Scientific evidence proves why healers see the ‘aura’ of people
May 5, 2012
Researchers in Spain have found that many of the individuals claiming to see the aura of people – traditionally called “healers” or “quacks” – actually present the neuropsychological phenomenon known as “synesthesia” (specifically, “emotional synesthesia”). This might be a scientific explanation of their alleged “virtue”. In synesthetes, the brain regions responsible for the processing of each type of sensory stimuli are intensely interconnected. This way, synesthetes can see or taste a sound, feel a taste, or associate people with a particular color.
The study was conducted by the University of Granada Department of Experimental Psychology Óscar Iborra, Luis Pastor and Emilio Gómez Milán, and has been published in the prestigious journal Consciousness and Cognition. This is the first time that a scientific explanation is provided on the esoteric phenomenon of the aura, a supposed energy field of luminous radiation surrounding a person as a halo, which is imperceptible to most human beings.
In neurological terms, synesthesia is due to cross-wiring in the brain of some people (synesthetes); in other words, synesthetes present more synaptic connections than “normal” people. “These extra connections cause them to automatically establish associations between brain areas that are not normally interconnected”, professor Gómez Milán explains. Many healers claiming to see the aura of people might have this condition.
The case of the “Santón de Baza”
The University of Granada researchers remark that “not all healers are synesthetes, but there is a higher prevalence of this phenomenon among them. The same occurs among painters and artists, for example”. To carry out this study, the researchers interviewed some synesthetes as the healer from Granada “Esteban Sánchez Casas”, known as “El Santón de Baza”.
Many people attribute “paranormal powers” to El Santón, such as his ability to see the aura of people “but, in fact, it is a clear case of synesthesia”, the researchers explain. El Santón presents face-color synesthesia (the brain region responsible for face recognition is associated with the color-processing region); touch-mirror synesthesia (when the synesthete observes a person who is being touched or is experiencing pain, s/he experiences the same); high empathy (the ability to feel what other person is feeling), and schizotypy (certain personality traits in healthy people involving slight paranoia and delusions). “These capacities make synesthetes have the ability to make people feel understood, and provide them with special emotion and pain reading skills”, the researchers explain.
In the light of the results obtained, the researchers remark the significant “placebo effect” that healers have on people, “though some healers really have the ability to see people’s auras and feel the pain in others due to synesthesia”. Some healers “have abilities and attitudes that make them believe in their ability to heal other people, but it is actually a case of self-deception, as synesthesia is not an extrasensory power, but a subjective and ‘adorned’ perception of reality”, the researchers state.
Reference:
Auras in mysticism and synaesthesia: a comparison. Consciousness and Cognition, 2012, 21(1), 258-268 de Milán, Iborra, Pastor y otros. Avalaible at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810011002868
Contact: Emilio Gómez Milán. Department of Experimental Psychology. Phone Number: +34958 240665. e-mail address: egomez@ugr.es
Contact: Emilio Gomez Milan
egomez@ugr.es
34-958-240-665
University of Granada
Sobered up using LSD
March 8, 2012
Forty years ago, LSD was used in the treatment of alcoholics – with good results. Perhaps it’s time to look at it again?
In the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, researchers in many places in the world experimented with LSD in the treatment of various disorders, including alcoholism. Not all experiments were scientifically tenable by today’s standards, but some were. Now Teri Krebs and Pål-Ørjan Johansen, researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), have taken a closer look at these experiments.
The results of all of these studies pointed in the same direction, which Krebs and Johansen say is quite clear: A single dose of LSD, provided for treatment purposes, helped heavy alcoholics and made it less likely that they would relapse.
“There has long been a need for better treatments for addiction. We think it is time to look at the use of psychedelics in treating various conditions,” the researchers say.
536 alcoholics
The Norwegian researchers found six different studies of LSD and alcoholism that were scientifically sound, in which patients were randomly assigned, as if by tossing a coin, to receive either LSD or a comparison treatment. They combined all the data from these studies, involving a total of 536 people – the first such rigorous quantitative analysis in the world.
