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By mthomas
A great issue of the Psychologist magazine this month (September 2010) includes a fascinating article by Charles Spence on the multisensory perception of flavour. Spence is head of the Crossmodal Research Lab in Oxford University’s Department of Experimental Psychology. He also enjoys a glass of wine and spends time with celebrated molecular gastronaut Heston Blumenthal, hence the picture of him clutching a glass of the good stuff and the front cover being one of Heston’s multisensory culinary creations (pictured left).
Spence takes us through the discoveries of neuroscientists and psychologists who have demonstrated the primacy of visual sensory information. For example why the voice of a ventiloquist’s dummy is perceived as coming from the dummy’s mouth. He also looks at wine, amongst other foods and drinks, and studies showing the powerful effect of colour on discrimination and description. The important question of how flavour should be defined; as a unitary sensory modality (like hearing) or as a perceptual system is addressed.
Effects, such as ’sensory dominance’ and ’superadditivity’ , are heralding a new era of product design and a ‘new wave’ of chefs. The hope is that we will not just have more exciting and interesting foods to enjoy but that this knowledge can be applied to improve health. For example reducing fat, sugar and salt in our food over coming decades without sacrificing any pleasure (hedonic valence).
I love being an Associate Editor of the Magazine which manages to thrive as a ‘learned professional journal’ whilst publishing cutting edge and engaging articles of interest to a wide audience. This issue has been circulated freely to thousands of students and I am sure many will become subscribers as their careers develop. Those of you who are not members of the British Psychological Society download a free copy here.
By mthomas
This paper has been picked up by the international press and has tabloid sub-editors salivating over ‘Booze yourself brighter’ and ’Pour genius’ (boom boom!) headlines. Of course the truth is more complex than soundbytes allow (one of my reservations about Twitter) and reading a complex journal paper is not something most journalists relish, or are equipped to do, (apologies to those that are, and/or enjoy it!). However, this study does appear to offer further empirical evidence for cognitive benefits of moderate wine consumption.
The authors have produced a well thought out paper in terms of the experimental design and justify the conclusions drawn from the large data corpus. It is a longitudinal population-based study and interesting in that light-to-moderate wine consumption was associated with better performance on cognitive tests after 7 years follow up. Their results support findings from previous research on the topic and over the last twenty-five years the association between moderate alcohol intake and cognitive function has been investigated in more than 50 studies. Most show an association between light to moderate alcohol consumption and better cognitive function as well as reduced risk of conditions such as dementia.
Particpants in the Norwegian study (I prefer this term to the convention of subjects) were over 5000 stroke-free, to remove potential confounding variables, men and women. Alcohol consumption and other cardiovascular risk factors were measured and cognitive function was assessed after 7 years follow up with verbal memory test, digit–symbol coding test and tapping test. Moderate wine consumption was found to be independently associated with better performance on all cognitive tests in both men and women. Of note is that there was no consistent association between consumption of beer and spirits and cognitive test results. Alcohol abstention was also associated with lower cognitive performance in women.
Of course the truth is that we have to balance any positive effects of alcohol use against the huge medical and social problems related to problematic drinking. I recall a researcher saying to me some years ago; ‘the bottom line is you will never offset the negative impact of alcohol consumption with positive health outcomes for the majority of people, at least in our lifetime anyway“. The only way this will be achieved in future is through artificially enhanced products where the content of beneficial elements, such as polyphenols, is much higher (and alcohol lower). I also think education will continue to be the definitive factor. Wine may be ‘better’ than many alcoholic beverages because of polyphenol content but, that said, it is really how we consume alcohol (and how much) that matters most. Also wines differ greatly in terms of production and composition so some wines are likely to be better than others (e.g. young unfiltered tannic reds).
Arntzen KA, Schirmer H, Wilsgaard T, Mathiesen EB. Moderate wine consumption is associated with better cognitive test results: a 7 year follow up of 5033 subjects in the Tromsø Study. Acta Neurol Scand: 2010: 122 (Suppl. 190): 23–29.
