Which COVID-19 personality are you?
New research identifies 16 different COVID-19 personality types and the lessons we can learn from this global pandemic.
02 February, 2021
Credit: deagreez on Adobe Stock
- New research by Mimi E. Lam at the University of Bergen explores the different "personality types" that have emerged in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- According to Lam, recognizing various COVID-19 identities can refine forecasts of SARS-CoV-2 transmission and impact.
- Global Solutions Initiative, Population Matters, and AME explore how the world (and society) has changed due to COVID-19.
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Are you a complier or non-complier personality type?
<p><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-00679-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">New research by Mimi E. Lam</a> at the University of Bergen (Human and Social Sciences Communications) explores the different "personality types" that have emerged in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.<br></p><p>Lam explains to Eurekalert: <em>"</em>...the COVID-19 pandemic reminds us that we are not immune to each other. To unite in our fight against the pandemic, it is important to recognize the basic dignity of all and value the human diversity currently dividing us."</p><p>According to Lam, "Only then, can we foster societal resilience and an ethical COVID-19 agenda. This would pave the way for other global commons challenges whose impacts are less immediate, but no less dire for humanity."</p><p>There are 16 different COVID-19 personality types, and they include the following:</p><ol> <li><strong>Deniers </strong>—<strong> </strong>Individuals who downplay the viral threat and promote a kind of "business as usual" lifestyle.</li><li><strong>Spreaders </strong>—<strong> </strong>Individuals who believe spreading the virus could actually be positive. These are individuals who believe in "herd immunity" and that passing the virus around will eventually allow things to return to normal.</li><li><strong>Harmers </strong>—<strong> </strong>Individuals who intentionally attempt to harm others by spreading the virus (via coughing or spitting, not wearing masks, licking various public surfaces, etc.).</li><li><strong>Realists </strong>—<strong> </strong>Individuals who recognize the reality (and potential harm) of spreading the virus and attempt to adjust their behaviors to not spread the virus.</li><li><strong>Worriers </strong>—<strong> </strong>Individuals who stay informed and safe to manage their uncertainty and fear. These are also individuals who will have a lot of anxiety over the current state of the virus at all times.</li><li><strong>Contemplators </strong>—<strong> </strong>Individuals who have taken "quarantine times" to isolate and reflect on their own lives. These are individuals who may attempt to better themselves (focusing on new hobbies or skills) during times of isolation.</li><li><strong>Hoarders </strong>—<strong> </strong>Individuals who panic-buy and hoard products (such as <a href="https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/toilet-paper-is-a-giant-waste-of-resources" target="_blank">toilet paper</a>) in an attempt to quell their panic and worry over the spreading of the virus.</li><li><strong>Invincibles </strong>—<strong> </strong>Individuals who believe themselves to be immune to the virus. These are also individuals who claim a kind of "if I get sick, I get sick" kind of attitude, not taking time to reflect on the idea that they could be carriers of the virus, spreading it to others.</li><li><strong>Rebels </strong>—<strong> </strong>Individuals who defiantly ignore social distancing measures and various other rules put into place to protect the general public.</li><li><strong>Blamers</strong> — Those who fault others for their fears and frustrations.</li><li><strong>Exploiters </strong>—<strong> </strong>Those who attempt to exploit the current situation (taking advantage of vulnerable people/situations) for power, profit, or brutality.</li><li><strong>Innovators </strong>—<strong> </strong>Individuals who attempt to design or repurposes resources in an attempt to fight the pandemic and contribute to society.</li><li><strong>Supporters </strong>—<strong> </strong>Individuals who show support and solidarity to others around them in regards to fending off the virus or supporting loved ones.</li><li><strong>Altruists </strong>— Individuals who help the vulnerable, elderly, and isolated.</li><li><strong>Warriors </strong>—<strong> </strong>Individuals (such as front-line support workers and health care workers) who combat COVID-19 on the front lines, facing the harsh and grim realities of a global pandemic on a larger scale.</li><li><strong>Veterans </strong>—<strong> </strong>Individuals who have experienced a previous pandemic (such as SARS or MERS) and willingly comply with restrictions.