfastly maintained his innocence, and even provided an alibi: He had been at a party for his girlfriend the night of the crime, with several witnesses. Nevertheless, after 18 hours of interrogation, the police produced a confession, written out by an officer and signed by Kogut.

The confession stated that Kogut and the two other men had given Fusco a ride in a van owned by one of the others. She entered the van voluntarily, but was then raped by the two others. Kogut confessed to murdering the teenager with a coil of rope. Based on this confession, police searched the van and found several strands of hair, which were introduced as forensic evidence. The alibi witnesses, now aware of Kogut’s signed confession, started questioning the certainty of their own memories.

Kogut was convicted in May of 1986 and sentenced to 31½ years to life in prison. His two accomplices got similar sentences in a separate trial. The sentences were vacated in 2003, based on new DNA evidence, and Kogut was retried. In 2005, a judge found him not guilty, and set him free. Kogut had spent nearly two decades in prison.

Confessions are powerful and damning evidence, which is a good thing if the defendant is guilty. But what if the defendant is innocent, as Kogut was? It’s not clear just how the police extracted Kogut’s false confession, but the statement clearly had a powerful corrupting effect on his trial. In part, that’s simply because people tend to believe confessions. It doesn’t make any sense that someone would take the blame for murder and rape if they didn’t commit the crimes. But there is also a second, more insidious, explanation for the power of false confessions: Confessions can taint others’ perceptions of potentially exonerating evidence. Were Kogut’s alibi witnesses swayed by his confession? How about the forensic experts? The jurors? The judge?

Fully 25 percent of exonerations based on DNA evidence reveal a false confession, and experts are beginning to believe this is just the tip of the iceberg. Psychological scientist Saul Kassin of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice has been especially vocal on this issue, and in a recent study he and two colleagues decided to systematically reexamine the evidence in exoneration cases that revealed a false confession. They compared them to exoneration cases without a false confession, to see if evidence other than the confession itself was tainted—and contributed to wrongful imprisonment. Were false confession cases more likely to have other evidence errors? What kind and how often? And, importantly, which came first—the other evidentiary mistakes or the false confession?

The scientists examined the case files of the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to helping prisoners prove their innocence with DNA evidence. Since 1992, the Innocence Project’s efforts have led to the exoneration of 273 prisoners, including 17 who served time on death row. Kassin and his colleagues examined 241 of these cases, including police reports, witness statements, trial testimony, and other court records—basically any evidence that might have led to conviction. Two independent coders examined these records, enumerating the contributing causes of conviction, erroneous eyewitness testimony, bad forensic evidence, and reliance on informants. They also noted the order in which the confession and other evidence were gathered.

The results were troubling. As reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, multiple errors were discovered in three out of four cases involving a false confession, compared to fewer than half of cases without a false confession. These additional errors included, in order of frequency, invalid or improper forensic science, eyewitness mistakes, and incriminating snitch testimony. Two-thirds of the false confession cases also had forensic errors, and a third had at least two of these additional errors. What’s more, false confessions were much more likely to come before (rather than follow) forensic missteps or informant errors. The timing strongly suggests that the false confession actually corrupted the other evidence.

Laboratory evidence has already highlighted this problem. Confessions have been shown to bias not only other witnesses but also trained polygraph examiners and fingerprint experts. This study is the first to document the same kind of bias and misjudgment among forensic experts in actual criminal cases. The findings reiterate the conclusions of the National Academy of Sciences, which in 2009 was highly critical of many forensic disciplines, including ballistics, handwriting analysis, fingerprint analysis and—most relevant here—hair and fiber analysis. Indeed, the expert hair analysis introduced at Kogut’s original trial was so inept that it was thrown out at his retrial.

How does a false confession distort perceptions of other evidence? It’s not entirely clear, but one possibility is the well known confirmation bias: Belief in guilt leads people to see only evidence of that guilt. It’s also possible that knowledge of a confession motivates people to help the police and prosecutors bring the guilty to justice.

The scientists believe that this analysis underestimates the problem of evidence corruption. It also demonstrates that the criminal justice system’s safeguards are inadequate. Many states require that confessions be corroborated by other evidence in order to be admissible, but this doesn’t help if the corroborating evidence itself has been biased by the false confession. And courts allow convictions to stand if a coerced confession is considered “harmless”—that is, if the remaining evidence is enough to convict. But if the remaining evidence is tainted, as these findings say, that calls into question any possibility that a confession is truly harmless.

Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought, is available in paperback. Excerpts from his two blogs—“We’re Only Human” and “Full Frontal Psychology”—appear regularly in The Huffington Post and Scientific American Mind.

But that’s just the biology of weight control. What about the psychology? Why do we habitually take in too many calories, even when we know those calories are a ticket to obesity and all sorts of chronic diseases?

There are two major reasons for unhealthy weight, according to experts. One is a simple lack of self-control. We live in a society where every day we confront an abundance of high-calories foods. Not overeating in this environment requires extraordinary discipline. The second is an inability to cope with stress. Struggling with ordinary but constant life stresses can drain the cognitive energy needed for discipline, weakening our resolve. Stress-related eating packs on unhealthy calories, contributing to weight gain—and over time to obesity.

What if there were a simple psychological intervention that addressed both of these issues at once—bolstering self-control and buffering against everyday stress?

I know. It sounds like one more gimmick, too good to be true. Perhaps, but in a new study, two psychological scientists propose just such an intervention—along with some preliminary evidence to back it up. Christine Logel of the University of Waterloo, Ontario, and Geoffrey Cohen of Stanford University describe a brief and simple way to give people the tools for resisting temptation and coping with life’s pressures.

It’s called “values affirmation,” and it’s done with a simple writing exercise. The theory is that focusing on one’s core values triggers a cascade of psychological processes: It bolsters a sense of self-worth and personal integrity. It underscores our higher values, rather than our impulses, and by reminding us what’s really important in life, it buffers against mundane stresses. Since stress saps our limited cognitive resources, such an affirmation frees up these resources for willpower and self-discipline.

At least that’s the theory, which Logel and Cohen tested in a simple experiment. They recruited a group of young women (apparently women are more prone to stress-related overeating), recording their baseline weight and Body Mass Index, or BMI. The women were representative of North American women in general. That is, nearly 60 percent were overweight or obese, the rest normal. Notably, all were dissatisfied with their current weight.

Then half of the women wrote an essay about their most cherished values—religious beliefs, relationships, whatever they considered most important to them. The remainder, the controls, wrote about something they did not prize particularly, and why it might be important to someone else. Importantly, none of the values in the exercise had to do with weight or health.

That’s it. That’s the entire intervention. Then the scientists waited for about 2½ months, at which point they called all the volunteers back into the lab. They again measured their weight and BMI, and also their waistlines. They also gave the volunteers a test of working memory, which is one of the cognitive processes crucial to self-control. Reducing stress should theoretically boost working memory capacity and, consequently, discipline.

The results, reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, were clear and quite dramatic. The control subjects gained 2.76 pounds on average, and this gain boosted average BMI as well. Anyone who has ever struggled with weight knows that this is a huge weight gain in just 2½ months. It’s the equivalent of more than 13 pounds in a year—for no particular reason. By contrast, those who had completed the values affirmation lost an average of 3.4 pounds–also huge–and trimmed their BMI in the process. Women in the values intervention also had smaller waistlines, independent of BMI. And these women also had better working memory, suggesting that it was indeed their enhanced cognitive function that bolstered their self-control. Even the most seriously overweight women experienced these dramatic results after the brief writing exercise.

Losing even a few pounds and keeping them off can be maddeningly difficult. So how could one brief intervention like this have such long-term results? The scientists believe that people can get stuck in repeating cycles, in which failure to lose weight impairs psychological functioning, which in turn increases the risk of more failure. Even a quick and simple intervention has the power to disrupt this destructive cycle.

All right, so let’s be as skeptical as we can here. It’s a small study, just a single experiment with a modest number of subjects. And while 2½ months is a significant chunk of time, we don’t know how these women are doing now—or how well they’ll control their weight over years. Even so, these results are the first evidence that affirming a person’s values can measurably reduce health risk. What’s more, it’s a low-cost, low-effort intervention that could easily be repeated, with at least the possibility of slowing the accumulation of both pounds and risk over years.

Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought, is now available in paperback. Excerpts from his two blogs—“We’re Only Human” and “Full Frontal Psychology”—appear regularly in Scientific American and in The Huffington Post.

