Seeing the World in Black and White

When the Chrysler car company released its new model Dodge Coronet in 1967, the theme of its ad campaign was the “White Hat Special.” Some of the ads featured cartoon cowboys riding around “keepin’ the prices low,” while others had the ubiquitous “Dodge Girl” in her signature white Stetson, chirping: “Only the good guys could put together a deal like this.”

These ads didn’t need any elaboration. Madison Avenue knew the potential buyers had all been raised on film and TV Westerns, and knew the symbolism of white hats. Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger—cinematic heroes wore white hats, and bad guys wore black. It was all very simple.

Simple, but maybe not all that original. The colors white and black have carried layers of moral meaning since long before American’ infatuation with cowboys and automobiles, and some scientists believe that those associations may be automatic and universal and ancient. Indeed, blackness and whiteness may be wired into our neurons, and tightly tangled up with notions of sin and virtue and cleanliness and dirt.

Two University of Virginia psychologists recently decided to explore this provocative idea in the laboratory. Gary Sherman and Gerald Clore wanted to know if common metaphors may be more than mere rhetorical devices, if in fact they might be deep embodiments of moral thinking. They decided to test the link between white and virtue (and black and sin) as part of this larger question.

To do this, the psychologists adapted a reaction-time test from the 1930s, called the Stroop Test. Readers may know this from the Internet, where it circulates as a kind of parlor game. It’s the one in which the names of colors are printed in different colors—say the word blue in yellow ink—and you must very rapidly indicate the ink color rather than the meaning. It’s hard, because our mind wants to read the word—and slow reaction time is taken as a sign of cognitive disconnect or conflict.

In Sherman and Clore’s version of the Stroop, volunteers read not the names of colors but words with strong moral overtones: greed and honesty, for example. Some of the words were printed in black and some in white, and they flashed rapidly on a screen. As with the original Stroop, a fast reaction time was taken as evidence that a connection was mentally automatic and natural; hesitation was taken as a sign that a connection didn’t ring true. The researchers wanted to see if the volunteers automatically linked immorality with blackness, as in black ink, and virtue with whiteness.

And they did, so quickly that the connections couldn’t possibly be deliberate. Just as we unthinkingly—almost unconsciously—“know” a lemon is yellow, we instantly know that sin and crime are black; grace and virtue, white.

Why would this be? Well, one possibility is that the metaphor is more complex, embodying not just right and wrong but purity and contagion, too. Think of the metaphor “new fallen snow”: It’s not only white, it’s virginal and unadulterated, like a wedding dress. And blackness not only discolors it; it stains it, taints its purity. With this in mind, the psychologists ran another experiment, adding this idea of contagion, feeling morally dirty. They deliberately primed some volunteers’ immoral thoughts by having them read a story about a self-serving, immoral lawyer, and compared them to volunteers primed for ethical thinking.

The idea was that people who were feeling morally dirty would be quicker to make the connection between immorality and blackness on the moral Stroop test, which is exactly what they found. And what’s more, they found this with much looser definitions of morality and immorality—including words like dieting, gossip, duty, partying, helping, and so forth. In other words, those primed for misbehavior linked blackness not only with crime and cheating but with being irresponsible, unreliable, self-centered slackers.

This is pretty convincing in itself, but the researchers wanted to look at the question yet another way. If the association between sin and blackness really does reflect a concern about dirt and impurity, then this association should be stronger for people who are preoccupied with purity and pollution. Such fastidiousness often manifests as personal cleanliness, and a proxy for personal cleansing might be the desire for cleaning products. They tested this string of psychological connections in a final study, again ending with the Stroop test.

The results were unambiguous. As reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, those who expressed the strongest desire for an array of cleaning products were also those most likely to link morality with white, immorality with black. But here’s the really interesting part: The only products with this power were Dove soap and Crest toothpaste, products for personal cleanliness; things like Lysol and Windex did not activate the sin-blackness connection. In short, concerns about filth and personal hygiene appear central to seeing the moral universe in black and white.