<br></li></ol><p>According to Lam and her research, recognizing various COVID-19 identities can refine forecasts of SARS-CoV-2 transmission and impact. These viral identities can reflect values, social identities, situational contexts, and risk tolerances. Lam suggests that to forecast viral transmission within populations (accounting for different responses), these identified viral behaviors can be clustered by their "compliance" efforts.<br><br></p><ol><li><strong>Non-compilers </strong>are individuals who fall into the following categories: Deniers, Harmers, Invincibles, and Rebels.</li><li><strong>Partial compliers</strong> would be individuals who fall into the categories of: Spreaders, Blamers, and Exploiters.</li><li><strong>Compliers</strong> would be individuals who are in the categories of Realists, Worriers, Contemplators, Hoarders, Innovators, Supporters, Altruists, Warriors, and Veterans.</li></ol><p><strong>Lam suggests that liberal democracies need an ethical policy agenda with three priorities: </strong></p><ul><li>Recognize the diversity of individuals</li><li>Deliberate and negotiate value trade-offs</li><li>Promote public buy-in, trust, and compliance</li></ul><p>By projecting different impacts in COVID-19 transmission and deaths and then correlating those with variable behavioral responses such as the ones listed above, we can reveal the benefits of not only flattening the viral curve but shifting our behavioral curve in a joint human effort to induce more adaptive responses to the pandemic. More research needs to be conducted in this area. </p>What has COVID-19 taught us as a society?
<img class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU1OTcwMS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MDM2MDA5MH0.3RGt8n8Oll8KaVxfWZhf4scO4FuZTJnBiTo3l5V4nHg/img.jpg?width=980" id="66eb9" width="7200" height="4050" data-rm-shortcode-id="e968da24d34b826d99aca0d35cfaa043" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="image of shop closed due to coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic economy" />Image by Corona Borealis on Adobe Stock
<p><strong>The <a href="https://www.global-solutions-initiative.org/press-news/fundamental-lessons-from-the-covid-19-pandemic-global-solutions-summit-2020-opening-address/" target="_blank">Global Solutions Initiative</a></strong><strong> outlines a few questions and concerns that humankind has been faced with since the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020:</strong></p><ul><li>We have been confronted with the true uncertainty and vulnerability of human life and our very existence.<br><br> </li><li>We have been made to face existential questions - what are we here for, what do we want to accomplish? Who are the people that matter most to us?</li></ul><p><strong><a href="https://populationmatters.org/news/2020/12/18/what-covid-19-has-taught-us-about-our-relationship-nature" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Population Matters</a> outlines a few more daunting questions about humankind's relationship with nature: </strong></p><ul><li>What is the link between population growth, environmental destruction, and pandemics?<br><br> </li><li>How has our society's exponential rise in consumption, trade, and population pressure driven a rapid increase in the risk of pandemics? </li></ul><p><strong><a href="https://www.ameinfo.com/industry/life/5-things-covid-19-has-taught-us" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">AME</a> outlines some essential things this pandemic has taught us about humanity and life: </strong></p><ul><li>The meat industry has played a large hand in transmitting this virus. According to a recent study, SARS-CoV-2 originated in bats and has likely been transmitted to human through a scaled mammal called a pangolin (which are highly traded in China despite being deemed illegal). </li></ul><ul><li>Nature can recover from our destructive efforts. Since the pandemic, the world has seen <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/living-in-sf/article/Coyotes-are-being-seen-on-the-empty-streets-15159105.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">coyotes on the streets</a>, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-lockdown-conservation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wild boar roaming around in Barcelona</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/09/coronavirus-may-prove-boost-for-uks-bees-and-rare-wildflowers" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">more bees, and rare wildflowers in the UK.<br></a> </li><li>Many in-office employees can work from home. This pandemic has altered the way many businesses run and will continue to run in the future. This could cause less pollution and have positive impacts on the environment. </li></ul><p>The research conducted by Lam and subsequent research on how COVID-19 is impacting society can help us grow and adapt and perhaps become better equipped to deal with global pandemics in the future. </p>
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What is the ‘self’? The 3 layers of your identity.