But let’s not get too self-righteous quite yet. We may not derive our core sense of self-worth from what we buy and own, but does that mean we’re immune to all the cues in our consumer culture? Unless you live in a cave, you have been relentlessly bombarded since before Thanksgiving with images of goods that are novel, luxurious, or necessary for personal fulfillment. Is it possible that these ubiquitous messages might awaken the inner consumer in all of us, leading to all those unsavory social consequences?

That’s the idea that Northwestern University psychological scientist Galen Bodenhausen has been exploring in the laboratory. He and his colleagues suspected that even the purest anti-materialist might, under the right circumstances, respond to situational triggers, and that this mindset might have an immediate, untoward effect on well-being. This happens because a materialistic mindset activates certain values—wealth, achievement, power and status—while suppressing others, notably concern about others. This in turn leads to dissatisfaction with one’s life, and to social disengagement.

That’s the theory, which the scientists explored in four studies. The first was fairly straightforward. Volunteers were seated in private cubicles and asked to rate the pleasantness of various images. Half of them were exposed to pictures of luxury consumer goods—jewelry, electronics, cars—while the others, the controls, saw neutral images. Then, ostensibly as part of a different study, all the volunteers completed measures of positive and negative emotions, and their preferences for activities with other people. The results were clear. Those whose inner materialist had been cued were significantly more depressed and anxious than the control group. They were also less inclined to engage in social activities. Notably, all it took to trigger these negative emotional effects was very brief exposure to pictures—much as you would see in a Christmas catalog or TV advertisement.

To reexamine these findings a different way, the scientists ran another experiment in which they told some volunteers they would be working on a “Consumer Reaction Study.” They had to check a box identifying themselves as “an American consumer.” The controls identified themselves as American “citizens” and participated in a “Citizen Reaction Study.” The purpose of this ruse was to focus only some of the volunteers on their identity as a consumer, to see if this shaped their thinking about values. And it did. When they completed a measure of automatic, unconscious biases, the “consumers” tended strongly toward values having to do with self-enhancement, like wealth, image and success. The “citizens” in the study showed no such bias.

The two other studies were variations on the same idea. As described in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, one showed that consumer cues trigger greater competitiveness; the other that these cues lead to selfish, less community-minded, actions. Taken together, these experiments document the rapid, adverse effects of materialistic thinking on personal well-being. Apparently when people start to seek value outside of the self, in extrinsic things, this mindset leads to a cascade of unpleasant effects: Self-comparisons and competitiveness result in dissatisfaction and anxiety, which in turn diminish trust and the desire to connect with others. In short, a not so wonderful life.

It’s not clear from these experiments how long these distressing effects last. But in a way it doesn’t matter. The ubiquity of these consumerist messages in everyday life—and especially during the holiday season—almost guarantees that, even if any single effect is not enduring, another cue will inevitably follow, reigniting materialistic thinking again and again, every shopping day until Christmas.

Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought, is now out in paperback. Excerpts from his two blogs—“We’re Only Human” and “Full Frontal Psychology”—appear regularly in Scientific American Mind and The Huffington Post.

That’s my behavioral immune system kicking in. Behavioral immune system is just a fancy way of summarizing what the mind and body have long known, that one of the most powerful tools we have for staying well is to watch out for sick people, and then give them wide berth. Our ancient ancestors learned this lesson well, and it’s now entwined in our basic perceptions and thinking and decision making. It’s like a sentry, always vigilant for anything out there that’s suspicious.

But the system is not simple, nor is it infallible. First of all, it’s closely tied to our biological immune system—all those cells that detect and attack foreign invaders. What’s more, it’s far from perfect at recognizing what is a real health threat and what is not. Two new studies, both published on-line in the journal Psychological Science, explore this complex dual defense system, both its cleverness and its liabilities.

It’s been known for some time that our heightened vigilance can trigger a biological response as well. We’re heading into flu season now, so we’re primed to be circumspect, and this in turn puts the body’s disease-fighting cells on high alert. But does it also work the other way around? Two psychological scientists—Saul Miller of the University of Kentucky and Jon Maner of Florida State—suspected that it might, for this reason: The cellular immune system is imperfect. It causes an inflammatory response to fight off pathogens, but since this inflammatory reaction is harmful to tissue, it immediately produces anti-inflammatory cells to protect the body. Thus, after fighting off one disease, the body becomes susceptible to other infections for a short period of time. Miller and Maner had the idea that the initial immune response might trigger the behavioral immune system to provide extra protection during this time of vulnerability.