Thanks to John Wiley & Sons for the journal image and the paper
By mthomas
The following is from the BPS research digest. This view of personality is quite limited but probably contains some ‘truths’ about bloggers and their choice of words. It would be interesting to analyse by topic too; perhaps wine bloggers tend towards a specific personality type. I always think that wine language is peculiarly idiosyncratic, elaborated (in terms of being a code) and often alienates people.
See if you can identify the Psychologist (pictured left) given the post below.
You can tell a person’s personality from the words they use. Neurotics have a penchant for negative words; agreeable types for words pertaining to socialising; and so on. We know this from recordings of people’s speech and from brief writing tasks. Now Tal Yarkoni has extended this line of research to the blogosphere by analysing the content of 694 blogs - containing an average of 115,000 words written over an average period of about two years - and matching this with the bloggers’ (predominantly female; average age 36) answers to online personality questionnaires.
Some commentators have suggested that the internet allows people to present idealised versions of themselves to the world. Contrary to that idea, Yarkoni found that bloggers’ choice of words consistently related to their personality type just as has been found in past offline research.
More neurotic bloggers used more words associated with negative emotions; extravert bloggers used more words pertaining to positive emotions; high scorers on agreeableness avoided swear words and used more words related to communality; and conscientious bloggers mentioned more words with achievement connotations. These were all as expected. More of a surprise was the lack of a link between the Big Five personality factor of ‘openness to experience’ and word categories related to intellectual or sensory experience. Instead openness was associated with more use of prepositions, more formal language and longer words.
The sheer size of the data set at Yarkoni’s disposal allowed him to look not only at links between personality factors and broad word categories (as past research has done) but to also zoom in on the usage of specific words. Among the most strong and intriguing correlations were: Neuroticism correlated with use of ‘irony’ and negatively correlated with ‘invited’; Extraversion correlated with ‘drinks’ and negatively correlated with ‘computer’; Openness correlated with ‘ink’; Agreeableness with ‘wonderful’ and negatively correlated with ‘porn’; and Conscientiousness correlated with ‘completed’ and negatively correlated with ‘boring’.
‘The results underscore the importance of studying the influence of personality on word use at multiple levels of analysis,’ Yarkoni concluded, ‘and provide a novel approach for refining existing categorical word taxonomies and identifying new and unexpected associations with personality.’
Yarkoni, T. (2010). Personality in 100,000 Words: A large-scale analysis of personality and word use among bloggers. Journal of Research in Personality, 44 (3), 363-373
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2010.04.001
By mthomas
Got back last night from great writing and sailing trip to Greece. There were five of us on our boat (two other psychologists, skipper Pete and my very good friend Paul, Mike the Barrister and Roy who created and writes ‘New Tricks’ for the BBC) and seven on the other boat (skippered by Pete’s brother John) who we affectionately referred to as ‘The Hobbits’ due to their diminutive size compared to us 6 footers. We had a new Bavaria 45 (pictured to the left) which handled beautifully and has plenty of space. The trip was superb and along the way we also took in some great Greek culture including plenty of wines.
We left Athens and did a roundabout trip taking in most of the Saronic islands and some of the mainland towns such as Epidavros. A highlight was mooring in the notoriously difficult Hydra (pictured right) after the rescue of a French family. They had snagged their anchor on an electrical cable and Pete dived down over 5 metres to release it. He is an absolute legend and with Mike, Paul and Roy, was fantastic company.
In between the sailing I managed to read, and make notes on, William Younger’s opus; Gods, Men and Wine. It was a work of love he completed following a stint working for the intelligence services during the war. The introduction sets the tone to this learned and fascinating history of wine;
“Wine suffers a heaving birth. It has a rough, groping childhood. It develops into adolescence. Then if it does not sicken, it matures: and in this it is almost human since it does not mature according to a fixed rule but according to the law of its particular and individual personality. The act which gives it personality is the act of fermentation. In this metamorphosis it is changed from fruit into animal: sometimes even an animal of splendor.”
It was great to read about wines in antiquity whilst visiting some of the places mentioned. The section on wine and the Romans is incredibly insightful and informative, and some of the illustrative plates fascinating in terms of aesthetics and content. If you can get hold of a copy it is one of the great wine books.
