Freud and Mass Media

Recently I've been watching documentaries by loyal BBC employee and all around adept documenter Adam Curtis.  His voice soothes like every story he tells were a bedtime story, and he has the patience of 8000 Terracotta soldiers.  I am amazed at his ability to provide quality factual programming while somehow avoiding censorship. 

His best known work is Century of the Self, a 4 part journey following the effect of psychoanalysis on consumer culture and world politics.  In my next few posts I'm hoping to tie some of the ideas of his documentary with other pieces of things I've found.  What I've been focused on mostly on the role of the media, what it is and what it actually is doing.  Curtis points out very early in the first few minutes Freud's (love him or hate him, this is important) deduction that information was driving human behavior in indirect ways, at an emotional and almost animalistic level.  His nephew Ed Bernays used this information to create market consulting and eventually focus groups, finding out what people's unconscious ideas were relating to objects, and then giving people what they wanted but didn't realize it was what they wanted, in the form of consumer products like cigarettes and cake mix.  The idea is that you play to people's irrational emotions, because they knew what the people they were targeting wanted and presented the product as a means to get what it is they really wanted.  This is important for understanding advertising, to begin with, but related and also important is that the news media plays to irrational emotions, too, and there is no reason they wouldn't use similar tactics. 

But what would be the media's end goal?  To sell more papers?  Print barely exists any more, and although many institutional news sources have complained about steep drop in newspaper revenue, somehow they manage to scrape by and carry on their messages.  I'm used to the media never ever telling me anything critical about the media, because maybe that does not sell as many papers, and so I was surprised when I found this article written by Neil Macdonald on CBC news (June 6, 2013).  As the CBC correspondent in Washington, he wrote an article here discussing his confusion around media coverage in the United States, the fact that the American army sexual assault scandal received little or no coverage, while the IRS scandal is getting constant priority coverage by all the major American media outlets.

Even though the media does enjoy referring to news (as referring to news coverage of the news or the media talking about the media) and sporadically commentating on the effect the media has, in a general way, it is rare that someone talks about what it means in the broader context, let alone as problematic.  In the end, Neil asserts the media does not cover it because American's aren't interested in the story.  He surmises the reason American's are not interested is because it is somehow communicated to their society as a whole not to be interested, not to care, it is embarrassing.  The IRS story is only embarrassing for some people, problems in the military is embarrassing for all Americans.  But is anyone outside of America concerned either?  The American army is huge and has exerted a massive influence as long as the country existed.   Nobody seems to indicate that they care about the news story, nationally or internationally, and I suppose it will be gone rather quickly.

In Century of the Self, Curtis states that the position of democracy in America became one where they want to maintain the current relations of power, and they could do it by stimulating the psychological lives of the public (ie war on communism), that is, stimulating particular emotions, the same "irrational self" that was being used to convince the advertisement-viewing public to buy products they don't need.  Only by this application, the emotions invoked can sell people on the decisions of the president so it can do what it wants to do.

 A faction of Americans want to believe Obama ordered the IRS to destroy his enemies.  I have not been able to see any of the news footage on the military rape charges or the IRS scandal, but if we apply the ideas in Century of the Self, then we can clear Neil Macdonald's confusion through the explanation that the emotions invoked by the media are perhaps apathy while covering the military court coverage, and invoking strong bipartisan emotions like anger for the anti-Obama camp and maybe even some other emotions for people that still like Obama.

Neil ends his articles drawing some poignant conclusions, all the while having no idea why this is being done.  Maybe he is savvy enough to know the answers but not be the one to break kafabe.   "Even the media doesn't believe what they are saying... they don't believe their own claims... Those of us who try to do our job properly are just dupes."  I can't tell if the last statement is a cynical joke or if he honestly believes the existence of pure journalism in mainstream media.  My guess would be he likes his job and wants to keep it.

Prosopagnosia in Children

Although prosopagnosia has been frequently documented in adults, recent research has given added attention to deficits in facial recognition in children. One such patient, identified as K.D., sustained cerebral damage in infancy and since had been unable to recognize people’s faces (Young & Ellis, 1989). However, when tested at ages 8-11 her visual abilities were found to be somewhat impaired, but were no poorer than other children who could recognize faces with no difficulty. She was diagnosed with prosopagnosia, where she could identify a face for what it was, can perceive and imitate facial expressions, but she does not have a recognition of faces that should be familiar to her due to previous experiences with them. It is believed that 2-2.9% of the general population is affected by face recognition difficulties (Bowles et al., 2009). Prosopagnosics use other cues such as voice, clothes, context and nonverbal cues to identify familiar people. This cognitive impairment is similar in both children and adults; with the exception that a child whose functional ability has been impaired at infancy has no memory of what it used to be like to recognize faces.