They tested this idea by dividing a group of volunteers into those who had been ill recently, and who had not. Then they very rapidly flashed photographs of people’s faces, some normal and others disfigured in some way. People who have contagious illnesses often appear abnormal—redness, swelling, tearing, scabs and sores—and those abnormalities are warning signs. The scientists reasoned that the mind’s imperfect detection system would also respond to other forms of disfigurement, unrelated to contagion.

And that’s just what they found. The recently ill volunteers—presumably with immune cells on alert—were much more likely to notice and pay attention to signs of facial abnormality. In other words, recent illness sparked a biological immune response which—independent of conscious concerns about illness—biased the volunteers’ attention to warning signs of contagion.

Of course, it’s was a mistaken response, so that’s not good. Indeed, it’s seriously wrongheaded, because the disfigured people in the photos were not sick at all. They just looked different. The skewed attention was prejudicial in a cruel and unfair way. And it gets worse. In a second experiment, the scientists measured not just attention, but actual avoidance. Again, they compared recently ill and healthy volunteers, but this time they used a joystick to gauge their automatic, unconscious approach or avoidance responses to disfigured people. And as predicted, the recently ill volunteers were much more avoidant. They responded automatically—but wrongly and prejudicially—to disease cues.

What’s novel here the first empirical evidence that activating the body’s immune cells shapes both cognition and behavior. Apparently our two immune systems are constantly backing each other up, providing additional lines of defense. But what about those disturbing social biases inherent in the behavioral immune system? The fact that this over-generalized prejudice is rooted in biology does not make it less of a concern; indeed, more. Is there any way to weaken this ancient, misguided response?

A second study suggests there might be. University of Toronto psychological scientist Julie Huang and her colleagues wondered if modern advances in immunology might also shape behavior, especially these irrational forms of prejudice. They decided to test the notion that public health measures like vaccines and hand washing might diminish vigilance for contagion, and in the process attenuate unfair social biases. In other words, if the physical threat of sickness can be eliminated, is it possible that the prejudicial thoughts and actions might also be eliminated?

To test this, Huang and colleagues recruited volunteers during the height of the 2009 H1N1, or swine flu, epidemic. They had only half of the volunteers read a passage about swine flu, its severity, and a shortage of the highly recommended vaccine. All of the volunteers then indicated whether or not they had been vaccinated, and in either case they rated the effectiveness of the vaccine.

To measure prejudice, all the volunteers completed a scale that assesses attitudes toward immigrants. Even though there is no obvious connection between contagion and immigrants—as there is between contagion and disfigurement—fear of illness has been shown to trigger such irrational animosity. As it did here: Those threatened by the swine full did show an anti-immigrant bias, but only if they had not been vaccinated. Those who had been immunized—especially those who believed in its effectiveness—were much less prejudicial toward foreigners.

These are provocative findings, and the scientists wanted to double-check them in a different manner. In another experiment, some of the volunteers used a hand-wipe to wash their hands, while others did not. Then all the volunteers read the same passage about H1N1, only in this case the passage emphasized the effectiveness of anti-bacterial hand-wipes. Then they rated their impressions of nine social out-groups, including the obese, crack addicts, disabled people and immigrants. These attitudes were conflated into an overall attitude toward out-groups. And again, those concerned about the flu—but who had not had the opportunity to wash their hands—were likely to make the mental leap from germ aversion to social prejudice. But those who had taken measures to protect themselves against the flu had much more favorable views of people unlike themselves.

So a vaccine against prejudice? Perhaps, in a way. Vaccines and hand-washing are already recognized as cost-effective strategies for reducing sickness and death. Social prejudice is also detrimental to emotional and physical health. So such public health initiatives, the scientists suggest, might easily be turned into dual-purpose interventions for the enhancement of well-being.

Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought, is now out in paperback. Excerpts from his two blogs—“We’re Only Human” and “Full Frontal Psychology”—appear regularly in The Huffington Post and Scientific American.

But that’s just one idea. There are many others—or make up your own. But they are all just theories. None has been empirically tested. A team of psychological scientists at Queen’s University, Ontario, is now offering a novel idea about the origin of religion, and what’s more they’re delivering some preliminary scientific evidence to support their reasoning. Researcher Kevin Rounding and his colleagues are arguing that the primary purpose of religious belief is to enhance the basic cognitive process of self-control, which in turn promotes any number of valuable social behaviors.

