Looking on the bright side can lead to irresponsible financial behavior, reveals a paper from the June 2008 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research. In a series of studies, Elizabeth Cowley (University of Sydney) examines repeat gambling in the face of loss. She finds that people often engage in too much positive thinking, selectively focusing on one win among hundreds of losses when they think back on the overall experience.

“When we want to justify engaging in an activity which could potentially be irresponsible – like gambling – we may need to distort our memory of the past to rationalize the decision,” Cowley explains. “People who have frequently spent more money than planned on gambling edit their memories of the past in order to justify gambling again.”

For example, Cowley had participants in one study play a computer game in which they could win credits with the financial equivalent of one cent per credit. Each participant played the game 300 times. Everyone experienced one big win and one big loss. But for the other 298 games, one half of the group experienced all small losses, while the other experienced all small wins.

Cowley also manipulated the distance between the big win and the big loss.

A week later, participants were surveyed for their memories of the experience. Surprisingly, Cowley found that even some losers remembered having a positive experience. If the big win and the big loss occurred far apart, losers had fond memories and indicated a willingness to spend their own money on the game.

As Cowley explains, the further apart the big win and the big loss, the easier it was for losers to isolate their memories and focus only on the positive, a “silver lining” effect.

“The tendency to segregate positive and negative events in a mixed-loss experience is based on the logic that remembering a large gain allows people to feel good even when the objective outcome was negative,” Cowley says.

Conversely, Cowley found that winners – those who experienced 298 small wins – were happier when the big win and the big loss were closer together, allowing them to lump all the games together and ignore the big loss. She termed this the “cancellation effect.”

“When the outcome of an experience including both positive and negative events results in a net gain, people look for ways to integrate positive and negative events to reduce, if not cancel, the pain associated with the negative events,” Cowley explains.

The research is the first to consider a motivated memory explanation for justifying irresponsible behavior. Apparently, positive thinking can sometimes be negative.

Elizabeth Cowley, “The Perils of Hedonic Editing.” Journal of Consumer Research: June 2008.

Researchers from several universities have determined that even though humans’ ability to weigh choices is remarkably advantageous, it can also come with some serious liabilities. People faced with numerous choices, whether good or bad, find it difficult to stay focused enough to complete projects, handle daily tasks or even take their medicine.

Researchers conducted seven experiments involving 328 participants and 58 consumers at a shopping mall. In the laboratory experiments, some participants were asked to make choices about consumer products, college courses or class materials. Other participants did not have to make decisions but simply had to consider the options in front of them.

The scientists then asked each group to participate in one of two unpleasant tasks. Some were told to finish a healthy but ill-tasting drink (akin to taking ones medicine). Other participants were told to put their hands in ice water. The tasks were designed to test how the previous act of choosing, or not choosing, affected peoples’ ability to stay on task and maintain behaviors aimed at reaching a goal.

Researchers found that the participants who earlier had made choices had more trouble staying focused and finishing the disagreeable but goal-focused tasks compared to the participants who initially did not have to make choices.

In other experiments, participants were given math problems to practice for an upcoming test. The participants who had to make important choices involving coursework spent less time solving the math problems and more time engaging in other distractions such as playing video games or reading magazines, compared to participants who were not asked to make choices prior to that point. The participants who made choices also got more math problems wrong than participants not faced with decisions.

To further buttress their laboratory findings, the researchers conducted a field test at a shopping mall. The shoppers reported how much decision-making they had done while shopping that day and then were asked to solve simple arithmetic problems. The researchers found that the more choices the shoppers had made earlier in the day, the worse they performed on the math problems. The authors note they controlled for how long the participants had been shopping, and for several demographic categories such as age, race, ethnicity and gender.

