Psychological Perspectives reflects on one year anniversary

The first installment of Psychological Perspectives appeared in the Pattaya Mail on July 2, 2004. This being the one-year anniversary of the column, I thought it appropriate to review a few of the stories covered in this series, and reflect upon my personal experience in writing on psychology for the Pattaya community.

Psychology in 2005 is a vibrant and vital social science. Over the past 100 or so years, researchers and theorists in psychology have generated an impressive body of knowledge and insights that are, in my view, uniquely relevant to understanding many of the events and issues that confront us in today’s world. Unfortunately, most of this information is published exclusively within the pages of professional journals, and is often obscured by technical jargon. For most in our society, the fruits of psychological research remain largely intangible, and consequently, irrelevant to the formation of public opinion and policies.

My intention in writing Psychological Perspectives has been to make a portion of this rich store of information in psychology available to readers of the Pattaya Mail, while demonstrating its applicability to the issues of topical and local interest to those of us fortunate enough to be a part of this interestingly diverse Pattaya community.

Over the past year there has been an abundance of local and regional issues and news events available to examine from a psychological perspective. The XV International AIDS Conference that was held last year in Bangkok prompted a consideration of the psychological issues raised by the deadly epidemic. In connection with World AIDS Day in December, Asian University followed up by hosting an AIDS Film Festival, free to the Pattaya community.

Another event that greatly affected the Pattaya community was the tsunami that rolled across the Andaman Sea in December, ravaging our neighborhood seaside communities. This regional tragedy formed the background for a number of pieces on the psychological aspects of dealing with the trauma produced by exposure to natural disaster and its aftermath.

Pattaya’s reputation as a haven for a thriving commercial sex industry prompted examination of a number of psychological issues raised by the existence of this controversial local enterprise. Related or, as some might argue, unrelated to the commercial sex industry, are topics pertaining to love and affairs of the heart. Some interesting psychological theories about the nature of love were examined here in connection with Valentine’s Day celebrations. The Miss Universe Pageant held last month in Bangkok also inspired a piece on psychological investigations pertaining to human beauty and attractiveness.

International events, too, provided the occasion for reviewing a number of relevant classic psychological studies from the dusty archives. For example, the apparent failure of the mainstream news media to properly assess the veracity of claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction prior to the U.S. led invasion, prompted a review of psychologist Irving Janis’s notion of “groupthink.”

When incidents of prisoner abuse were uncovered at Abu Ghraib, the U.S. run prison in Iraq, some U.S. politicians blamed it upon a few “bad apples.” Review of some landmark experiments by Stanley Milgram from the 1970s, however, illustrated the unpleasant fact that even “good apples,” like you and me, can be induced by situations to perform some very bad acts against our fellow man. Moreover, the decision of cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church to appoint an ultra-conservative theologian to replace John Paul II was revealed as predictable from the standpoint of social psychological theory.

New and emerging research findings from psychology have also been reported on this page. An example is the innovative research project that is being carried out with people living with HIV in Northern Thailand, to increase patient adherence to vital anti-retroviral treatments. Also reported here was the conclusion reached by the American Psychological Association, following a review of over 15 years of prevention research, that comprehensive sex education is effective in reducing the risk of HIV infection among young people. And let’s not forget the findings reported here two weeks ago that the basis of the female orgasm lies within the human gene.

I have personally found it both challenging and gratifying to examine and write about current events and topics of local interest from a perspective provided by psychological theory and research. I am always happy to receive comments on my stories, both favorable and unfavorable, from my readers. I want to take this opportunity to thank those of you who meet me here each week to explore topics in the news, and issues of interest to our unique Pattaya community.

Psychological aspects of human sexual adjustment

Last week in this space I reported on some very interesting findings published earlier this month by a team of British researchers suggesting a strong biological basis for the female orgasm. They discovered that the extreme variability found among women to experience orgasm during sex seems to be determined, in large part, by genetic factors. This investigation of 683 pairs of female identical twins, and 714 pairs of fraternal twins, found genetic factors to account for 45% of the subjects’ ability to experience orgasm.

A major implication of this work is that the difficulty some women experience in achieving orgasm is not necessarily indicative of psychological disturbance. Since this is a column dealing with “psychological perspectives,” however, I can’t leave this topic without mentioning the other side of the proverbial coin: For us humans, males, as well as for females, psychological factors can make or break the excitement we experience during sexual encounters.