More recently theoretical models to explain face processing have been assembled using data from case studies of prosopagnosics. Initially face processing is analyzed in a way common to all objects, perceiving the size, orientation and figure-ground relationships (Brunsdon et al., 2006). Next the face is structurally encoded, including an abstract representation that integrates a global general configuration along with its individual unique features. Each feature, such as nose, mouth, ears are given a ‘feature value’ recognized as an individual nose, for example, associated with that person. Recognition occurs when a known individual feature value for each feature group is recalled that is associated with that person. This recall also brings to mind associated personality characteristics and facts about that person. Of course the same information can be recalled from nonfacial cues such as those already mentioned above. Face recognition can give other information about a person, such as facial expression and mood since some cues will be specific to the person and vary from the last time the facial information was processed. However, this model is likely oversimplified, as studies with inherited prosopagnosia have shown. Subjects belonging to the same family expressed a variety of impairments, indicating that prosopagnosia may not be a single trait but a cluster of related subtypes, with individuals having some variety of impairments to the face-processing system (Schmalzl et al., 2008). Another interesting point is that studies employing MRI scanning of the brain have shown that the brain does indicate a recognition of faces, but this is a covert recognition not consciously known by the subject (Jones & Tranel, 2001).

Research into treatment for prosopagnosia have indicated successes in training to teach face recognition (Francis et al., 2002). One study focused on training using a complex mnemonic, incorporating remembering a prominent facial feature, the person’s name and occupation in order to remember photographs of particular people. To relearn a familiar face, they rehearsed semantic information about the person while viewing their photograph. However the improvements in facial memory was person specific and not particular to the stimulus used. Brunsdon et al. were able to successfully treat an 8 year old child with prosopagnosia through studying photos and observing and discussing the major facial features, such as those associated with the eyes, nose, mouth and hair (2006). After an established baseline the child showed significant improvement continuing post treatment, as well as anecdotal evidence that his ability to identify family members had improved. The study identified recognition of eyes and mouth as being most important for face processing. In another study, a 4-year-old girl diagnosed with congenital prosopagnosia was tested by monitoring eye movement recordings when studying faces (Schmalzl et al., 2008). Results of the scans revealed that the child’s scan paths lay outside the internal core features, particularly away from the eye region. Previously the girl had tended to use hair and voice to for recognition cues. The study then turned to focusing the child’s training on directing visual attention to characteristics of the internal features of faces. This precise training was rapidly integrated by the child and showed improvements similar to the study by Brunsdon et al.

Although prosopagnosia affects both children and adults alike, there seems to be more we can learn from studying these cognitive deficits in children. It appears that the underlying problem tends to be with abnormal scan pathing in the prosopagnosic subjects, at least with regards to faces. The treatment seems to be clear, but there are still some questions that merit further study. Why do some children have this abnormal scan pathing? Is there some common reason for why this may be happening in some children but not others? Although in some cases there may be a genetic component, in developmental prosopagnosia environmental factors may contribute the most. Further studies should consider potential environmental effects or particular childhood experiences that could contribute to inducing developmental prosopagnosia. In congenital prosopagnosia, brain-imaging studies can reveal more detailed information about how visual components of the brain develop, and how the brain can correct these physical problems over time.

References

Bowles, D. C., McKone, E., Dawel, A., Duchaine, B., Palermo, R., Schmalzl, L., et al. 2009. Diagnosing prosopagnosia: Effects of ageing, sex and participant-stimulus ethnic match on the Cambridge Face Memory Test and Cambridge Face Perception Test. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 26, 423-455.

Brunsdon, R., Coltheart, M., Nickels, L. & Joy, P. 2006. Developmental prosopagnosia: A case analysis and treatment study. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 23, 822-840.

Francis, D., Riddoch, M. J., & Humphreys, G. W. 2002. “Who’s that girl?” Prosopagnosia, person-based semantic disorder, and the reacquisition of face identification ability. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 12, 1-26.

Jones, R. D. & Tranel, D. 2001. Severe developmental prosopagnosia in a child with superior intellect.

Schmalzl, L., Palermo, R. & Coltheart, M. 2008. Cognitive heterogeneity in genetically based prosopagnosia: A family study. Journal of Neuropsychology, 2, 99-117.