As for the wine we drank… I am a lover of Greek wines but found the majority of the bottled wines available on the islands were overpriced and poor. However, we ate out most evenings and the house rosé in most tavernas was consistently enjoyable and very cheap. No-one ever seemed to know the grapes but it was fresh, light and perfect for the food and climate. Usually, but not always, quite dark for rosé, it was good to support local producers who, like many Greeks, are having a tough time. We often left carrying a couple of litres (mineral water bottles refilled) which we subsequently drank at lunch the next day, after a sail and swim, over one of Roy’s miraculous lunches whilst moored off a secluded cove. Bliss.
At times I found myself reflecting on how life must have been for the Greeks on these islands thousands of years ago. Wine had important functions in terms of religion, economics and culture but was also ‘medication’, nourishment and entertainment. I like to think the wine I drank was pretty close to some of those they had enjoyed and, in many ways, beneath the veneer of modernity and sophistication little has changed.
Younger, W. (1966) Gods, Men and Wine The Wine and Food Society
By mthomas
Another cracking research review from the BPS Research Digest…
There are some obvious practical reasons why you might want to avoid provoking the big, drunk guy in the bar. After all, he’s bigger than you. However, according to a new study, there’s a psychological reason to be wary - heavier men are, on average, more likely to be aggressive when drunk than are lighter men. Nathan DeWall and colleagues say their finding is consistent with evolutionary theory and research on embodied cognition.
Over five hundred women (average weight 149 lb) and men (average weight 183 lb), aged 21 to 35, consumed either an alcoholic beverage or a placebo drink before taking part in a reaction time contest. The winner of each round had the opportunity to inflict an electric shock on their opponent. Their choices of how strong and long a shock to inflict was the measure of aggression. Unbeknown to the participants, their opponent was fictitious and the game was fixed so that they won fifty per cent of the rounds.
The key finding was that among the male participants only, alcohol interacted with body weight to predict aggression. That is, heavier men who had an alcoholic drink tended to be more aggressive than those who had an alcohol-free placebo drink. By contrast, having an alcoholic vs. placebo drink made little difference to the aggression of lighter men.
Another way of looking at the results was that, among men who had the alcoholic drink, those who were heavier tended to be more aggressive. For the female participants, their weight bore no relation to their aggressiveness. These same findings were replicated in a second study with a further 327 men and women.
It makes sense in terms of evolutionary theory that bigger men should be more prone to aggression, the researchers said, because ‘they’re more able than weaker men to inflict costs on others in conflict situations.’ The same isn’t true for women because even those who are larger will usually be smaller and weaker than potential male adversaries.
An association between weight and aggression is also predicted by embodied cognition, the researchers said. This is the idea that the way we think about abstract concepts is rooted in physical metaphors. One example is that we think about importance in terms of weight, thus leading heavier people to feel more important and entitled to special treatment.
Consistent with both these theoretical arguments, past research has indeed found that physical size is related to aggression. However, DeWall’s team said their new study is the first to show that weight is a predictor of alcohol-induced increases in aggression. ‘It seems that alcohol reduced the inhibition for heavy men to “throw their weight around” and intimidate others by behaving aggressively,’ they said.
DeWall, C., Bushman, B., Giancola, P., & Webster, G. (2010). The big, the bad, and the boozed-up: Weight moderates the effect of alcohol on aggression. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46 (4), 619-623
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.02.008
By mthomas
I was really pleased to see that the British Psychological Society Research Digest Blog (here) has been voted the best psychology blog in the inaugural Research Blogging Awards. I subscribe to the digest and it is a great round-up of interesting and topical studies such as the one below (which is relevant given some of the current stories about wine and health).
Well done to Dr Christian Jarrett who does a great job with it.
A short while ago there was a shocking advert on British TV that used slow motion to illustrate the bloody, crunching effects of a car crash. The driver had been drinking. Using these kind of scare tactics for anti drink-driving and other health issues makes intuitive sense. The campaigners want to grab your attention and demonstrate the seriousness of the consequences if their message is not heeded. However, a new study makes the surprising finding that for a portion of the population, scare tactics can back-fire, actually undermining a message’s efficacy.