Answering the question of who you are is not an easy task. Let's unpack what culture, philosophy, and neuroscience have to say.
22 January, 2021
- Who am I? It's a question that humans have grappled with since the dawn of time, and most of us are no closer to an answer.
- Trying to pin down what makes you you depends on which school of thought you prescribe to. Some argue that the self is an illusion, while others believe that finding one's "true self" is about sincerity and authenticity.
- In this video, author Gish Jen, Harvard professor Michael Puett, psychotherapist Mark Epstein, and neuroscientist Sam Harris discuss three layers of the self, looking through the lens of culture, philosophy, and neuroscience.
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A psychiatric diagnosis can be more than an unkind ‘label’
A popular and longstanding wave of thought in psychology and psychotherapy is that diagnosis is not relevant for practitioners in those fields.
19 January, 2021
Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images for Sotheby's
When I was training as a clinical psychologist, I had a rotation in a low-cost psychotherapy clinic.
<p> Among the first people I met was a young man who believed that he might be responsible for harm coming to his family if he didn't engage in time-consuming rituals, including arranging his shoes very particularly for up to half an hour. The logic motivating this man's behaviour was notably rather magical and unrealistic, appealing to notions of spirit possession and evil, which were culturally alien to his family. My supervisor, a sensitive and empathic clinician, who believed that most issues could be addressed by attentive listening and interpretation, tended to have a single diagnostic concern. The central question for him was whether the person was experiencing anxiety or manifesting the early symptoms of a psychosis. The latter ought to receive a more thorough assessment and more support than our clinic could offer.</p><p>Because of the magical quality to this person's reasoning, my supervisor decided that this might be an early sign of psychosis. He instructed me to refer the man to a new research clinic near my training site, which specialised in treating and researching the 'at risk' state for psychosis.</p><p>Of course, sensible and cautious though this seemed to me, it entailed telling this young man that he could not be seen by us for talking therapy. Instead, he should go to a clinic that specialised in something serious and frightening-sounding. When I broke the news, he was devastated. He left our clinic, and I later learned that he never followed up with the referral.</p>
<p>What I failed to appreciate at the time – and what some remedial reading later painfully revealed to me – was that, rather than being an early manifestation of psychosis, this man's presentation was more likely a case of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), a common condition in which people develop obsessive thoughts and feel compelled to engage in actions to prevent feared harms. If I'd had the diagnostic knowledge and confidence to assert this to my supervisor during the initial consultation, the man I met would likely have received help, rather than being referred to an inappropriate clinic that led to him falling through the cracks.</p><p>Yet, a popular and longstanding wave of thought in psychology and psychotherapy is that diagnosis is not relevant for practitioners in those fields, and should be left to psychiatrists, if at all. This is not a fringe view, it has been perennially present in clinical psychology since at least the 1960s, when the iconoclastic psychiatrists Thomas Szasz and R D Laing presented a dual challenge to their profession.</p><p>Szasz, a Hungarian émigré to the United States, <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1961-01456-001" target="_blank">argued</a> that mental illness is a 'myth', rooted in a misuse of language. Neurological diseases are real, Szasz suggested, because they can be confirmed by a postmortem examination of the brain. In contrast, he argued that psychiatric 'illness' has no such neurological basis, and is just a medicalised way of talking about problems in life that could be solved by taking responsibility for yourself and your actions.</p><p>Meanwhile, Laing, a Scot who trained at the Tavistock Institute in London, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/274343/the-divided-self-by-r-d-laing/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">argued</a> in <em>The Divided Self</em> (1960) that psychosis is a psychic response to an increasingly alienated 'false self' obscuring the true emotional core of an individual. He held that so-called 'symptoms' (hearing voices, believing unusual things) were actually attempts at recovery in the face of this alienation.</p>