Schmalzl, L., Palermo, R., Green, M., Brundson, R. & Coltheart, M. 2008. Training of familiar face recognition and visual scan paths for faces in a child with congenital prosopagnosia. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 25, 704-729.

Young, A. W. & Ellis, H. D. 1989. Childhood prosopagnosia. Brain and Cognition, 9, 16-47.

Can Body Language Indicate Personality Traits?

In my previous discussion paper, “The Tarot as a Source of Ancient Personality Theory”, one of the more interesting findings was that some characteristics of the court cards, which are believed to represent people in your life, had to do with the way people move, such as ‘graceful’, ‘swift’, ‘acute’, ‘slow’ and ‘clumsy’. As a result this researcher was lead to question whether personality may actually be indicated in how a person moves and carries themselves. However, current personality theory does not associate traits with physical movement within any of the Five Factor Model of personality characteristics. Even though people tend to use their first impressions about a person to make quick judgments regarding personality, surprisingly little research is available to further our understanding of how exactly this might work. In this paper we will examine whether any current research on body language could lend itself to personality theory and expand present knowledge in this area.

An interesting tool recently used in assessment of personality and body language is Laban Movement Analysis. Created by Rudolf Laban to describe interpret and document human movement for dancers, actors, athletes and health professionals, LMA is also being incorporated by psychologists into these theories by correlating movements with emotional state and personality variables (Levy & Duke, 2003). LMA also takes a gender based approach, finding subtle differences in the expression of particular emotions between males and females. For example, in males anxiety may be expressed by increased use of shrinking movements while dominance, achievement and exhibitionism is expressed by decreased use of enclosing movements. Females, in contrast, expressed anxiety by a decreased tendency to change back and fourth between efforts and lack of emphasis in effort, as well as decreased sagittal movements. Dominance and exhibition is expressed by a decreased use of spreading movements. This indicates that there may be some subtle gender based difference in emotional expression in body language.

Another study examined whether body language could be linked to desire for control. In a study more than 700 participants were asked to sit and stand in a variety of positions (Rhoads, 2002). In addition, the same subjects completed need for control tests and the results were correlated. Results indicated that people who crossed their arms with the right arm in the dominant position, with the right shoulder elevated, as well as which side they favor when they stand or sit was positively correlated with desire for control. Highly controlling people are associated with characteristics in the low agreeableness trait.

A very informative study covers a much more holistic view of personality assessment based on body language. Politicians giving speeches were transformed into animated stick figures and shown to subjects, who rated the five personality factors of the figure based on gestures (Koppensteiner & Grammer, 2010). Overall subjects were found to be very adept at associating meaning to gestures and movements. Stick figures with more low arm gesture activity interrupted with smaller periods of high activity were regarded as more agreeable than stick figures with overall high activity. High extraversion was associated with high overall activity and only brief low activity periods. Stick figures with greater head movements were considered less conscientious, more neurotic and less open compared to stick figures with head movements with less amplitude. High openness was associated with pronounced changes in movement direction, and round movements were considered linked to less openness. Making smooth transitions in movement from one activity peak to the next was associated with low neuroticism, whereas high neuroticism was linked to sudden changes in gestures and making these changes more often. Although further study is required to confirm if these traits are consistent, it gives us considerable insight integrating particular movement patterns with trait theory.

Overall we can start to see connections between body language and personality. High extraversion seems to be connected to more movement, broader, sweeping movements and increased saggital movement. High neuroticism could be seen in shrinking, enclosing movements, decreased saggital movement, more head movement and more sudden, jerky movement. Openness may be linked with more profound changes in movement direction, and conscientiousness with less head movements. Agreeableness may be linked to low periods of activity with short periodic bursts of high activity, as well as displaying more submissive body language such as crossing arms with the left arm dominant as well as sitting and standing with the left shoulder favored relative to the right.

Going back to the original traits under consideration we could see swiftness as a trait of high extraversion and slowness associated with low extraversion. Graceful gestures could indicate a smoothness of movement linked to low neuroticism. Finally, acute movement could also indicate increased confidence, and hence low neuroticism, or it may indicate high neuroticism if gestures are sharp and change frequently. It is surprising this has not been an area of more intense research, since the research that has been done would seem to indicate that this method of personality assessment is constantly employed by nearly everyone, and deserves to be better understood.

References

Koppensteiner, M. & Grammer, K. 2010. Motion patterns in political speech and their influence on personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 44, 374-379.

Levy, J. A. & Duke, M. P. 2003. The use of Laban Movement Analysis in the study of personality, emotional state and movement style: An exploratory investigation of the veridicality of “body language”. Individual Differences Research, 1, 39-63.