All of the studies were conducted either in the U.S. or Canada between 1966 and 1970. The studies all involved individuals who were admitted to treatment for alcoholism and who voluntarily participated in the trials. Nearly all were men.
Within each of the studies all patients were given the same treatment programme. But on one treatment day some patients were given a single large dose of LSD, while control patients received a low dose of LSD or a stimulant drug – or nothing. In some studies, during the duration of the drug effects, patients talked with a therapist, while in other studies, patients received only brief reassurance if they wanted. But all were encouraged to reflect on their alcohol problem.
Neither patients nor the individuals who were treating them knew in advance who would get a full dose of LSD.
Clear improvements – greater opportunities
“In independent and standardized follow-up examinations, ranging from one to twelve months later, all of the studies showed that the patients who had received a full dose of LSD fared the best. On average, 59 per cent of full-dose patients showed a clear improvement compared with 38 per cent in the other groups,” say Krebs and Johansen.
LSD patients were less likely to relapse into problematic alcohol use and had higher levels of total abstinence. In some studies their relatives also reported the same findings. Many of the patients said they had gained a new appreciation for their alcohol problem and new motivation to address it.
These patients also reported greater self-acceptance and openness, as well as greater faith in their ability to deal with future problems.
Affects the brain
“We do not yet fully know why LSD works this way,” the researchers admit. “But we know that the substance is non-toxic and that it is not addictive. We also know that it has a striking effect on the imagination, perception and memories.”
The researchers explain that LSD interacts with a specific type of serotonin receptor in the brain.
“LSD may stimulate the formation of new connections and patterns, and generally seems to open an individual to an awareness of new perspectives and opportunities for action,” they say.
Not followed up
By 1971 LSD had been banned for non-medical use, and although the drug was and is still permitted as an experimental medical treatment, it became increasingly difficult to conduct clinical trials. Despite the promising studies, LSD was claimed to have no demonstrated medical use. There may be several reasons for this, the researchers explained.
“The earliest studies reported promising results but also had methodological problems. Many scientists expected unrealistically good results from a single dose, and tended to ignore effects that lasted less than a year. Importantly, many of the individual studies did not have enough patients to reach a conclusion by themselves.”
“But when we combine studies that had sound methodology, the results are unambiguous. We can therefore safely conclude that a single dose of LSD had a positive treatment effect that lasted at least six months,” Krebs and Johansen said.
Should offer repeated doses
The improvement was greatest during the first few months of treatment. As the months passed, the effect gradually decreased.
“It is unusual for psychiatric drugs to have an effect that lasts for several months after a single dose. We now better understand that alcoholism is a chronic, relapsing disorder that typically requires ongoing treatment. The next step should be to periodically provide additional doses of LSD in combination with modern evidence-based treatment programs,” the researchers conclude.
The meta-analysis is being published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
The work was financed by the Research Council of Norway and conducted during a research stay at Harvard Medical School. Krebs and Johansen are currently affiliated with the Department of Neuroscience at NTNU.
Reference: Teri S. Krebs and Pål-Ørjan Johansen: Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) for alcoholism: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (Journal of Psychopharmacology) DOI:10.1177/0269881112439253
Contact: Pal-Orjan Johansen
pal.johansen@ntnu.no
47-922-93108
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Why spiders do not stick to their own sticky web sites
March 3, 2012
Researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and University of Costa Rica asked why spiders do not stick to their own sticky webs. Repeating old, widely quoted but poorly documented studies with modern equipment and techniques, they discovered that spiders’ legs are protected by a covering of branching hairs and by a non-stick chemical coating. Their results are published online in the journal, Naturwissenschaften.
They also observed that spiders carefully move their legs in ways that minimize adhesive forces as they push against their sticky silk lines hundreds to thousands of times during the construction of each orb.