<p>These ideas resonated and had significant influence over psychiatric thinking throughout the 1960s. They contributed to diagnostic approaches to mental health – the idea that there are illnesses called schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression – becoming decidedly <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-psychiatrist-who-didn-t-believe-in-mental-illness" target="_blank">unfashionable</a>. Indeed Szasz's and Laing's critiques became so popular that already by the early 1970s, the influential US clinical psychologist Paul Meehl grumbled in his 1973 paper 'Why I Do Not Attend Case Conferences' about an 'antinosological' (ie, antidiagnostic) bias taking hold in his profession.</p><p>Recently, the animus against psychiatric diagnosis has become more formal and scientifically argued. The British Psychological Society's Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP) – one of the official bodies representing the profession – published <a href="https://dxrevisionwatch.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/position-statement-on-diagnosis-master-doc.pdf" target="_blank">two</a> <a href="http://www.newvisionformentalhealth.com/2018/01/26/guidelines-on-language-in-relation-to-functional-psychiatric-diagnosis/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">documents</a> in 2013 and 2015 articulating the difficulties with diagnosis, and promoting instead the value of individualised 'formulations'. While it is clear that the DCP's position on diagnosis is not universally held by practitioners in the UK, British psychologists are around half as likely to report regular use of a diagnostic classificatory system as their colleagues in some other countries (for <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207594.2013.804189" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">example</a>, fewer than 35 per cent of psychologists in the UK say that they use diagnosis regularly, compared with more than 70 per cent of psychologists in the US, Germany and South Africa). This likely reflects a UK professional culture steeped in suspicion of diagnostic thinking.</p><p>The suspicion is not unwarranted. One of the most interesting recent critiques of diagnosis has come from the Belgian psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist Stijn Vanheule. He <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22903905" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">invoked</a> the philosophy of language to argue that diagnosis necessarily draws our attention to the shared meanings conjured by diagnostic language, rather than to the individual meanings inherent to people's experiences. Thus, for example, when I say 'schizophrenia', I focus attention on a generalised, clinical definition that exists in a book, rather than on the individual, personal significance of hearing voices or believing unusual things. For psychotherapists, Vanheule argued, the former is irrelevant, the latter vital.</p>
<p>These arguments are valuable, and they are correct in important ways. Their conclusions are a significant part of what inspired me to get into clinical psychology in the first place. Reading Laing as a teenager, I thrilled to the challenge he presented: to understand people as they endure the most extreme and bewildering psychic states; to try to find coherence even where it seems to be absent. This impulse is essential. Patience and careful listening can reveal that people are capable of engaging in communication more often than we tend to give them credit for. But my clinical training has shown me that, despite the importance of understanding people in an individualised way, having a knowledge of diagnostic categories is also essential.</p><p>To return to the example above, my supervisor and I were ignorant of valuable diagnostic information; we were ignorant of the ways that clinicians can distinguish magical obsessions from the early hints of delusion. We were ignorant of the fact that even quite magical ideas are well within the range of the former without shading into the latter. We were ignorant of how easy it would have been to provide effective help without raising the prospect of a terrifying psychosis down the pipeline. Our ignorance cost someone dearly.</p><p>Diagnosis is often vital for ensuring good care. Apart from the importance of ruling out organic causes for apparently straightforward instances of depression and anxiety (which can be symptomatic of a surprising range of endocrine, infectious and neurological diseases), linking psychological distress into a broader framework also helps clinicians make sense of the people they are trying to help. Certain forms of substance misuse could represent attempts at self-medication for highly treatable disorders of mood or attention, for instance. Correct identification of trauma symptoms can avert diagnosis of a psychotic illness. Proper diagnosis of depression in later life can frequently account for changes in memory and attention that might otherwise be mistaken for dementia, as unfortunately often happens. Diagnosis of bipolar mood disorder can prevent people being inappropriately treated for personality disorders.</p><p>Psychology's antinosological tendency encourages a belief that diagnostic thinking is somehow inherently unkind; that in thinking about categories you are always only 'labelling' people, and that this is an inhumane thing to do.</p>