Article: “Making Choices Impairs Subsequent Self-Control: A Limited-Resource Account of Decision Making, Self-Regulation, and Active Initiative,” Kathleen D. Vohs, PhD, and Noelle M. Nelson, PhD, University of Minnesota; Roy Baumeister, PhD, Florida State University; Brandon J. Schmeichel, PhD, Texas A&M University; Jean M. Twenge, PhD, San Diego State University; Dianne M. Tice, PhD, Florida State University; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 94, No. 5

A recent US study on a small group of people found that aromatherapy oils had no physiological effect although they may improve mood for some people.

The study is the work of researchers at Ohio State University and appears in the April issue of the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Described by a doctor speaking on the CBS News Early Show on Tuesday as one of the few studies to take “a very scientific look at aromatherapy”, the study found that the two most popular aromatherapy oils, lemon and lavender, failed to show any improvement in wound healing, immune status, blood pressure, stress hormones, or pain control.

Lemon oil did show a small effect in mood improvement, but lavender oil was even less effective than water, said the researchers who conducted three psychological tests as well as examining physiological effects.

Lead author of the study and professor of psychiatry and psychology at Ohio State University, Dr Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, and colleagues, looked for physiological evidence that the two oils went beyond increasing pleasure. Aromatherapy is a large industry that markets oils as having health benefits, but there is little scientific evidence of this.

Kiecolt-Glaser said:

“We all know that the placebo effect can have a very strong impact on a person’s health but beyond that, we wanted to see if these aromatic essential oils actually improved human health in some measurable way.”

Lemon and lavender are the two most used scents in aromatherapy, and recent research also selected these to study.

The researchers invited 56 healthy male and female volunteers and screened them to find out how good their sense of smell was. Some of the participants believed aromatherapy was effective while the others had no opinion one way or the other.

The participants attended three half day events where they had cotton balls with lemon oil, lavender oil or distilled water taped below their noses while they were examined using a range of physiological and psychological tests.

Their blood pressure and heart rate was monitored during the sessions, and they also gave blood samples. Ability to heal was assessed by a standard test where sticky tape is applied and then removed repeatedly on an area of skin, and reaction to pain was measured from immersing their feet in ice cold water.

The volunteers also completed three standard psychological tests to assess mood and stress at three times during each session. They were also asked to express their reaction to the experience, and their use of positive and negative words in their narrative was assessed.

Several biochemical markers were tested in the blood samples to establish changes in immune and endocrine system. These included the cytokines Interleukin-6 and Interleukin-10, and the stress hormones cortisol, norepinephrine and other catacholomines.

The results showed that while lemon oil clearly enhanced mood, lavender oil had no such effect, and neither smell made any impact on any of the measures for stress, pain control and wound healing.

The study is one of the most comprehensive pieces of research to look at aromatherapy, but the human body is “infinitely complex” said co-author Dr William Malarkey, professor of internal medicine at Ohio State University.

“If an individual patient uses these oils and feels better, there’s no way we can prove it doesn’t improve that person’s health,” he said.

“But we still failed to find any quantitative indication that these oils provide any physiological effect for people in general,” added Malarkey.

Fellow co-author Dr Ronald Glaser, a professor of molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics at Ohio State, said that the wound healing experiment measured how fast the skin repaired itself, and a lot of things have to happen in the body for that to take place:

“We measured a lot of complex physiological interactions instead of just a single marker, and still we saw no positive effect,” said Glaser.

Speaking on the CBS Early Show, Dr Roshini Raj of New York University Medical Center said that the effect of lemon on mood “shouldn’t be underestimated”, saying it was a “pretty good thing” if just smelling something can make a person feel better. Perhaps there is a strong placebo effect, she said, where people believe aromatherapy works but there is no real physiological effect.

She suggested that perhaps some people feel less stressed when they use aromatherapy, and this helps them deal with certain medical conditions.

Raj pointed out that the study was relatively small, and therefore “you can’t say aromatherapy doesn’t work for everyone”.

The message appears to be that while it probably won’t do any harm, and maybe worth a try, don’t expect aromatherapy to replace needed medications.