The senses, of course, are major contributors to human sexual excitement, particularly those of sight and touch. Pattaya’s go-go bars and sex shows, for example, make effective use of sights and sounds to entertain and arouse their customers. Hotel “honeymoon suites” often feature mirrors in strategic positions around the nuptial bed to take advantage of patrons’ susceptibility to sensual visual stimuli. Erotic pictures and films appeal primarily to the visual sense, but also have the effect of sparking viewers’ imaginations, another avenue of sexual arousal.

Thoughts and feelings are particularly potent sources of sexual stimulation for humans. Remembering past sexual experiences, thinking about the object of one’s lust or affection, or imagining fantasy sexual encounters can be arousing for most people. Erotic literature is often evaluated on its ability to elicit sexual excitement through capturing the imagination of the reader.

The sound of the human voice has also been identified as a source of arousal for many. Certain singers, both male and female, develop reputations for their ability to arouse romantic and sexual feelings among members of the opposite sex. The pioneer blues vocalist Billie Holliday, and “make-out music” king Barry White are examples of singers with a seemingly magical ability to use the human voice in a distinctly sensual way.

The quality of life experiences can also have an impact upon human sexual adjustment. A person who is fortunate enough to be raised in an environment where warmth and affection are a mainstay of the home experience is well on the road to developing a rich and satisfying sex life. Moreover, if that person is lucky enough to have his or her first sexual experiences with a loving and caring partner who is attentive to his or her wants and needs, positive attitudes that can enhance the person’s capacity for sexual enjoyment later in life are likely to develop.

While attitudes, thoughts and feelings can have a positive influence upon sexual development in humans, they can have a detrimental effect as well. Certain thoughts and attitudes, such as anger, guilt and anxiety, are usually incompatible with sexual arousal. Unfortunately, social groups such as families and religious organizations often promote attitudes and feelings toward sex that serve to inhibit or otherwise interfere with healthy human sexual adjustment. Some parents, for example, who observe their children masturbating or otherwise engaging in pre-sexual play, may communicate that this activity is considered dirty or shameful. Religionists often promote feelings of guilt in those who engage in sexual acts not meeting with their approval. Attitudes like these, once instilled, may linger into adulthood, becoming associated with mature sexual activity, and consequently interfering with sexual enjoyment.

Likewise, those who are traumatized through childhood sexual abuse or rape are prone to associate disturbing thoughts and feelings such as anger, anxiety, and guilt, with sexual activity and arousal. Although they may find themselves in a mature relationship with a kind and loving partner, such people often experience difficulty establishing a healthy and fulfilling sexual life because of these negative associations.

Fortunately, attitudes that interfere with sexual enjoyment are learned, rather than innate. As such, they can, with some effort, be unlearned and replaced by more sensible and sexually compatible ones. Sexual problems, usually addressed by specialists in the treatment of psychosexual disorders, are considered among the problems most successfully treated by psychologists. This is probably due, in part, to the fact that people with sexual difficulties are often highly motivated for change, and the rewards of successful work on sexual difficulties are particularly gratifying to the client.

Female orgasms in the news

A surprising degree of variability exists among women in their ability to achieve orgasm. Some women are able to achieve orgasm with relative ease, both during sexual intercourse and masturbation. Other women achieve orgasm only occasionally, or only in response to specific forms of stimulation. Some women never achieve orgasm. The reason for such variability in the female sexual response has remained an open question among experts in the field of human sexuality... until now.

According to research published last week in the Royal Society’s Biology Letters, a significant portion of the variability in women’s ability to experience an orgasm is determined by the human gene.

In reaching their conclusions, researchers in the UK collected questionnaires from 683 pairs of female identical twins, and 714 pairs of fraternal twins. Subjects’ ages ranged from 19 to 83. Since identical twins develop from a single fertilized egg, they share an identical genetic make-up. In contrast, fraternal twins develop from different egg cells. Thus, they are no more genetically alike than other sibling pairs. Like identical twins, however, pairs of fraternal twins are usually reared in similar environments. By comparing identical twins to fraternal twins, investigators are able to determine to what degree variation of a characteristic like ability to reach orgasm, is attributable to genetic factors, versus environmental factors.