The web-weaving behavior of two tropical species, Nephila clavipes and Gasteracantha cancriformis, was recorded with a video camera equipped with close-up lenses. Another video camera coupled with a dissecting microscope helped to determine that individual droplets of sticky glue slide along the leg’s bristly hair, and to estimate the forces of adhesion to the web. By washing spider legs with hexane and water, they showed that spiders’ legs adhered more tenaciously when the non-stick coating was removed.
The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, headquartered in Panama City, Panama, is a unit of the Smithsonian Institution. The Institute furthers the understanding of tropical nature and its importance to human welfare, trains students to conduct research in the tropics and promotes conservation by increasing public awareness of the beauty and importance of tropical ecosystems. Website: www.stri.si.edu.
Reference: R.D. Briceño and W.G. Eberhard. 2012. Spiders avoid sticking to their webs: clever leg movements, branched drip-tip setae, and anti-adhesive surfaces. Naturwissenshaften. DOI 10.1007/s00114-012-0901-9. Published online: 1 March 2012.
Contact: Beth King
kingb@si.edu
202-633-4700 x28216
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Ancient popcorn discovered in Peru
January 18, 2012
People living along the coast of Peru were eating popcorn 1,000 years earlier than previously reported and before ceramic pottery was used there, according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences co-authored by Dolores Piperno, curator of New World archaeology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and emeritus staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
Some of the oldest known corncobs, husks, stalks and tassels (male flowers), dating from 6,700 to 3,000 years ago were found at Paredones and Huaca Prieta, two mound sites on Peru’s arid northern coast. The research group, led by Tom Dillehay from Vanderbilt University and Duccio Bonavia from Peru’s Academia Nacional de la Historia, also found corn microfossils: starch grains and phytoliths. Characteristics of the cobs – the earliest ever discovered in South America – indicate that the sites’ ancient inhabitants ate corn several ways, including popcorn and flour corn. However, corn was still not an important part of their diet.
“Corn was first domesticated in Mexico nearly 9,000 years ago from a wild grass called teosinte,” said Piperno. “Our results show that only a few thousand years later corn arrived in South America where its evolution into different varieties that are now common in the Andean region began. This evidence further indicates that in many areas corn arrived before pots did and that early experimentation with corn as a food was not dependent on the presence of pottery.”
Understanding the subtle transformations in the characteristics of cobs and kernels that led to the hundreds of maize races known today, as well as where and when each of them developed, is a challenge. Corncobs and kernels were not well preserved in the humid tropical forests between Central and South America, including Panama – the primary dispersal routes for the crop after it first left Mexico about 8,000 years ago.
“These new and unique races of corn may have developed quickly in South America, where there was no chance that they would continue to be pollinated by wild teosinte,” said Piperno. “Because there is so little data available from other places for this time period, the wealth of morphological information about the cobs and other corn remains at this early date is very important for understanding how corn became the crop we know today.”
The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, headquartered in Panama City, Panama, is a unit of the Smithsonian Institution. The Institute furthers the understanding of tropical nature and its importance to human welfare, trains students to conduct research in the tropics and promotes conservation by increasing public awareness of the beauty and importance of tropical ecosystems. Website: www.stri.si.edu
Contact: Beth King
kingb@si.edu
202-633-4700 x28216
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Stinky frogs are a treasure trove of antibiotic substances
November 30, 2011
Some of the nastiest smelling creatures on Earth have skin that produces the greatest known variety of anti-bacterial substances that hold promise for becoming new weapons in the battle against antibiotic-resistant infections, scientists are reporting. Their research on amphibians so smelly (like rotten fish, for instance) that scientists term them “odorous frogs” appears in ACS’ Journal of Proteome Research.
Yun Zhang, Wen-Hui Lee and Xinwang Yang explain that scientists long have recognized frogs’ skin as a rich potential source of new antibiotics. Frogs live in warm, wet places where bacteria thrive and have adapted skin that secretes chemicals, known as peptides, to protect themselves from infections. Zhang’s group wanted to identify the specific antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), and the most potent to give scientists clues for developing new antibiotics.