They tested this theory in four fairly simple experiments, using classic measures of self-control. In the first study, for example, they used a word game to prime some volunteers’ (but not others’) subconscious thoughts of religion. Then they asked all the volunteers (using a ruse) to drink an unsavory mix of OJ and vinegar, one ounce at a time. They were told they could stop any time, and to take as much time as they liked, and that they would be paid a small amount for each ounce of the brew that they drank.

The amount they drank was a proxy for self-discipline. The more OJ and vinegar they forced down, they greater their self-control. And as predicted, those with religion on their mind endured longer at the unpleasant task. Since society and religion ask us to tolerate many things we don’t particularly like for the common good, the scientists interpret this finding as evidence of a particular kind of self-control.

Another way to think of self-control, perhaps the most familiar, is delayed gratification—resisting immediate temptation to wait for a greater reward later on. In another experiment, the scientists again primed some of the volunteers with hidden religious words, but in this case they were told (falsely) that the experiment was concluded and that they would be paid. They were told, further, that they could either return the next day and be paid $5, or come back in a week and get $6. This is a widely used laboratory paradigm for measuring the exertion of discipline in the face of temptation, and indeed, almost twice as many of those with religion opted for more money later.

Self-control is costly, consuming a lot of mental resources. Recent research has demonstrated that our cognitive power—in the form of glucose, the brain’s fuel—is limited. The mind and brain can become fatigued, just like a muscle, and when depleted, normal self-control is impaired. The third experiment built on an understanding of this process, often called “ego depletion.” The scientists wanted to see if cognitively depleted people are “refueled” with reminders of religion, so they had only half of the volunteers perform a mentally draining task while listening to loud music. Then they primed half of these depleted volunteers, and half the controls, with religious words.
So at this point, there were four groups: Depleted; depleted but religiously primed; undepleted controls; and religiously primed controls. All of these volunteers then attempted a set of geometrical puzzles, which, unknown to them, were impossible to solve. The impossible task was included to test their persistence against great difficulty—another measure of self-control.

The results were unambiguous. Among those who were mentally depleted, the ones with religion on their minds persisted longer at the impossible task—suggesting that the religious priming restored their cognitive powers—and their patience in the process. They performed basically the same as those who were never tired out in the first place. The scientists take this as strong evidence for the replenishing effect of religion on self-discipline.

The fourth and final experiment was the only one with ambiguous results. The first three studies had shown direct causal evidence of religion on self-control—and downstream effects on enduring discomfort, delaying rewards, and exerting patience. But is it possible that the religious priming might have activated something else—moral intuition, or death-related concerns? In order to rule out these possibilities, the scientists used a completely secular self-control task, one with no moral overlay: the so-called Stroop task. This is the task where one must rapidly identify the ink that words are printed in, rather than read the words. It’s very difficult, requiring mental exertion and self-control.

The scientists primed some with religious words as usual, but others were primed with moral words—virtue, righteous—and still others with words related to mortality—deadly, grave, and so forth. Then all the volunteers attempted the Stroop task on a computer, which measured accuracy and reaction time. The results, as reported in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, showed that religiously primed volunteers had much more self-control than did controls or those primed to think about mortality. But those with religion on their minds were statistically no different than those with morality on their minds. This was an unexpected finding, and it suggests that activating an implicit moral sensibility may have some of the same effects as religion.

It’s not entirely clear what cognitive mechanism is at work in religion’s influence on self-control. One possibility is that religion makes people mindful of an ever watchful God, and thus encourages more self-monitoring. Or religious priming may activate concerns of supernatural punishment. A more secular explanation is that religious priming makes people more concerned about their reputation in the community, leading to more careful self-monitoring. Notably, almost a third of the volunteers in these studies were self-defined atheists or agnostics, suggesting that these robust effects have little or nothing to do with the suggestibility of the most devout.

Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought, was recently published in paperback. Excerpts from his two blogs—“We’re Only Human” and “Full Frontal Psychology”—appear regularly in Scientific American and in The Huffington Post.

This write-up, which I also put on The Huffington Post, got a fair amount of attention on Twitter and elsewhere. But it didn’t get a lot of attention in the mainstream press. When I spoke to science journalists about the study and its implications, the typical response was: Well, it’s one thing to show that such misrepresentations are possible, and quite another to show that they actually are prevalent. In other words, is there really any reason for the consumer of behavioral science to be wary of the entire enterprise, or is this inside baseball?