Steffen Nestler and Boris Egloff had 297 participants, 229 of them female, average age 35, read one of two versions of a fictional news report from a professional medical journal. The report referred to a study showing links between caffeine consumption and a fictional gastro-intestinal disease ‘Xyelinenteritis’. One version was extra-scary, highlighting a link between Xyelinenteritis and cancer and saying that the participant’s age group was particularly vulnerable. The other version was lower-key and lacked these two details. Both versions of the article concluded by recommending that readers reduce their caffeine consumption.
Before gauging the participants’ reaction to the article and its advice, the researchers tested them on a measure of ‘cognitive avoidance’. People who score highly on this personality dimension respond to threats with avoidance tactics such as distracting themselves, denying the threat or persuading themselves that they aren’t vulnerable.
The key finding is that participants who scored high on cognitive avoidance actually rated the threat from Xyelinenteritis as less severe after reading the scary version of the report compared with the low-key version. Moreover, after reading the scary version, they were less impressed by the advice to reduce caffeine consumption and less likely to say that they planned to reduce their caffeine intake.
On the other hand, highly cognitive avoidant participants were more responsive to the low-key report than were the low cognitive avoidant participants. In other words, for people who are cognitively avoidant, scary health messages can actually back-fire.
‘Practically, our results suggest that instead of giving all individuals the same threat communications, messages should be given that are concordant with their individual characteristics,’ Nestler and Egloff said. ‘Thus, the present findings are in line with the growing literature on tailoring intentions to individual characteristics, and they highlight the role of individual differences when scary messages are used.’
Nestler, S., & Egloff, B. (2010). When scary messages backfire: Influence of dispositional cognitive avoidance on the effectiveness of threat communications Journal of Research in Personality, 44 (1), 137-141 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2009.10.007
Author weblink: http://www.psych.uni-mainz.de/abteil/pp/nestlers.html
By mthomas
A really enjoyable trip to Newcastle last week following an invitation to speak to fellow Psychologists about wine as part of a Seminar series organised by Northumbria and Newcastle Universities. It was really good to meet Professor David Kennedy, Director of the Brain, Performance and Nutrition Research Centre (website here) who is leading on research in to the role and function of dietary Polyphenols. He and his team are undertaking ground-breaking work into the cognitive effects of polyphenols, such as resveratrol, and it was fascinating to talk with them about their studies.
The centre has state-of-the-art testing facilities including their own COMPASS assessment system, internet and mobile phone testing technology, neuro-imaging capability (Near Infrared Spectroscopy, Transcranial Doppler and EEG) and physiological sampling facilities. They use these to assess the neurocognitive effects of “the most basic units of brain fuel – oxygen and glucose – as well as investigations of the cognitive mechanisms and mood effects of herbal extracts, nutraceuticals and food supplements”. Their projects focus on the psychopharmacology of commonly consumed everyday substances such as caffeine, social drugs (wine included), and chocolate. Special thanks to Emma who arranged the enjoyable wine reception at the University and meal in town.
I took some leave the next day to explore Newcastle as I hadn’t been there since the 1980s (when I went on an undergrad jaunt with friends to see a band). It was a cold but bright day so I walked for hours and managed most of the sights. I liked the Baltic gallery (pictured above), a ‘mini Tate Modern’, and enjoyed the Jenny Holzer exhibition (including ‘Waterboard’ - a tellingly censored document and very moving piece of work). I also trawled the retro shops and got lucky when I found a pot made by the Roth factory. I collect post-war German ceramics and am especially interested in Roth, a small high quality ’studio’ that made wonderful pieces inj the 60s and 70s, so was chuffed with the find (pictured). This glaze and design is uncommon and I have the same shape in the more distinctive and archetypal ‘fat lava’ glazes.
I found a great pub called The Forth (website here). It had a good wine list but the Mordue bitter came highly recommended and was a fine pint. I hope to return to Newcastle much more quickly next time as it is a welcoming city full of authenticity and charming people.