For more insights into the quirks of human nature, visit the “We’re Only Human” blog at www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman. Selections from the blog also appear regularly at Newsweek.com and in the magazine Scientific American Mind.

The Narrative in the Neurons

Frank and Joe Hardy clutched the grips of their motorcycles and stared in horror at the oncoming car. It was careening from side to side on the narrow road.
“He’ll hit us! We’d better climb this hillside—and fast!” Frank exclaimed, as the boys brought their motorcycles to a screeching halt and leaped off.
“On the double!” Joe cried out as they started up the steep embankment.

Some readers will recognize the quick-witted motorcyclists here as the Hardy Boys, brothers and heroes of a long-popular series of kids’ mystery books. The amateur teenage sleuths do manage to escape the reckless driver in this scene, but the close call entangles them in a perilous adventure involving stolen jewels, false accusation, deathbed confession, and clever detective work. Good stuff.

These are actually the opening lines of The Tower Treasure, first published in 1927. I read this passage in the 1950s, and kids are apparently still getting sucked into the story even today. What is it about narratives like these that grab our attention? We may quickly move on to more sophisticated tastes in literature, but even a simple story such as this has power to grab our attention, engage our brains. But what’s the brain responding to exactly?

Psychologists are very interested in this question, and have some ideas. One theory is that we all have many “scripts” stored in our neurons. These scripts are derived from past experiences, and words activate these scripts, transforming the printed text into something more like a real-life experience. The opening scene from The Tower Treasure is actually rather spare in its language, yet for the reader it can be a rich encounter. We visualize a narrow road, perhaps one that we have actually known from somewhere. We feel our grip on the motorcycle handlebars, and hear the screech of the tires; we imagine leaping and the difficult pitch of the embankment and the effort of climbing.

At least that’s the idea, which a team of psychologists at Washington University in St. Louis decided to test in the lab. Jeffrey Zacks and his colleagues suspected that several different regions of the brain collaborate in the reading of a tale, each supplying a specialized script based on a particular kind of real-world experience. So, for example, one group of neurons might supply a story’s sense of space and movement (the careening car on a narrow road), while another might contribute the sensation of handling objects (clutching the grips), and still another, the characters’ goals (climbing to safety).

To test this idea, the scientists used a brain scanner to see what regions lit up during the reading of a story. They watched the brains of volunteers as they read four short narrative passages. Each clause in each story was coded for the script it should theoretically trigger: movement in space, sense of time passing, characters’ goals, interaction with physical objects, and so forth. The idea was to see if different parts of the brain lit up as the reader’s imagined situation unfolded.

And they did. The details of the brain anatomy aren’t important here, but clearly there are several different neuron clusters involved in story comprehension. For example, a particular area of the brain ramped up when readers were thinking about intent and goal-directed action, but not meaningless motion. Motor neurons flashed when characters were grasping objects, and neurons involved in eye movement activated when characters were navigating their world.

These findings, reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, strongly suggest that readers are far from passive consumers of words and stories. Indeed, it appears that we dynamically activate real-world scripts that help us to comprehend a narrative—and those active scripts in turn enrich the story beyond its mere words and sentences. In this way, reading is much like remembering or imagining a vivid event.

It’s possible, the psychologists say, that not just reading but all thinking may be similarly embodied in stored, real-life experiences. In this sense, language may have been an adaptive strategy for efficient and vivid communication of experiences to others. Put another way, storytelling may have evolved as a tool of survival.

For more insights into the quirks of human nature, visit the “We’re Only Human” blog at www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman. Selections from the blog also appear regularly in the magazine Scientific American Mind and at Newsweek.com.

