November 2009
Volume 22, Number 9
Trust Your Gut? Study Explores Religion, Morality and Trust in Authority
Most of us strive to do what’s right, but we differ on how we get to the definition of right, with some basing their beliefs on religious teaching and others on a secular moral code. Psychologists Daniel C. Wisneski, Brad L. Lytle, and Linda J. Skitka from the University of Illinois at Chicago explored this interplay of moral convictions and religious beliefs as it relates to our trust in authority. Specifically, the researchers provided a nationally-represented sample of adults — 53 percent female, 72 percent White, 12 percent Black, and 11 percent Hispanic — with an online survey about the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on physician-assisted suicide. Participants took a survey designed to measure their support of or opposition to physician-assisted suicide, the extremity of their attitude, their moral convictions, their religiosity, their issue-specific trust in the Supreme Court, and the time it took them to answer each question. As the findings published in a recent issue of Psychological Science suggest the more religious participants tended to trust the Supreme Court’s ability to make the right decision whereas the group with strong moral, but not religious, convictions felt distrust. And both groups, as it turned out, based their beliefs on a gut reaction rather than on thoughtful, careful deliberation. As the authors concluded, people with strong moral convictions seem to not only base their trust in judgment on a gut reaction, “they do not trust even legitimate authorities to make the right decision in the first place.”
Mad Genius: Study Suggests Link Between Psychosis and Creativity
History teems with examples of great artists acting in very peculiar ways. Were these artists simply mad or brilliant? According to new research reported in Psychological Science, maybe both. In order to examine the link between psychosis and creativity, psychiatrist Szabolcs Kéri of Semmelweis University in Hungary focused his research on neuregulin 1, a gene that normally plays a role in a variety of brain processes, including development and strengthening communication between neurons. However, a variant of this gene (or genotype) is associated with a greater risk of developing mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. In this study, the researchers recruited volunteers who considered themselves to be very creative and accomplished. They underwent a battery of tests, including assessments for intelligence and creativity. The results show a clear link between neuregulin 1 and creativity: Volunteers with the specific variant of this gene were more likely to have higher scores on the creativity assessment and also greater lifetime creative achievements than were volunteers with a different form of the gene. Kéri notes that this is the first study to show that a genetic variant associated with psychosis may have some beneficial functions.
Use It or Lose It? Study Suggests the Brain
Can Remember a "Forgotten" Language
Many of us learn a foreign language when we are young, but in some cases, exposure to that language is brief and we never get to hear or practice it again. Our subjective impression is often that the neglected language completely fades away from our memory. But does “use it or lose it” apply to foreign languages? Although it may seem we have absolutely no memory of the neglected language, new research suggests this “forgotten” language may be more deeply engraved in our minds than we realize. Psychologists Jeffrey Bowers, Sven L. Mattys, and Suzanne Gage from the University of Bristol recruited volunteers who were native English speakers but who had learned either Hindi or Zulu as children when living abroad. The scientists asked the volunteers to complete a background vocabulary test to see if they remembered any words from the neglected language. They then trained the participants to distinguish between pairs of phonemes that started Hindi or Zulu words. As it turned out, even though the volunteers showed no memory of the second language in the vocabulary test, they were able to quickly relearn and correctly identify phonemes that were spoken in the neglected language. These findings suggest that exposing young children to foreign languages, even if they do not continue to speak them, can have a lasting impact on speech perception.