A mere 14% of women in the investigation reported always experiencing orgasm during sexual intercourse. Thirty-two percent of the women reported being able to achieve orgasm at least three quarters of the time during intercourse. Twenty-one percent reported never, or infrequently achieving orgasm, even during masturbation. Sixteen percent of the women reported never having experienced an orgasm, either during intercourse, or masturbation.

Using statistical methods, the researchers estimated that genetic factors accounted for 34% of the variance in these women’s ability to achieve an orgasm during intercourse. This figure rose to 45% for the women’s ability to reach orgasm during masturbation, indicating a strong contribution from genes. Rather than a sign of sexual dysfunction, as some have suggested, the difficulty of some women to achieve orgasm appears to be largely the result of a natural variation, genetically programmed into the human species.

The female orgasm has long been a controversial issue among sex theorists and researchers. During the early 20th century, Viennese psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud promoted his belief that there were two types of female orgasms. One, he believed, arose from stimulation of the clitoris, the female phallus. The other resulted from penetration and stimulation of the vagina.

Clitoral orgasms were considered by Freud as inferior, a forerunner of the adult female sexual response. In his view, with maturation, clitoral orgasms should be replaced by vaginal orgasms. The failure of a woman to make this transition, in Freud’s view, was a sign of neurosis, and a major cause of “frigidity” or female sexual dysfunction.

Freud’s dogma was subsequently adopted and disseminated by a largely male medical establishment that, evidently, understood little about the female sexual response. In fact, some professionals of that era erroneously defined frigidity as an inability to have “vaginal” orgasms.

In 1953 the sex researcher, Alfred Kinsey corrected Freud’s mistake when he published the results of the first comprehensive investigation into female sexual behavior. Relying on 5,940 sexual history questionnaires provided by White American women, Kinsey discovered what most women already knew: Stimulation of the clitoris plays a central role in generating the female orgasm. Vaginal penetration is not even necessary for a woman to climax.

Like many studies, the present research raises more questions than it answers. For instance, the specific way in which genetic influences manifest themselves is not known. Genes could have such effects through anatomical, hormonal, psychological, neurological or behavioral factors, or various combinations of these. How genetic factors interact with environmental factors such as education, family upbringing, and cultural norms is also poorly understood. Researchers will, no doubt, attempt to answer such questions in the coming months and years.

Perhaps most interesting are questions concerning the role of the female orgasm in the evolution of our species. Biologists propose that characteristics that are based in our genes may have conferred a biological advantage to our ancestors, assisting them in some way with the problems of survival and reproduction. How might the female orgasm have contributed to the success of our species, and why would natural selection pressures preserve such variability in women’s ability to achieve orgasm? For now, we can only speculate, while we wait for research to provide answers to these intriguing questions.

Beautiful people

Last week the Kingdom played host to the Miss Universe Pageant, in which eighty-nine stunning female contestants vied for cash, prizes, and the coveted title of Miss Universe. Despite longstanding objections and criticisms by some feminists and conservative traditionalists, beauty contests like the Miss Universe Pageant continue to attract widespread public attention and support in our societies.

In celebrating physical beauty through our beauty contests, we persist in idealizing the beauty of glamorous, smiling, shapely women dressed in revealing swimsuits, and lavish evening gowns. In apparent contrast, popular maxims, such as “beauty is only skin deep,” and “you can’t judge a book by its cover” seem to promote the creed that beauty is not, or should not be a significant factor in social interactions.

A considerable body of psychological research suggests that the attraction we experience toward beautiful people is universal, and possibly innate to humans. A remarkable degree of consensus exists both within, and across cultures, as to what qualifies as human beauty. Further, our human preference for beautiful people appears well established, even before we are influenced by socialization from parents, peers, and the media. Infants as young as three months of age already demonstrate a preference for attractive faces over unattractive ones.

Research also reveals the existence of a bias, or stereotype that operates regarding those we consider beautiful. We generally expect attractive people to possess desirable personal qualities, such as intelligence, success, and happiness. Conversely, we assume that unattractive people possess undesirable traits, such as deviousness and untrustworthiness.