They identified more than 700 of these substances from nine species of odorous frogs and concluded that the AMPs account for almost one-third of all AMPs found in the world, the greatest known diversity of these germ-killing chemicals. Interestingly, some of the AMPs have a dual action, killing bacteria directly and also activating the immune system to assist in the battle.
The authors acknowledge funding from the National Basic Research Program of China and The National Natural Science Foundation of China.
The American Chemical Society is a non-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
Contact: Michael Bernstein
m_bernstein@acs.org
202-872-6042
American Chemical Society
Psychopaths’ brains show differences in structure and function
November 22, 2011
Images of prisoners’ brains show important differences between those who are diagnosed as psychopaths and those who aren’t, according to a new study led by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.
The results could help explain the callous and impulsive anti-social behavior exhibited by some psychopaths.
The study showed that psychopaths have reduced connections between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), the part of the brain responsible for sentiments such as empathy and guilt, and the amygdala, which mediates fear and anxiety. Two types of brain images were collected. Diffusion tensor images (DTI) showed reduced structural integrity in the white matter fibers connecting the two areas, while a second type of image that maps brain activity, a functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI), showed less coordinated activity between the vmPFC and the amygdala.
“This is the first study to show both structural and functional differences in the brains of people diagnosed with psychopathy,” says Michael Koenigs, assistant professor of psychiatry in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “Those two structures in the brain, which are believed to regulate emotion and social behavior, seem to not be communicating as they should.”
The study, which took place in a medium-security prison in Wisconsin, is a unique collaborative between three laboratories,
UW-Madison psychology Professor Joseph Newman has had a long term interest in studying and diagnosing those with psychopathy and has worked extensively in the Wisconsin corrections system. Dr. Kent Kiehl, of the University of New Mexico and the MIND Research Network, has a mobile MRI scanner that he brought to the prison and used to scan the prisoners’ brains. Koenigs and his graduate student, Julian Motzkin, led the analysis of the brain scans.
The study compared the brains of 20 prisoners with a diagnosis of psychopathy with the brains of 20 other prisoners who committed similar crimes but were not diagnosed with psychopathy.
“The combination of structural and functional abnormalities provides compelling evidence that the dysfunction observed in this crucial social-emotional circuitry is a stable characteristic of our psychopathic offenders,” Newman says. “I am optimistic that our ongoing collaborative work will shed more light on the source of this dysfunction and strategies for treating the problem.”
Newman notes that none of this work would be possible without the extraordinary support provided by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, which he called “the silent partner in this research.” He says the DOC has demonstrated an unprecedented commitment to supporting research designed to facilitate the differential diagnosis and treatment of prisoners.
The study, published in the most recent Journal of Neuroscience, builds on earlier work by Newman and Koenigs that showed that psychopaths’ decision-making mirrors that of patients with known damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). This bolsters evidence that problems in that part of the brain are connected to the disorder.
“The decision-making study showed indirectly what this study shows directly – that there is a specific brain abnormality associated with criminal psychopathy,” Koenigs adds.
Paying for sex and ‘playing dead’ – the deceitful gift-giving spider
November 14, 2011
Male nursery web spiders (Pisaura mirabilis) prepare silk-wrapped gifts to give to potential mates. Most gifts contain insects, but some gifts are inedible plant seeds or empty exoskeletons left after the prey has already been eaten (presumably by the male himself!). Males will also ‘play dead’ if a female moves away and then attempt to re-establish mating. New research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology examines the reproductive success of deceitful males and shows that females are not impressed by worthless gifts.
Male spiders were provided with either a potential gift of a fly, or a worthless item, such as a cotton wool ball, a dry flower head, a prey leftover (previously eaten housefly), or no gift at all. All the gifts were approximately the same size, so the females would not be able to tell what the gift was without unwrapping it. Males that offered any gift were more likely to successfully mate than males without. However the length of time the females allowed males with worthless gifts to spend transferring sperm was shorter than those with edible gifts (and even shorter for those with no gift at all!).