Rhoads, S. A. 2002. Using body language as a measurement of the personality trait of desire for control. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 63, 2996

The Tarot as Ancient Personality Theory

Sigmund Freud has been credited for establishing personality theory in the early 1900’s, the age of modernity where rationalism and a scientific approach was the prevailing mode of thought throughout the western world. Perhaps, though, there have been other times in history when educated minds have considered personality types, traits and origins. Although the middle ages had erased much of accumulated civilized knowledge, at least one source has survived: the tarot deck.

It is believed that tarot cards date beyond ancient Egypt (Sadhu, 1962). When the Egyptians were in danger of being conquered by the Persian Empire, they wanted to insure their accumulated wisdom would be preserved. Stories within the bible itself contain references directly identifiable to tarot cards, such as The Tower, Strength, and Judgement. This paper will focus on the sixteen court cards, the Knight, Queen, Prince and Princess (or in other decks the King, Queen, Knight and Page) of each of the four suits – Wands/Batons, Cups, Swords and Disks/Pentacles/Coins. In readings, the court cards usually represent people – spouses, relatives, friends and other important figures in our lives (Cavendish, 1975).

The suit of the court cards as well as the member role form the two dimensions of the calculated personality. Interestingly, both represent one of the four elemental forces manifesting the personality and so two elements are combined, identifiable by certain traits symbolized in the element. The suits actually represent the piece of human technology associated with mastery over the particular element; so the wand represents mastery over fire in the form of a torch, a cup can hold the element of water, and so on. Similarly with role, Knight represents fire, Queen water, Prince air and Princess earth (I will stick to the Aleister Crowley definitions for simplicity, but it is worthwhile knowing that the suits and court cards vary between deck types (Crowley, 1944)).

Each element symbolizes a particular theme, an umbrella under which rest many related traits, further refined by the crossing of it with another element. Fire brings with it masculine ideas of aggression, industriousness, persuit with passion. Water is associated with feminine qualities of emotion, sensitivity, love and pleasure. The idea of air is linked to conflict, intellect, instability and ethereality. Earth is solid and tangible, related to tangible practical matters, deliberate and present. With these general ideas in mind we can project 16 different personality categories containing unique characteristics, and compare them with traits in the five factor model of personality. Refer to Table 1 for each court card, it’s list of associated personality characteristics and which ‘Big 5’ trait each characteristic is associated with. Court card characteristics were compiled from tarot guides by Crowley (1944) and Cavendish (1975).

Not every characteristic translated over into a five factor trait, and all categorizations are not absolute. I did not attribute characteristics that were overly ambiguous such as ‘discrete’ or ‘thoughtful’ since they could equally belong to more than one category. Other characteristics, such as ‘subtle’ did not seem to fit in to any category. Still others do not seem to be characteristics in the psychological sense, but perhaps may be telling of a particular way that personality theory may be lacking: in terms of the physical, kinesthetic movements. Specifically, the Knight of Disks is described as ‘slow’ and ‘clumsy’, the Prince of Wands as ‘swift’, the Princess of Wands is ‘quick’, Princess of Cups ‘gentle’, the Princess of Swords ‘subtle’ and ‘acute’. The Knight of Cups and Princess of Swords are both described as ‘graceful’. It would be interesting for future research to examine the possibility of relationships between personality types and body language. If common body language characteristics could be found in people with particular personality traits, this could add to better understanding of personality as well as lead to more accurate trait assessments.

There was also an interesting deviation between Crowley and Cavendish’s description of the Princess of Disks. While Cavendish provided a list of characteristics in similar fashion to the other cards, Crowley went on to describe the personality of this card as “too various to enumerate. She contains all the characteristics of woman, and it would depend entirely upon the influences to which she is subjected whether one or another becomes manifest…In one sense, then, her general reputation will be one of bewildering inconsistency” (1944). Does this mean her personality is continuously changing? It would be interesting to pursue the potential meaning of this statement within the context of personality theory, since it is the common belief at this time that personalities are stable and only subject to small change over long periods of time.

Lastly, coding the characteristics was imperfect at best. Some seeming contradictions, such as having High and Low Conscientiousness traits present in the Knight of Disks could represent an error of interpretation, or perhaps just like in people taking personality traits today sometimes people have opposing characteristics. Perhaps though, it could also indicate a flaw in the current personality trait theory. Further examination could be done to comparing completed pictures of the 16 court personality types and compare them to current data. Is it possible that these 16 cards represent the most common combination of personality traits?