The Paradox of Loyalty

A curious thing happened among my friends during the Bush-Cheney years. Some, especially those who opposed the invasion of Iraq, disengaged from American symbols and traditions. They didn’t celebrate the 4th of July; indeed wouldn’t even watch a fireworks display or fly a flag. But others, also no fans of the war or the administration’s torture policies, did the opposite: They became more patriotic, or at least more public in their displays and declarations of loyalty to country.

I count myself in the second group, yet I admit to being perplexed by this phenomenon. Why would disappointment in one’s country inspire increased loyalty? Doesn’t it seem more natural to disavow the country as a protest against its unjust actions, or at least to disengage a bit?

Well, it turns out that loyalty is a complex and paradoxical emotion. Psychologists have been studying the interplay of social injustice, righteous anger and group allegiance, and it appears that loyalists are not simply apologists for anything and everything the group stands for. In fact, ramped-up loyalty may be a predictable step toward taking a firm and principled stand.

New York University psychologists Heather Barry and Tom Tyler have been exploring this phenomenon in the laboratory, focusing on students’ loyalty to their university. In one study, for example, they used an elaborate procedure to measure the strength of students’ group commitment—that is, how important the university was to the individual students’ sense of identity. Once the students were sorted out according to their group allegiances, they were all asked to review the university’s grievance procedures. This was actually a laboratory ruse: In fact, some read procedures that seemed just and fair, while others read a version that clearly disrespected students’ rights, along with fellow students' complaints about unfair treatment.

The psychologists wanted to see how the students would react to unfavorable revelations about their university. Would seeing their group in a bad light change their sense of loyalty? Would they remain team players, with a shared sense of common purpose? They measured this in two ways. First, they asked them a series of questions about their willingness to serve their schools and fellow students in selfless ways: Would they tutor another student if asked? Would they help a professor with some photocopying? That kind of thing. The researchers wanted to get a general measure of how cooperative and service-oriented the students were feeling. In addition, one of the experimenters deliberately dropped her pen during the experiment, to see which of the students were spontaneously helpful.

The findings were provocative. As reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, the students who were the most devoted to their school to begin with were also the most cooperative and helpful when forced to confront the school’s failings. That is, those truest to their group redoubled their sense of service and commitment when faced with injustice. They didn’t criticize, nor did they distance themselves from the others in the group.

These results were immediate and short-term. The psychologists emphasize this, and find the results encouraging. It means that the group members’ loyalty is not so fragile that they jump ship with just a little disillusionment; they stay to help strengthen the group and correct its course. But this pumped-up loyalty is unlikely to last for long: If confronted with continued evidence of unfairness and injustice, many will stop compensating for the group’s shortcomings—and leave. What’s unclear is how long this will take—or how unjust a group must be before it squanders its members’ loyalty.

For more insights into the quirks of human nature, visit “We’re Only Human” at www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman. Selections from the blog also appear regularly in the magazine Scientific American Mind and at Newsweek.com.

Bending Time's Arrow

Among my parenting memorabilia is an illustrated timeline my son made back in the second grade. It starts with his 1986 birthday on the left and proceeds through various milestones of his first years—first day of kindergarten, T-ball, and so forth—ending on the far right with another celebration at the ripe old age of seven. I treasure this.

But how did he know that life unfolds from left to right, and not the other way around? Sure, his teacher instructed him and his classmates to draw the timeline this way, but why? Why do we accept without question that left equals early while right equals late, far off in time? More fundamentally, why do we entwine time and space?

Psychologists suspect that this space-time continuum may be more than a social convention, an artifice that we all simply agree to. Perhaps the brain has wired our perceptions of space and time together for some reason. A team of researchers has been exploring this question in the laboratory, using an unusual pair of spectacles.

Psychologist Francesca Frassinetti of the University of Bologna and her colleagues wanted to see if deliberately distorting space perception would also distort perception of the passage of time. They had a group of volunteers look at an image on a computer screen for different intervals of time—say two seconds. Then a different image appeared on the screen, and the volunteers tried to keep it on the screen for exactly the same amount of time, using a controller. In other words, they tried to duplicate the interval of time they had just perceived.