“Olfactory influences on mood and autonomic, endocrine, and immune function.”
Janice K. Kiecolt-Glaser, Jennifer E. Graham, William B. Malarkey, Kyle Porter, Stanley Lemeshow and Ronald Glaser.
Psychoneuroendocrinology Volume 33, Issue 3, April 2008, Pages 328-339.

One glass of red wine can be good for you, but a second may not, reports the Daily Mail. The first drink relaxes the blood vessels and “reduces the amount of work the heart has to do”, the newspaper says, but the second “countered any health benefits – increasing the risk of high blood pressure, coronary artery disease and heart failure”. The story is based on a small study that looked at the direct effects of red wine, plain alcohol, and water on people, using complex measurements of the heart, blood vessels and nervous system. This is the latest addition to the continuing debate of what may be a safe or even optimal amount of alcohol to drink for health. Red wine in particular has repeatedly been hailed as a protection against heart disease.

This was a small randomised crossover trial designed to investigate the potential benefits of alcohol consumption on blood circulation, blood vessel function and its related nervous system supply, and whether these effects are dose-dependent (how they change with the quantity consumed) or affected by whether red wine or diluted pure alcohol is consumed.

The researchers selected a group of 13 healthy non-Asians (seven men and six women), who normally drank moderate quantities of alcohol. On three separate occasions during the trial period each of the participants were randomly assigned to drink either water, red wine or ethanol (diluted pure alcohol). During each of the test sessions, the volunteers were seated and linked to an ECG (heart monitor), blood pressure machine. They had an electrode placed in one of the nerves of the leg, and a hand-held ultrasound machine was used to detect heart output and blood flow in the arm in response to changes in pressure change of the blood pressure cuff. Blood was also drawn from the arm for measurements of chemical levels in the blood.

After the first set of measurements were taken, the volunteer drank the alcohol, wine or placebo over five minutes. The measurements were repeated when the peak blood alcohol had reached a target level (using a breathalyser). The measurements were repeated for a third time after the second drink had been given and the peak blood alcohol had reached a higher target level. At the end of the test, a urine sample was taken. There was a two-week period between each of the three test sessions.

A named brand of red wine was used which is known to have high levels of resveratrol and catechin – the chemicals believed to have heart-protective and anti-oxidant properties. For the other alcoholic drink, 95% ethanol was diluted with Perrier water to an equivalent concentration. Perrier water was used as the control.

What were the results of the study? The circulatory output of the heart fell slightly after water and after one drink of red wine or ethanol, but increased after two drinks of either alcohol compared with water. Also, one drink did not alter sympathetic nerve activity (nerve impulses that are not consciously controlled, e.g. the fight or flight response), but two drinks of either alcohol significantly increased nerve activity compared with water.

There was significant increase in the diameter of the main artery in the arm after both one and two drinks of alcohol compared with water. There was no effect of any of the drinks upon the artery diameter (after conducting a test to see how much the artery would dilate when increasing the pressure in the blood pressure cuff to a level that would cause the arm to go red). Ethanol and red wine had no effects overall on either blood pressure of heart rate (although two glasses of wine slightly raised heart rate). Red wine significantly raised blood levels of resveratrol and catechin.

What interpretations did the researchers draw from these results? The authors conclude that one alcoholic drink (either red wine or ethanol) causes blood vessel dilation without an increase in heart rate or sympathetic nerve activity. When compared with water, two drinks increases heart circulatory output, sympathetic nerve activity, and heart rate (red wine only), with no increase in blood pressure. Despite wine causing higher blood levels of resveratrol and catechin – the chemicals believed to have heart-protective and anti-oxidant properties – no differences in measurements were found compared with plain alcohol.

What does the NHS Knowledge Service make of this study?

This is a complex and well-conducted scientific experiment. However, there are several points to note when interpreting the results:

- This is a small study of only 13 volunteers who received each drink once only. It is unclear how this experimental situation relates to any real-life drinking pattern. Studies examining the effects of different alcohol doses over a longer period of time (e.g. one glass per day compared with two) and in a much greater number of people would be valuable.