<p>Conversely, it also encourages a belief that all you really need in mental healthcare is sympathy, rapport and interpretative heroics. This appeals to some of the questionable impulses of professionals: to our desire to see ourselves as people uniquely able to understand others, and to our ordinary human laziness. Who would want to engage in learning about taxonomy if to do so is both unkind and unnecessary?</p><p>Understanding people is a multifaceted enterprise. We all manifest a splendid idiosyncrasy, living out lives that could never be copied or repeated, so it makes sense to consider one another in the light of this uniqueness. But we also bear resemblances to one another. Important though it is to be seen in all your individuality, it is also helpful to know when your problems have precedent.</p><p>Psychiatric diagnoses are imperfect, sketchy theories about how people's minds can give them trouble. We know that they are largely less precise and valid than is popularly understood, but this does not render them totally uninformative. We have learned snippets of useful information by considering psychological problems in terms of categories: the effectiveness, or not, of treatments for particular groups of people; the elevated risk of suicide among others. Many symptoms can seem to 'make sense' in the context of a person's life, but we know that humans are sense-making machines, so we need to be vigilant against 'making sense' where it is only illusory. The great intellectual challenge of clinical psychology is to integrate knowledge about reasons and people with knowledge about causes and mechanisms. We should avoid relying solely on diagnostic information, but we shouldn't discard it altogether.<img src="https://metrics.aeon.co/count/3533ace3-823d-4522-8d68-702c1e19f406.gif" alt="Aeon counter – do not remove"></p><p>Huw Green</p><p>This article was originally published at <a href="https://aeon.co/?utm_campaign=republished-article" target="_blank">Aeon</a> and has been republished under Creative Commons. Read the <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/a-psychiatric-diagnosis-can-be-more-than-an-unkind-label" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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Why some people think they hear the voices of the dead
A new study looks at why mysterious voices are sometimes taken as spirits and other times as symptoms of mental health issues.
18 January, 2021
Credit: Photographee.eu/Adobe Stock
- Both spiritualist mediums and schizophrenics hear voices.
- For the former, this constitutes a gift; for the latter, mental illness.
- A study explores what the two phenomena have in common.
<p>Even different definitions of the word "clairaudience" reflect the way different people respond to the experience.</p><p>Merriam-Webster <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clairaudience" target="_blank">defines</a> it as "hearing something not present to the ear but regarded as having objective reality," suggesting a hallucinatory experience. The Free Dictionary <a href="https://www.thefreedictionary.com/clairaudience" target="_blank">refers</a> to it as the ability to hear things "outside the range of normal perception," suggesting a sort of superpower to hear what's there, but that others can't hear.</p><p>Often, what's heard are voices. In some cases, the hearer finds the experience distressing, and a mental health diagnosis, perhaps of <a href="https://www.psychiatryadvisor.com/home/schizophrenia-advisor/auditory-hallucinations-in-schizophrenia-dysfunction/" target="_blank">schizophrenia</a>, may result. For other people—such as seance mediums—the phenomenon has spiritual significance, and such voices are interpreted as messages from the dead.</p><p>Are these two different phenomena, or are they the same thing, understood differently depending on the context in which they occur? A new study in the journal <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13674676.2020.1793310" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mental Health, Religion & Culture</a> suggests the latter, and seeks to work out why hearing voices for some is a symptom of mental illness but for others it's a religious/spiritual experience (RSE). The study assumes sincerity on the part of those reporting hearing voices.</p>
The study
<img class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTQ5Nzc1OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxOTU1ODQwOX0.wlQLO9cjh2hFAz9BXwf2DpaqwepAlybru_OH6J4ZwzI/img.jpg?width=2000&coordinates=64%2C74%2C84%2C330&height=1500" id="2659f" width="2000" height="1500" data-rm-shortcode-id="859b9ea95f570450f7acedffc8abc9ac" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Schizophrenia
Credit: Camila Quintero Franco/Unsplash