Fair enough. That wasn’t addressed in the study. But now comes word of a new study, also slated for publication in Psychological Science, which does look at precisely this question. And the results are no less worrisome. Three scientists—Leslie John of Harvard Business School, George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon, and Drazen Prelec of MIT—surveyed more than 2000 psychological scientists at major U.S. universities about the use of “questionable research practices” in their work. These practices are very similar to the ones addressed in the earlier study: They include failing to report all of a study’s dependent variables; deciding to collect more (or less) data during the course of a study (what’s called “testing until significant”); and reporting an unexpected finding as if it were predicted from the start. The scientists also asked about the prevalence of more serious “scientific felonies”: claiming that results are unaffected by demographic variables, when they know they are; and outright falsifying of data.

The scientists did not expect their subjects to be forthcoming about scientific fraud, or even for that matter about the “gray zone of accepted practice.” So they devised a new anonymous survey methodology with explicit incentives for truth-telling. It’s a bit complicated, but basically it promises charity donations depending on the truthfulness of responses, which is determined by an algorithm known as the “Bayesian truth serum.” By creating the (correct) belief that dishonest responses will hurt the respondent’s charity of choice, the scientists boosted the moral stakes riding on each answer—and presumably got a more honest picture of actual laboratory practices.

It’s not an entirely positive picture. One in ten research psychologists appear to have actually falsified scientific data, and the majority have engaged in some of the more ambiguous “questionable” practices. These numbers are higher than previous studies have suggested—no doubt due to this study’s truth-telling incentives. The survey also asked which of these practices were “defensible.” Overall, the respondents rated these practices somewhere between “possibly defensible” and “defensible.” And unsurprisingly, those who engaged in the practices were more likely to rationalize them. A relatively large proportion of respondents also admitted to doubts about the integrity of scientific research on at least one occasion.

The authors emphasize that, while outright falsification of data is never justified, many of these other practices can be defended under some circumstances. Indeed, scientists often appear to engage in these practices unknowingly, and in that sense, they are not even misdemeanors. Yet other justifications in this gray area were what the authors label “contentious”: For example, dropping dependent measures to tell a “more coherent story” or to increase the likelihood of publication. Indeed, scientists’ justifications for these practices are often a by-product of the pressure to publish, the authors conclude. The inherent ethical ambiguity of scientific evidence may cause researchers to delude themselves that it’s okay to ignore nuisance data.

The authors believe this is a significant problem for the field, one requiring attention. These common practices, even if understandable, are wasting researchers’ time and stalling scientific progress, because researchers are fruitlessly trying to build on results that are not real and won’t replicate. Even more “disheartening,” they conclude, is that “unrealistically elegant results” can only be matched by using more of the same dubious methods, creating a “race to the bottom.” In short, these practices have become “the steroids of scientific competition, artificially enhancing performance while providing considerable latitude for rationalization and self-deception.”

Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought, is out in paperback. Excerpts from his two blogs—“We’re Only Human” and “Full Frontal Psychology”—appear regularly in Scientific American and in The Huffington Post.

So imagine my surprise when I came across this passage while browsing the journal Psychological Science. I include all the methodological detail because they are important:

Using the same method as in Study 1, we asked 20 University of Pennsylvania undergraduates to listen to either “When I’m Sixty-Four” by The Beatles or “Kalimba.” Then, in an ostensibly unrelated task, they indicated their birth date (mm/dd/yyyy) and their father’s age. We used father’s age to control for variation in baseline age across participants. An ANCOVA revealed the predicted effect: According to their birth dates, people were nearly a year-and-a-half younger after listening to “When I’m Sixty-Four” adjusted M = 20.1 years) rather than to “Kalimba” (adjusted M = 21.5 years), F(1, 17) = 4.92, p = .040.

If you’re like me, you had to reread the passage: It doesn’t say that subjects felt a year and a half younger; it says that they actually were a year and a half younger. That is, the data support the scientists’ unbelievable hypothesis that listening to music about old age can make us significantly younger.