- Overall, there were no differences found in the effects of two glasses of wine compared with two glasses of plain alcohol; therefore the findings are not limited to wine drinking as the newspaper headlines may imply.

- Importantly, there is nothing to suggest from this study that “a second glass is bad for the heart”. It is unclear how the small changes in sympathetic nerve activity, blood vessel diameter and heart output after two glasses of wine or alcohol on a single tested occasion in this study would relate to health.

- The size and alcohol content of the “drink” given in this study may not be comparable to the real life situation. The researchers calculated the alcohol concentration and volume that they believed would be needed to reach the target blood level in a particular individual. The earlier part of the report mentions the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee defining one drink as 120ml glass of wine or a 44ml shot of spirit; however, in the study different quantities of alcohol were taken by each of the volunteers depending on bodyweight.

- The second drink of alcohol was consumed after the breathalyser test had fallen to a defined alcohol level. However, it is not possible to say for certain whether any affects on the heart, blood vessels, or nervous system from the first drink may have continued after this time and could be clouding the effects of the second drink. Likewise, the effects of two drinks were not followed over an extended period.

- Although the study is reported as being single-blind (i.e. either the investigators or the participants did not know which of the study drinks were given) no further details of this are given. Presumably, the investigators would have been unaware of the drinks, as the participants would be able to tell which of the drinks they were consuming. However, even if this were the case, as they were checking for a rise in blood alcohol levels it would seem they would be able to tell when water had been taken. This may have led to some bias in result reporting; although as all measurements were objective this is uncertain.

- This trial is only conducted in non-Asian populations and findings may not be transferable to these groups.

Dr Jonas Spaak and colleagues of University of Toronto and Liquor
Control Board of Ontario, Canada, carried out this research. The study
was supported by Operating Grants from the Heart and Stroke Foundation
of Ontario and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. It was
published in the (peer-reviewed): American Journal Physiology of Heart.

If you are sad you are more likely to spend more money to acquire the same commodities as a person whose emotional state is neutral, according to an article to be published in Psychological Science. Researchers from Carnegie Melon University, Stanford University, University of Pittsburg and Harvard University say people spend more if they are feeling sad and self-focused, even those whose sad feelings are temporary.

Previous research had indicated there might be a link between sadness and buying, the authors explain. Their aim was to follow-up on those findings. They have found that when a person’s self-focus is heightened his/her likelihood to spend more is significantly greater. They say this latest study helps us understand consumer behavior better; especially the impact emotions may have on decision-making.

In this experiment volunteers were asked to look at two types of video footage, a ’sad’ one and an ‘emotionally neutral’ one. They were randomly selected to view sad or neutral clips. They then had the task of buying a basic commodity, such as a water bottle. They had a wide range of prices to choose from. It was found that those who were assigned to the sad videos tended to offer nearly 300% more money than the neutral volunteers to buy the same type of commodity.

Those assigned the sad videos also said the content of the film clip did not affect their spending behaviors in any way – in other words, they were unaware of its impact.

The researchers say that self-focus helps to explain the differing spending behaviors of the two groups. Those who were highly self-focused and ‘primed’ to feel sad paid much more for commodities than those whose self-focus was low.

According to the authors, sadness and self-focus makes us devalue both our sense of self and our current possessions. This devaluation makes us more willing to splash out more money for new material goods as a way of enhancing our sense of self.

The “misery is not miserly” upshot may be even more striking in real life, as the low-intensity sadness induced in the experiment probably misjudges the power of extreme sadness on spending behavior.

The authors say this effect may well go beyond the domains of purchasing decisions – causing people to take bigger stock-trading risks, or even to seek new relationships, while being completely unaware that these behaviors are being driven by emotions.

“Misery is not Miserly: Sad and Self-Focused Individuals Spend More”
Cynthia E. Cryder, Jennifer S. Lerner, James J. Gross, Ronald E. Dahl

http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~ccryder/miseryisnotmiserly.pdf