Most of the volunteers were pretty good at this, but that wasn’t the point. After the initial test, all of the volunteers put on special glasses, called prismatic lenses. These glasses shifted the volunteers’ perception of the image horizontally, either to the left or to the right; that is, they would look at the image just as before, but it would appear to the left or the right. They were basically forced to shift their spatial attention. Then they all did the same time estimation task as before.

The results were clear, and a bit spooky. As reported in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science, when the glasses shifted the volunteers’ attention to the right, they overestimated time. Not to put too fine a point on it, time hurried by; it expanded in their minds. Similarly, shifting the brain’s focus to the left compressed time; time intervals seemed shorter than they were in fact.

This doesn’t explain why time’s arrow moves from left to right, but it does show that time's on a horizontal line in the mind's eye. And it does help explain something else about my son’s timeline. A lot of time and experience is compressed into a very small space early on in his young life, with each year taking up more space as he gets older. It makes intuitive sense that we would experience time as expanding into the future, where the exact dimensions of our experience are as yet unknown.

For more insights into the quirks of human nature, visit “We’re Only Human” at www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman. Selections from the blog also appear regularly in the magazine Scientific American Mind and at Newsweek.com.

"I am a lovable person." "Not."

A milestone in the self-help movement was the publication of Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking in the early 1950s, which encouraged Americans to both think and talk positively about their lives and themselves. By the mid-1980s, that therapeutic philosophy had become so pervasive in American society that the Saturday Night Live comedian Al Franken wickedly parodied self-glorification through his alter-ego Stuart Smalley, who wrote the quintessential self-help volume: I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!

A lot has changed since the 80s. Comedy writer Franken is now the junior Senator from Minnesota, and will soon be writing laws instead of SNL skits. But one thing has not changed appreciably: Americans are still being urged—through self-help books, TV therapists and the like—to think positively and make daily affirmations of their self-worth.

But do they work? Is self-affirmation a sound scientific idea, or just more of our therapeutic culture’s gobbledygook? Interestingly, despite its broad popularity, the effectiveness of positive self-talk has never been rigorously tested. Until now. Psychologist Joanne Wood of the University of Waterloo and her colleagues recently decided to explore the idea in the laboratory. They report their surprising findings in the July issue of the journal Psychological Science.

There’s scientific reason to be skeptical about the value of self-affirmation. Psychologists know, for example, that people have a great deal of difficulty balancing two contradictory ideas. We may try to tell ourselves we’re something we’d like to be, but most of us are deeply resistant to ideas that violate our true sense of identity. Based on this theory, Wood reasoned that forced affirmations might merely remind some people of how they are not measuring up—and indeed might boomerang and make them feel worse. Here’s the experiment:

Wood gave a group of volunteers a standard test for self-esteem, and selected those who scored highest and lowest. Then they all participated in a writing exercise, but half got this instruction: Every time you hear a bell sound, repeat to yourself: “I am a lovable person.” The bell sounded about every 15 seconds during the exercise, and afterward she measured their mood and self-esteem. She also had the volunteers think about the words “I am a lovable person”; but some thought only about why the statement might be true, while others thought about why the statement might be either true or false.

The results were unambiguous and ironic. Those who already felt good about themselves got a slight boost from self-loving talk, but those who had low self-esteem to begin with got worse—more depressed and more self-critical. But interestingly, the volunteers who tried to focus on only positive thoughts about themselves did worse than those who were encouraged to think both good and bad things about themselves. Those preoccupied with self-affirmation were probably unsuccessful at suppressing all negative thinking, giving the negativity more power—power enough to trump the self-loving words.

For more insights into the quirks of human nature, visit “We’re Only Human” at www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman. Selections from the blog also appear regularly in the magazine Scientific American Mind and Newsweek.com.