It appears that both male and female spiders are apparently able to assess the value of the gift and modify their behavior accordingly. Not only did the female spiders end mating sooner with an inedible gift, but male death feigning (thanatosis), which is triggered by the female attempting to end mating and run away with the gift, occurred in half of the matings involving an edible gift, but only once with a worthless gift. Similarly males and females were sometimes seen fighting over edible gifts, but never for a worthless gift.
Maria Albo who led the research explained, “The evolution of male deceit involves a complex equation of costs and benefits. It costs the males to find and wrap a gift, but these costs can be reduced if the male does not have to first catch his gift, or gives one that has already been eaten. The benefit of the gift is longer mating, which leads to more sperm being transferred, and potentially a higher number of offspring. However, the females are wise to deception and terminate mating early for worthless gifts.”
She continued, “The final results show that the number of eggs hatching was lower if the female had not received a gift, but there was little difference between females who had received an edible or inedible gift. The success of cheating probably explains why both strategies have co-evolved and are maintained in the population.”
Contact: Dr Hilary Glover
hilary.glover@biomedcentral.com
44-020-319-22370
BioMed Central
City lights could reveal E.T. civilization
November 3, 2011
In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses. In a new paper, Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Edwin Turner (Princeton University) suggest a new technique for finding aliens: look for their city lights.
“Looking for alien cities would be a long shot, but wouldn’t require extra resources. And if we succeed, it would change our perception of our place in the universe,” said Loeb.
As with other SETI methods, they rely on the assumption that aliens would use Earth-like technologies. This is reasonable because any intelligent life that evolved in the light from its nearest star is likely to have artificial illumination that switches on during the hours of darkness.
How easy would it be to spot a city on a distant planet? Clearly, this light will have to be distinguished from the glare from the parent star. Loeb and Turner suggest looking at the change in light from an exoplanet as it moves around its star.
As the planet orbits, it goes through phases similar to those of the Moon. When it’s in a dark phase, more artificial light from the night side would be visible from Earth than reflected light from the day side. So the total flux from a planet with city lighting will vary in a way that is measurably different from a planet that has no artificial lights.
Spotting this tiny signal would require future generations of telescopes. However, the technique could be tested closer to home, using objects at the edge of our solar system.
Loeb and Turner calculate that today’s best telescopes ought to be able to see the light generated by a Tokyo-sized metropolis at the distance of the Kuiper Belt – the region occupied by Pluto, Eris, and thousands of smaller icy bodies. So if there are any cities out there, we ought to be able to see them now. By looking, astronomers can hone the technique and be ready to apply it when the first Earth-sized worlds are found around distant stars in our galaxy.
“It’s very unlikely that there are alien cities on the edge of our solar system, but the principle of science is to find a method to check,” Turner said. “Before Galileo, it was conventional wisdom that heavier objects fall faster than light objects, but he tested the belief and found they actually fall at the same rate.”
As our technology has moved from radio and TV broadcasts to cable and fiber optics, we have become less detectable to aliens. If the same is true of extraterrestrial civilizations, then artificial lights might be the best way to spot them from afar.
Contact: Christine Pulliam
cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu
617-495-7463
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Video games used in new treatment that may fix ‘lazy eye’ in older children
October 23, 2011
A new study conducted in an eye clinic in India found that correction of amblyopia, also called “lazy eye,” can be achieved in many older children, if they stick to a regimen that includes playing video games along with standard amblyopia treatment. Today at the 115th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, Dr. Somen Ghosh will report on the approaches that allowed about a third of his study participants, who were between 10 and 18 years old, to make significant vision gains.
By the end of the one year study, nearly 30 percent of the 100 participants achieved significant vision gains. About 60 percent showed at least some improvement. Significant gains were more likely in children who participated in Groups 3 or 4 of the four treatment regimens. Treatment Group 3 completed daily video game practice and Group 4 took the supplement citicoline, which is associated with improved brain function. Improvement was more likely in children younger than age 14 than in those 14 and older.