By mthomas
Jan Heufer’s article “In vino veritas signaling and drinking,” uses Game Theory as a theoretical and conceptual framework to explore the idea that a moderate consumption of alcohol within a social context can be beneficial. It is argued that social drinking can help reveal a person’s personality, particularly their trustworthiness. The example of playing a game of trust is used; if a trustworthy person plays a game of trust and his or her trustworthiness is common knowledge, the player would be trusted by others and this would lead to a higher pay off for everyone. However if their trustworthiness is not observable then other players might not be willing to take the risk of trusting them. Therefore the trustworthy player has an incentive to employ alcohol in order to credibly reveal information about their personality.
|
Hawk |
Dove |
| Hawk |
v−c, v−c |
2v, 0 |
| Dove |
0, 2v |
v, v |
| The hawk-dove game is an illustrative example of game theory modelling |
Heufer argues that as alcohol is not addictive for moderate consumption and has only short term effects so there is not too much of a trade off between the gains due to the revelation of trustworthiness and the effects of alcohol on productivity. The model presented in this paper included the use of a noisy signal to reveal information about personality types. For example if a player in the game of trust (involuntarily) emits a noisy signal this gives the other player information about their personality type. It was found that drinking had an impact on the distribution of the signal, specifically, that drinking reduces the standard deviation of the noisy signal. However it has been argued that the introduction of noisy information alone can reduce the overall level of trust, as some trustworthy players with low noisy signals will not be trusted, even though they may have been trusted without the noisy information.
In this article only trustworthiness was analysed. It is also possible that the ability of one player to exploit another intoxicated player decreases with their own intoxication. In that case using the drug together and simultaneously can decrease the risk of being exploited for both players, for example each player could take one sip of alcohol at a time and wait for the other player to follow in suit. Therefore players can also signal trust by using the drug simultaneously.
Game theory seems to be relatively rarely applied to drinking behaviour but is still a popular (albeit much criticised) paradigm within economics and the social sciences. I would be interested in seeing an analysis of competition tastings from a Games Theory perspective as I think it might identify a number of interesting forces at work.
Heufer, J. (2009) In Vino Veritas: The Economics of Drinking (Ruhr Economic Paper No. 158). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1532171
By mthomas
I am currently writing a section for ‘the book’ on contextual influences on perception and was aware of research from Germany on ambient lighting having an influence on taste. This is true even when the lighting doesn’t directly effect the colour of the wine. It even influences the subjective value of the wine and the amount of money consumers are willing to spend. This has obvious relevance for bars and retail outlets.
Daniel Oberfeld-Twistel and colleagues at Johannes Gutenberg Univerity in Mainz served the same bottle of Riesling under varied lighting. Red light appeared to increase perceived sweetness and increase the amount per bottle participants were prepared to spend by one Euro/70 pence (blue light also did this).
The effects seem to be related to changes in mood but further work is planned to attempt to determine precise mechanism(s). This is yet another indication of the power of context and wine tasters should be (and often are) mindful of such influences.
Daniel Oberfeld, Heiko Hecht, Ulrich Allendorf and Florian Wickelmaier. Ambient lighting modifies the flavor of wine. Journal of Sensory Studies, 2009; 24 (6): 797 Abstract is (here)
By mthomas
The New Scientist magazine recently published an interesting article by Peter Aldhous on pharmacological approaches to the treatment of alcoholism. It also introduced me to a new demographic ‘Cyber-Millenials’ and I am slightly concerned that I may be one. They (we?) are often ‘binge-drinkers’ with expendable income living in trendy urban fringe areas. I am probably a bit old to be a proper one and having a demanding job plus 2 kids (dad’s taxi duty ferrying them to and from various activities) really limits opportunities for binge drinking.
On a more serious note, in the past medication such as disulfiram was not designed to reduce cravings for alcohol but to induce nausea as an aversive if the person did drink. The new wave of SSRIs (Prozac was an earlier one) such as Naltrexone are ‘designed’ to reduce cravings and the compulsive urge to drink. This type of drug will be familiar to many because of branded versions being used in a variety of domains; Champix (to stop smoking) and Cipramil (to reduce panic attacks and in some cases compulsive shopping!) They are also subject to concerns regarding negative side effects and debates over cost-benefits.
There are other wider social issues related to how we may be pathologising and medicating groups as well as accusations of aggressive marketing by the pharmaceutical industry or ‘Big Pharma’ as it is sometimes known. Excessive drinking is linked to a range of social and medical issues but is the answer to replace it with a ‘magic pill’?
The full article can be read (here).
