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Yay! “Inoculation” Against Misinformation Effective

Yay! “Inoculation” Against Misinformation Effective

by | 2022 Aug 25 | Public, Quick Hits

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Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

fake news brain

Wouldn’t it be great in the current world if we could inoculate people against misinformation. Sigh! But that will never happen. Wait, you say, it can happen, it is possible, it works! Oh, please tell me more!

Yes, very good news on the misinformation wars.

So, what is this inoculation and how does it work?

Teams of scientists from the University of Cambridge and Bristol behind the Inoculation Science project collaborated with Jigsaw a unit within Google dedicated to tackling threats to open societies.

After conducting seven different experiments with 30’000 participants, they found that viewing a single clip increases awareness of misinformation. The videos introduce concepts from the “misinformation playbook” and includes relatable examples from popular film and TV.

This information is effective for all populations groups and political groupings – simply because most people don’t want to be manipulated. Rather than state opinions the videos are neutral just showing the tricks that are used to manipulate people and this is why they are so effective.

So how can this be spread to the world at large. Well, easily, through YouTube with over 2 billion users worldwide. Google owns YouTube and plans to start a roll out a wave of prebunking programmes in Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech republic targeted at emerging disinformation on Ukrainian refugees.

However, the effect is consistent and large compared to other effects such as brand awareness after advertising, but it is only a 5% increase – nothing to be sniffed at but still a long way to go.

Nevertheless, good news, and I hope they get this rolled out in other areas soon. The world needs more prebunking!

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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Reference

Jon Roozenbeek, Sander van der Linden, Beth Goldberg, Steve Rathje, Stephan Lewandowsky.
Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media.
Science Advances, 2022; 8 (34)
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abo6254

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Lack Of Sleep Makes Us Selfish

Lack Of Sleep Makes Us Selfish

by | 2022 Aug 24 | Public, Quick Hits

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Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

sleep brain health

Sleeping well is essential to brain health

 

We humans are a social species, we do things in groups, gather in restaurants, bars, music venues, and public spaces together. We work together, play sports together, join clubs and associations. We also help others and give immense amounts of money to charities of all sorts. Yes, we are a very social – unless we get a bad night’s sleep.

Ok,  that might be a bit of an exaggeration – we are still social after a bad night’s sleep – we are just less social on average according to research just out.

Eti Ben Simon from the University of California Berkley collected data in three separate scenarios to come to this conclusion.

The first scanned the brains of 24 participants after a normal night’s sleep and after no sleep. We know this causes multiple disruptions in our cognitive ability and how the brain connects and communicates to itself and with the body. In fact, all of us who have missed a night’s sleep know this from experience.

But what they specifically found is that regions of the brain associated with empathy and relating to other people’s wants and needs was less active.

A second study tracked 100 people online over three or four nights. They tracked their sleep patterns and then measured their willingness to help others in different ways such as holding the door open for a stranger, volunteering, or helping an injured person on the street.

Here they noticed that a decrease in the quality of sleep left people significantly less willing to help others.

The third piece of data came from mining a data set on over 3 million charitable donations over 5 years to look at the impact of transition from daylight saving hours, and hence potentially losing and hours sleep.

They found a drop in charitable donations of 10% (but only in locations that had lost this I hour). This effect was more surprising because it is only a small disruption to sleep patterns but showed a significant impact.

All this leads them to saying that yes, losing sleep will make you less generous. That is in combination with the multiple other negative impacts on just about every aspect of your health and wellbeing.

So, for the sake of yourself, and now we also know, others, get a good night’s sleep.

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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Reference

Eti Ben Simon, Raphael Vallat, Aubrey Rossi, Matthew P. Walker. 
Sleep loss leads to the withdrawal of human helping across individuals, groups, and large-scale societies. 
PLOS Biology, 2022; 20 (8): e3001733
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001733

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Don’t Try to Change Minds – Change Behaviour

Don’t Try to Change Minds – Change Behaviour

by | 2022 Aug 23 | Public, Quick Hits

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Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

vaccination alzheimer brain

Don’t try to change minds, but simply change behaviour is the result a group of researchers have come to with regard to vaccinations.

This might sound a bit strange as there had been a lot of shouting over vaccinations during the pandemic – but ironically not that much before. And there seems to be a prevailing sense that we should educate people to try to convince them to take the vaccination, any vaccination at that.

Changing beliefs would be part of a change process of changing antecedents, the things that come before the behaviour. Sounds like a good plan, on paper at least. But Brewer et al. from the University of Colorado conducted a comprehensive scientific review of the academic literature around the psychology of vaccinations and came to a different conclusion.

They found that simply focusing on the behaviour and making this easier was the most effective way to increase vaccination rates. This could be through simple things like reminders, help making appointments, and simply taking away as many barriers as possible.