<p>The researchers, led by <a href="https://www.dur.ac.uk/research/directory/staff/?mode=staff&id=15156" target="_blank">Adam Powell</a> of Durham University's Hearing the Voice project and Department of Theology and Religion, conducted online surveys of 65 clairaudient mediums they found through contact with spiritualist communities. The survey also included 143 people from the general population who responded negatively to the question "Have you ever had an experience you would describe as 'clairaudient?'" posed through an online study recruitment tool.</p><p>All participants spoke English and were aged 18-75. Most (84.4 percent) were from the U.K., with the rest mostly from the North Americas, Europe, or Australasia.</p><p>Of the spiritualists surveyed, 79 percent said hearing voices was a normal part of their lives at church and at home, while 44.6 percent said that they heard voices every day. Most respondents reported the voices as being inside their heads, though 31.7 percent said they came from outside their bodies.</p><p>Not surprisingly, more spiritualists reported believing in the paranormal than did the general population participants. They also cared less about what others thought of them.</p><p>Both groups were prone to visual hallucinations as well.</p>Youth and absorption
<img class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTQ5Nzc2NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNzE3MTUyNn0.BsqsYO4KFNF9RX9O6TXYE14RysJgiwXua7FegMBf8Ss/img.jpg?width=980" id="5fe11" width="1440" height="1080" data-rm-shortcode-id="b5043b02533749e65eb8befcd05f3062" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Credit: Tanner Boriack/Unsplash
<p>Spiritualist clairaudients reported their first experiences with other voices early in life. Of these participants, 18 percent said they had heard voices for as long as they remembered. The average age, however, for first hearing voices was 21.7 years. Schizophrenia typically presents when a person is somewhat older than this, in the <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/childhood-schizophrenia/symptoms-causes/syc-20354483" target="_blank">late 20s</a>.</p><p>Significantly, 71 percent said their experience with voices pre-dated their awareness of spiritualism. Rather than religion prompting the hearing of voices, it seems that it's more the other way around — voices led them to religion.</p><p>Says Powell, "Our findings say a lot about 'learning and yearning.' For our participants, the tenets of spiritualism seem to make sense of both extraordinary childhood experiences as well as the frequent auditory phenomena they experience as practicing mediums."</p><p>Still, the voices came first he says, so "all of those experiences may result more from having certain tendencies or early abilities than from simply believing in the possibility of contacting the dead if one tries hard enough."</p><p>The more likely factor is spiritualist clairaudients' relationship with absorption. Responses to questions based on the 34-point <a href="https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~jfkihlstrom/TAS.htm" target="_blank">Tellegen Absorption Scale</a> revealed that these people tended toward absorptive personality characteristics. These are described by the study's authors as "being readily captured by entrancing stimuli, reporting vivid mental imagery, becoming immersed in one's own thoughts."</p><p>Some, though not all, voice-hearing individuals from the general population were found to exhibit high levels of absorption — those that did were more likely to believe in the paranormal than others.</p>Implications
<p>The study's finding regarding the relative young ages at which spiritualist clairaudients begin hearing voices suggests that these individuals' more welcoming attitude toward the phenomenon may have to do with malleability of youth — a belief in the fantastical is part of being young.</p><p>"Spiritualists tend to report unusual auditory experiences which are positive, start early in life and which they are often then able to control," says co-author <a href="https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/m/peter-moseley/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Peter Moseley</a> of Northumbria University. "Understanding how these develop is important because it could help us understand more about distressing or non-controllable experiences of hearing voices too."</p><p>The authors of the study do note, however, that their findings leave two big unanswered questions: Does a tendency toward absorption reveal "a predisposition to having RSEs or a belief in the plausibility of having RSEs?"</p><p>The other obvious big question? It's beyond the scope of this survey, but are those really the voices of the dead?</p>
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Why large groups of people often come to the same conclusions
Study confirms the existence of a special kind of groupthink in large groups.
14 January, 2021
Credit: Kaleb Nimz/Unsplash
- Large groups of people everywhere tend to come to the same conclusions.
- In small groups, there's a much wider diversity of ideas.
- The mechanics of a large group make some ideas practically inevitable.