Unbelievable indeed. The authors of the report—Joseph Simmons and Uri Simonsohn of Penn and Leif Nelson of Berkeley—certainly don’t believe this finding, although they did really run the experiment as described, and they used accepted practices for reporting and analyzing their data. They ran the experiment to demonstrate a serious flaw in the usual way that behavioral science data are collected and reported—a flaw that (they claim) allows scientists to prove that “anything” is a significant finding. The scientists are not charging malfeasance or malicious intent, but they do argue that current methods lead inevitably to self-serving intellectual dishonesty, producing a lot of “false positives”—results that appear statistically valid but in fact are not. Discovering the Fountain of Youth is a deliberately absurd example, but the authors believe that false positives in behavioral science are “vastly more likely” than the 5 percent that’s generally acknowledged.

How does this happen? The scientists ran a computer simulation of 15,000 actual data samples, and identify the culprit as “researcher degrees of freedom.” This simply means that, in the course of running and reporting an experiment, scientists make a number of decisions that can skew results. These decisions—and the rules governing them—make it “unacceptably easy” to publish bogus evidence for literally any hypothesis. One example is the decision about the sample size. Typically, a researcher will recruit a sample—say 20 subjects—and run the experiment. At that point, the research tests the data for significance. If the result is significant, terrific: The researcher stops collecting data and reports the result. So far so good, but what if the result does not reach significance after 20 subjects? In that case, the researcher has the option of adding another group of subjects—say 10 more—and testing the data again. And again, and again. According to the authors’ computer simulation, this seemingly small degree of freedom increases the false-positive rate by 50 percent. A recent survey found that about seven in ten psychological scientists admit to making such interim decisions in their research.

Manipulating sample size is just one of the decision-making “freedoms” that the authors highlight in their Psychological Science paper. Another is flexibility in including (and reporting) dependent variables. If a researcher designs an experiment with two dependent variables, he or she can decide to test just one, or the other, or both, increasing the likelihood of producing at least one significant result. Similarly, flexibility in controlling for gender can dramatically boost false positives, as can dropping (or not dropping) one of three experimental conditions. What’s more, the authors note, scientists often use all these freedoms in the same experiment, a practice that would lead to a stunning 61 percent false positive rate. In other words, a researcher with all the best intentions is more likely than not to falsely detect a positive result just by using the accepted practices in the field.

They consider this estimate conservative. Researchers often test and choose among more than two dependent variables; exclude subsets of subjects as “outliers”; consign early data to “pilot studies”; and so on.

So what’s to be done? The authors offer a simple solution to the problem of false-positive publication, including requirements for researchers and guidelines for journal reviewers. The requirements all aim for more transparency in reporting data and methods of analysis—listing all variables, for example, and deciding on sample size before data collection begins. Here, for illustration, is the way the authors would revise their own report on the Fountain of Youth study:

Using the same method as in Study 1, we asked 34 University of Pennsylvania undergraduates to listen only to either “When I’m Sixty-Four” by The Beatles or “Kalimba” or “Hot Potato” by the Wiggles. We conducted our analyses after every session of approximately 10 participants; we did not decide in advance when to terminate data collection. Then, in an ostensibly unrelated task, they indicated only their birth date (mm/dd/yyyy) and how old they felt, how much they would enjoy eating at a diner, the square root of 100, their agreement with “computers are complicated machines,” their father’s age, their mother’s age, whether they would take advantage of an early-bird special, their political orientation, which of four Canadian quarterbacks they believed won an award, how often they refer to the past as “the good old days,” and their gender. We used father’s age to control for variation in baseline age across participants. An ANCOVA revealed the predicted effect: According to their birth dates, people were nearly a year-and-a-half younger after listening to “When I’m Sixty-Four” (adjusted M = 20.1 years) rather than to “Kalimba” (adjusted M = 21.5 years), F(1, 17) = 4.92, p = .040. Without controlling for father’s age, the age difference was smaller and did not reach significance (Ms = 20.3 and 21.2, respectively), F(1, 18) = 1.01, p = .33.

This detailed report is about twice as long as the one above, and will no doubt seem burdensome to many scientists. It also will not stop blatant cheaters, the authors concede, but that is not the point. The goal, they conclude is to reduce the “self-serving interpretation of ambiguity, which enables us to convince ourselves that whichever decisions produced the most publishable outcome must have also been the most appropriate.”

Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought, has recently been published in paperback. Excerpts from his two blogs—“We’re Only Human” and “Full Frontal Psychology”—appear regularly in Scientific American Mind and in The Huffington Post.