The prevailing wisdom has been that if amblyopia is not diagnosed and corrected before a child reaches school age, it is difficult or impossible to correct. But recently the United States-based Pediatric Eye Disease Investigation Group (PEDIG) reported significant vision gains in 27 percent of older children in a study funded by the National Eye Institute. This report motivated Dr. Ghosh to test new approaches to learn what might be particularly effective in this age group.
His study was divided into four treatment groups. Students in all groups followed a basic treatment plan that required them to wear eyeglasses that blocked the stronger eye for at least two hours a day, during which time they practiced exercises using the weaker eye. This “patching” technique is a standard amblyopia treatment that works by making the weaker eye work harder. Group one followed only the basic plan and served as the control group, while groups two, three and four received additional treatments:
- Group 2 took a supplement that contained micronutrients considered important to good vision
- Group 3 played at least one hour of video games daily using only the weaker eye
- Group 4 took the supplement citicoline, which is associated with improved brain function
Saurav Sen, a 16 year old graduate of Dr. Ghosh’s clinic, received a second chance to achieve good vision. At age 13 Sen began to experience serious vision problems, which negatively impacted his school work. Other doctors had told him it was too late to correct his amblyopia. He completed the regimen assigned to treatment Group 3.t
“Playing the shooting games while using just my weaker eye was hard at first, but after a few months I could win all game levels easily,” said Sen. “I’m very happy that I stuck with the program. My vision has improved a lot, so that I now have no trouble studying or taking exams. My tennis game also improved, and of course I’m now a pro PC gamer.”
“The cooperation of the patient is very important, maybe even crucial, to successful treatment of amblyopia,” said Dr. Ghosh. “We should never give up on our patients, even the older children, but instead offer them hope and treatment designed to help them achieve better vision.”
The 115th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology is in session October 23 through 25 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla. It is the world’s largest, most comprehensive ophthalmic education conference. Approximately 25,000 attendees and more than 500 companies gather each year to showcase the latest in ophthalmic technology, products and services. To learn more about the place Where All of Ophthalmology Meets, visit www.aao.org/annual_meeting.
Note to media: Contact Media Relations to arrange interviews with experts.
About the American Academy of Ophthalmology
The American Academy of Ophthalmology is the world’s largest association of eye physicians and surgeons – Eye M.D.s – with more than 30,000 members worldwide. Eye health care is provided by the three “O’s” – ophthalmologists, optometrists, and opticians. It is the ophthalmologist, or Eye M.D., who can treat it all: eye diseases, infections and injuries, and perform eye surgery. For more information, visit www.aao.org. The Academy’s EyeSmart® public education program works to educate the public about the importance of eye health and to empower them to preserve their healthy vision, by providing the most trusted and medically accurate information about eye diseases, conditions and injuries. Visit www.geteyesmart.org to learn more.
Contact: Mary Wade
mwade@aao.org
510-725-5677
American Academy of Ophthalmology
Men win humor test (by a hair)
October 19, 2011
Men are funnier than women, but only just barely and mostly to other men. So says a psychology study from the University of California, San Diego Division of Social Sciences.
While the findings lend some support to the stereotype on gender differences and humor – perhaps most vociferously and provocatively argued in recent memory by author Christopher Hitchens in his 2007 Vanity Fair article “Why Women Aren’t Funny” – they also undermine the standard explanations as to why. The standard explanations are usually variations on an evolutionary sexual-selection argument that likens a man’s humor to a peacock’s fancy tail or a deer’s rack of antlers, useful primarily for showing off and impressing potential mates.
Besides, said the study’s first author Laura Mickes, a postdoctoral researcher in the UC San Diego Department of Psychology and a Ph.D. graduate of the same department, “The differences we find between men’s and women’s ability to be funny are so small that they can’t account for the strength of the belief in the stereotype.”
Men edged out women by 0.11 points out of a theoretically possible perfect score of 5.0, while about 90 percent of both male and female study participants agreed with the stereotype that men are funnier.