Obviously, some people will still resist. And the research has shown that trying to change beliefs is very hard, ineffective, and even if you can do it, uptake is still very low.

When it comes to resistance, they found the best way to counter it is to simply reiterate the facts rather than try some clever way to convince someone. The other thing that contributes to hesitancy is conflicting information – so get the facts straight and give clear and consistent information.

The final thing they found is that social influence was also strong – so if your peer group are getting vaccinated then the chances that you will too are much higher.

So, to get people to get their jabs COVID or not:

  • Make it easy
  • Give clear consistent information
  • Use social groups where possible

Easy peasy, eh!?

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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Reference

Noel T. Brewer, Gretchen B. Chapman, Alexander J. Rothman, Julie Leask, Allison Kempe. 
Increasing Vaccination: Putting Psychological Science Into Action. 
Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2018; 18 (3): 149
DOI: 10.1177/1529100618760521

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Why Heat Makes Us Sleepy

Why Heat Makes Us Sleepy

by | 2022 Aug 22 | Public, Quick Hits

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Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

Who wouldn’t like a daily siesta – especially when it is hot after that post lunch period! And I am sure we have all experienced that desire to sleep when it gets warmer – it pushes us to laze around.

Now we may think this is just about activity, but a group of researchers at Northwestern University in the US have peered deeper into the brain to try to find out what is happening. To do this Alpert et al. looked into the brains of fruits flies. Yes, fruit flies. You may not know this but fruit fly brains are commonly used for brain research – their brains are simple – so easier to research, easy to breed, and none of those pesky ethical limitations.

Of note is also that fruit flies have developed all over the world and are attracted to the same temperatures as human beings. They actually seem to have developed to cohabitate with human beings. And this is not the only similarity: they also seem to get dozy under similar conditions when the temperature rises post lunch.

And what did these researchers find?

Well, they managed to identify a circuit in the brain that is a heat circuit and, interestingly this is separate to another cold circuit (so not just one temperature circuit). This suggests that the circuits have distinct functions.  They also think they’ve found the spot in the fly brain where these are integrated and therefore impact behaviour. This shows there is separate heat circuit in the brain that directly impacts behaviour and in our case it triggers sleepiness – and not through fatigue which is the normal process.

So, that afternoon nap on a hot day is not your imagination, it is your heat circuit in your brain activating your sleep circuits. And the research shows that an afternoon nap can be very beneficial – so maybe you shouldn’t resist!

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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Reference

Michael H. Alpert, Hamin Gil, Alessia Para, Marco Gallio. 
A thermometer circuit for hot temperature adjusts Drosophila behavior to persistent heat. 
Current Biology, 2022
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.07.060

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Tracking Mental States Through Your Skin – In Real Time

Tracking Mental States Through Your Skin – In Real Time

by | 2022 Aug 19 | Public, Quick Hits

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Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

skin brain mental health

Imagine if you are working and your stress levels are increasing, and then automatically soothing music is turned on to calm you down. Or alternatively if you are heading towards that after lunch dip of drowsiness and upbeat energetic music is turned on to energise you.

This sounds like a sort of mind-reading device of the future, but this is a possibility according to Rose Faghih of NYU Tandon School of Engineering – and without having any invasive electrodes or implants in your brain but through a simple skin patch!

How so you may ask?

Well skin conductance is a well-known way to measure things like stress responses. Your skin reacts very quickly at microscopic levels to things like stress and mental disturbances. We’ve known that for a long time and skin conductance measure are often used in research – it is cheap, non-invasive, and a good measure of many things.

The really tricky thing through is being able to accurately predict these brain or mind states and match these to the biological data and additionally to be able to do this in real time. For this Faghih and her team have developed much more accurate ways of modelling skin responses by mapping this to 3D modelling of sweat glands and amongst other things, how they respond, how sweat distributes, is evaporated, or reabsorbed.

This has then been used to develop accurate algorithms (which though complex require little computing power) to instantaneously predict mental states in real time. This is amazing – it uses very detailed models of how the skin responds to various scenarios and has modelled this to be able to report instantaneously on mind states. Wow!

The uses of this are multifold – the above example of work will probably not be a prime focus (or maybe only in high-risk roles such as pilots). This could include identifying peripheral neuropathy in diabetes patients, post-traumatic stress disorders, on top of multiple uses in mental health monitoring.

This sounds promising, some of you may think that this could be abused by employers. It could be, but I imagine the most obvious uses will be key health issues – in the short term – and that is a good thing.

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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Reference

Rafiul Amin, Rose T. Faghih.
Physiological characterization of electrodermal activity enables scalable near real-time autonomic nervous system activation inference.
PLOS Computational Biology, 2022; 18 (7): e1010275
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010275

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