<p>People make sense of the world by organizing things into categories and naming them. "These are circles." "That's a tree." "Those are rocks." It's one way we tame our world. There's a weird correspondence between different cultures, though — even though we come from different places and very different circumstances, cultures everywhere develop largely the same categorizations.</p><p>"But this raises a big scientific puzzle," <a href="https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/why-independent-cultures-think-alike-its-not-in-the-brain" target="_blank">says Damon Centola</a> of the University of Pennsylvania. "If people are so different, why do anthropologists find the same categories, for instance for shapes, colors, and emotions, arising independently in many different cultures? Where do these categories come from and why is there so much similarity across independent populations?"</p><p>Centola is the senior investigator of a new study in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20037-y?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ncomms%2Frss%2Fcurrent+%28Nature+Communications+-+current%29" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nature Communications</a> from the Network Dynamics Group (NDG) at the Annenberg School for Communication that explores how such categorization happens.</p><p>Some have theorized that these categories are innate—pre-wired in our brains—but the study says "nope." Its authors hypothesize that it has more to do with the dynamics of large groups, or networks.</p>
The grouping game
<img class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTQ1NDE2Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3NTMzNTA4OX0.onCxz1Ea1UdLBRvuuBZrSTQDgol_gXxRMfLhpEy-ZYw/img.jpg?width=980" id="a7e22" width="2767" height="382" data-rm-shortcode-id="397811a5105c39ed50619d7a6ae9175c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Some of the shapes used in the experiment
Credit: Guilbeault, et al./University of Pennsylvania
<p>The researchers tested their theory with 1,480 people playing an online "Grouping Game" via Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform. The individuals were paired with another participant or made a member of a group of 6, 8, 24, or 50 people. Each pair and group were tasked with categorizing the symbols shown above, and they could see each other's answers.</p><p>The small groups came up with wildly divergent categories—the entire experiment produced nearly 5,000 category suggestions—while the larger groups came up with categorization systems that were virtually identical to each other.</p><p><a href="https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/why-independent-cultures-think-alike-its-not-in-the-brain" target="_blank">Says Centola</a>, "Even though we predicted it, I was nevertheless stunned to see it really happen. This result challenges many long-held ideas about culture and how it forms."</p><p>Nor was this unanimity a matter of having teamed-up like-minded individuals. "If I assign an individual to a small group," says lead author Douglas Guilbeault, "they are much more likely to arrive at a category system that is very idiosyncratic and specific to them. But if I assign that same individual to a large group, I can predict the category system that they will end up creating, regardless of whatever unique viewpoint that person happens to bring to the table."</p>Why this happens
<img class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTQ1NDE4NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMjkzMDg0Nn0.u2hdEIgNw4drFZ2frzx0AJ_MAxIizuM98rdovQrIblk/img.jpg?width=980" id="d3444" width="1440" height="822" data-rm-shortcode-id="576cb567ace7a6a47fd32c510bc3c159" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />The many categories suggested by small groups on the left, the few from large groups on the right
Credit: Guilbeault, et al./Nature Communications
<p>The striking results of the experiment correspond to a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0607-5" target="_blank">previous study</a> done by NDG that investigated tipping points for people's behavior in networks.</p><p>That study concluded that after an idea enters a discussion among a large network of people, it can gain irresistible traction by popping up again and again in enough individuals' conversations. In networks of 50 people or more, such ideas eventually reach critical mass and become a prevailing opinion.</p><p>The same phenomenon does not happen often enough within a smaller network, where fewer interactions offer an idea less of an opportunity to take hold.</p>Beyond categories
<p>The study's finding raises an interesting practical possibility: Would categorization-related decisions made by large groups be less likely to fall prey to members' individual biases?</p><p>With this question in mind, the researchers are currently looking into content moderation on Facebook and Twitter. They're investigating whether the platforms would be wiser when categorizing content as free speech or hate speech if large groups were making these decisions instead of lone individuals working at these companies.</p><p>Similarly, they're also exploring the possibility that larger networks of doctors and healthcare professionals might be better at making diagnoses that would avoid biases such as racism or sexism that could cloud the judgment of individual practitioners.</p><p>"Many of the worst social problems reappear in every culture," notes Centola, "which leads some to believe these problems are intrinsic to the human condition. Our research shows that these problems are intrinsic to the social experiences humans have, not necessarily to humans themselves. If we can alter that social experience, we can change the way people organize things, and address some of the world's greatest problems."</p>
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