References

Cavendish, R. 1975. The Tarot. Westerham Press, Ltd.

Crowley, A. 1944. The Book of Thoth. U. S. Game Systems, Inc.

Sadhu, M. 1962. Tarot: A Contemporary Course of the Quintessence of Hermetic Occultism. Wilshire Book Co.

merging virtual and reality

The progress that is being made in games like WoW and Farmville tell us important information about progress that has been made in psychology and social engineering. Specifically rewarding types of behavior with virtual items like money, items, etc. The implications of where this is going is quite frightening, such as rewarding people for watching/remembering advertisements, or even for reporting friends and family for things they have done against the state.

If what I'm saying is too vague to be sensible, then watch this episode of TED Talks. There are lots of times modern society has been compared to 1984, and this is just one example of many. The implications about the direction society is headed, barring any natural disaster, can seem pretty overwhelming. But we need to remember that throughout human history people have always been stuck in shitty situations, and so there is no reason we can't be happy regardless of the situation we are in.

the costs of working

Working in an office environment is strange.  We have only been working in offices for a microscopic amount of time in evolutionary history.  So it seems like we will eventually figure it out, but that aint yet.  I witnessed this interaction where an employee went in to talk to a manager, and the manager was audibly irritated at them, asking questions like what about this and that, and then building to what do we (as a company) care?  I can understand he was busy and stuff, but it was painful to watch because the employee was actually trying to be helpful and proactive, and his boss didn't see this at all.

I don't pretend to have social skills, but I think we all need to be more aware that when we are getting annoyed at someone, it is because of internal reasons we get annoyed and probably not because what they are saying/doing.  Although people can be purposefully be annoying, these are jokes and should be treated as such.  The rest of the time, the person is trying to do something.  I don't know what because it's always different.  But when they approach you in an office environment, it is awkward and unsure to begin with, and the individuals have their own things going on and life crap that is on in the back of their mind.  Very few people only think about and deal with work when they are at work, and although work dominates our lives time wise our minds are always trying to escape it because few people enjoy their job and some of those people are mentally imbalanced workaholics.

Since you probably know the other person better than I do, you can tell yourself points of trivia about the person, why they formulated what they are saying, what they may be actually trying to say.  Reading between the lines is a very valuable skill.  Try to bunch all your anger inside instead of displacing it onto coworkers who in all likelihood are put off being where they are at the moment.  Then release it when appropriate on a punching bag or maybe a cardboard cutout.

the stuff dreams are made of

So I've been having some intense dreams lately.  I'm paying even more attention to them after I watched a documentary about dreams and that they are a way for our brains to learn and 'practice' things.  we generally have positive dreams during non-rem sleep, and more negative dreams during rem sleep.  According to a scientist in Montreal, who catologues a huge dream database, about 3/4 of all dreams are negative.  This is kind of a relief to me, who has had disturbing messed up dreams my whole life.  Apparently its NORMAL.  Someone in the thing also said that 50% of people are able to consiously think about something the night before, and then dream about it.  I have been able to do this occasionaly but I think I need some more practice.  I also maybe need to pick easy topics since I pick abstract things I want to get better at.

I've always wanted to keep a dream journal, but I just can't do it.  When I wake up from a dream I always think I will remember it all, OR I really want to get back to sleep and I can't be bothered to write shit down or I wont be able to sleep as easily.  I really like sleep, but I regret times like saturday morning when I dreamt about something funny and woke up laughing uncontrollably.  I'd probably be rich off whatever that was, but oh well I'm sure my brain can come up with something funnier.

Scary dreams, as I was told, are supposed to be to prepare us for the dangers that our ancestors used to face, but we quickly thought/invented our way past.  Mostly wild animals, I expect, but my bad dreams, like last night for example, often involve ghosts.

Last night I dreamt I was staying in this one room cabin with like 4 other people, all sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor, and for some reason the cabin was on the stilts (i think it was in the swamp) and so was 2 or 3 stories up.  We knew the cabin was haunted, but it was the only place we could stay.  While we were all sleeping, someone woke everyone up because the ghost had brushed past them.  Soon enough, a bit later, I felt the ghost brush past me (for some reason i knew it was an old lady, and she hobbled and walked slowly).  Finally, at one point, the ghost grabbed me by the shoulders and slid me clear across the room, almost sending me out the window except i managed to roll out of the way at the last second.

Now thats all well and good, but how does that help me?  Does my brain think I deal with ghosts on a regular basis, and that's something that I need to be wary of?  I think I just watch to many horror movies.