The study, published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, used a controlled version of The New Yorker cartoon caption contest to reach its conclusions.
Coauthors on the study are Nicholas Christenfeld, a UC San Diego professor of psychology, graduate students Drew Walker and Julian Parris, and Robert Mankoff, cartoon editor for The New Yorker.
Male prowess at the task of being funny on command, said Christenfeld, was “just at the edge of detectability,” and men scored better with other men than with women.
The study team ran two separate but related experiments. The first experiment had 16 undergraduate males and 16 undergraduate females writing captions alone in a quiet room for 20 New Yorker cartoons in 45 minutes, for a total of 640 captions. All were instructed to be as funny as they could be.
Though writing captions may not be the most “natural” way to be funny, Christenfeld and Mickes explained, it has several distinct advantages, including a level playing field to determine what people are capable of doing (as opposed to what they do in social settings and day-to-day life, which could be governed by other factors). It also helps eliminate the effect of bias in the humor ratings since it is harder to tell, despite writer V.S. Naipaul’s claims to the contrary, whether the writer is a man or a woman from written words alone.
The second phase of the first experiment had 34 male and 47 female undergraduates helping to rate the captions written earlier in a five-round knockout tournament: One cartoon image was displayed with two random and anonymous captions, and the raters chose the funnier of the two at their own pace. The process, with new captions each time, was repeated for all 32 captions for each cartoon. The 16 winning captions of round one were then randomly pitted against each other and so on. The number of rounds, from zero to five, that captions survived before being knocked out determined the writers’ average scores.
True to the conventional wisdom, men did better than women, but not by much: Male writers earned an average 0.11 more points than female writers. But what’s even more interesting, the researchers say, and what runs contrary to the standard explanations of why men might be funnier, is that men did better with other men: Female raters allocated only an average 0.06 more points to the male writers, while the male raters gave them a significantly higher average of 0.16 more points.
“Sad for the guys,” Christenfeld said, “who think that by being funny they will impress the ladies, but really just impress other men who want to impress the ladies.”
In a second, related experiment, the researchers tested memory and memory bias to see if men are credited with being funnier than they really are.
As expected, funny captions were remembered better than unfunny ones. The authors of funny captions were remembered better too. But humor was more often misremembered “as having sprung from men’s minds,” the researchers write. And, even more telling, Mickes said, when the study participants were guessing at authors’ gender, unfunny captions were more often misattributed to women and funny captions were more often misattributed to men.*
So if the study is right and men are just a skosh more funny, why might that be? In analyzing the content of the captions, the researchers noted that men used profanity and sexual humor a little more frequently (about 4 vs. 2 percent of the time), but that didn’t seem to account for the “win” since that style of caption didn’t necessarily do better, with either sex.
It could be that men see more opportunities to take a stab at humor, said Christenfeld. It could be that they try harder or more often.
As The New Yorker cartoon editor Mankoff observed on his blog in May, after film critic Roger Ebert won the caption contest on his 107th try: Nine of the top 10 most devoted entrants, or “überenterers,” are men. While fewer women win the actual contest, far fewer of them enter. When they do enter, though, their success rates are pretty impressive. Looking at contests #250 through #282, there are 32 winners, with 22 men and 10 women, Mankoff writes: “The 22 winning men entered an average of 70.22 contests, but the 10 women averaged 6.4 entries – and four of them won on their first attempt.”
It remains for further research to ferret out the reasons men might be the marginally funnier sex. In the meanwhile, the current paper had one other finding worth noting: When asked to predict their own performance on a scale of one to five, the men figured they’d get a 2.3, and the women, a more modest 1.5. That is, the difference in self-assessment was greater than the actual difference detected by the contest. “Male confidence, in this domain at least,” the researchers write, “does seem to outstrip male competence.”
*Mickes declined to make any funny comments because they’d be attributed to her male coauthors anyway.
Contact: Inga Kiderra
ikiderra@ucsd.edu
858-822-0661
University of California – San Diego