One of the most fascinating research studies on beauty suggests that our interactions with a beautiful person can have the effect of a self-fulfilling prophecy, influencing that person to behave more appealingly. Social psychologists Mark Snyder, Elizabeth Decker Tanke, and Ellen Berscheid produced surprising evidence of such a phenomenon in a clever 1977 experiment.

Male subjects in the experiment were told that they were taking part in an investigation of "how people become acquainted with each other." Each was shown a photograph and given biographical data on a female partner. They were then provided an opportunity to become acquainted with the partner through telephone conversations. Half of the males received a picture of a very attractive woman, while the other half received a picture of a relatively unattractive woman. The woman on the phone, however, was the same for both groups.

When the conversations were concluded, the men were asked to rate the woman with whom they had spoken on a number of personality characteristics, such as poise, sense of humor, and social adeptness. Psychology students who had not seen the pictures, but were allowed to hear only the woman’s side of the conversation were, likewise, asked to provide ratings of the woman.

As expected, the men who thought they were speaking to an attractive woman rated her higher on poise, humor, and social adeptness, than men who thought they were speaking to a relatively unattractive woman. Surprisingly, however, the unbiased student raters who had not seen the photos, but had heard only the woman’s side of the conversation, provided ratings that were consistent with those of the men who had seen the photos. Thus, when the woman had a conversation with men who believed her to be beautiful, she was rated as more animated, more confident, more attractive, and warmer than when she spoke to a man who believed her to be less beautiful.

This investigation provides evidence of a positive stereotype for beautiful people, which includes positive personality, intelligence and behavioral qualities, and a negative stereotype for plain or unattractive people. It further suggests that our stereotypes can influence us to behave toward that person in such a way as to elicit those positive or negative behavioral traits we assume the person to possess. Thus, the stereotype that beautiful people possess favorable traits, while less than beautiful people possess unfavorable traits, appears to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When logic and experience collide: An evolving view of science

Philosophers have long entertained themselves by arguing about various obscure issues. Although many of the arguments of philosophers may strike us as endlessly tedious and impractical, some of them can be quite entertaining. One of the most interesting arguments in contemporary philosophy, in my view, is a debate concerning the nature of science.

The nature of science is an important issue to the members of my profession, mainly because modern psychology considers itself by nature a scientific discipline. Although the subject matter of psychology; the mind, human thought, emotions, and behavior; can be traced back to the philosophers of antiquity, modern psychology considers 1879 to be its birth year. That is the year German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt opened the first experimental laboratory devoted to investigating psychological questions, thus officially embracing methods used so productively by the more established sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology.

The success of science is undeniable. The 20th century ushered in dramatic technological developments that have transformed the lives of us all. Modern research has generated advances in medicine, a dramatic revolution in information and communication, space exploration, and revolutionary new ways of producing food for a dramatically increasing population of human beings. We generally attribute such technological advances to progress made in understanding the world brought about by science.

While we, living in the 21st century, might take the status and authority of science for granted, the unqualified trust we place in science is of relatively recent origin in the history of human thought. There was a time in the not so distant past, when science competed for authority alongside other claims to knowledge, originating from such sources as magic, alchemy, religious cults and sorcery. It was only after the successes of the Newtonian revolution that the credibility of scientific claims became firmly and universally established.

But what is it about science that distinguishes it from superstition, religion, and pseudoscience? What makes science special? How can we distinguish activities that are scientific from those that are not? Philosophers refer to this as the issue of science’s demarcation. Is explores what it is that demarcates or distinguishes science from other knowledge claims.

Most people, if they thought about this question, would probably identify science’s method as its distinguishing feature. It turns out, however, that those who have examined the methods that scientists have historically employed have been unable to agree upon a universal method used by scientists.

Granted, if you open a textbook on science, you will probably find a section which describes a so-called “scientific method.” A simplified version of that method might go as follows: define a problem to be investigated, form a hypothesis, or an statement that can be tested, collect data, or make observations bearing upon the hypothesis, and draw conclusions. Many of us were introduced to this method when we were schoolchildren.

What is puzzling, however, is that there have been some major advances that have occurred in science that have in no way been associated with this textbook method. In fact, there are some very interesting accounts of exemplary scientists of the caliber of Galileo and Newton behaving seemingly unscientifically, arguing against the evidence of our senses, or using clever manipulative techniques in order to win the support of the scientific community to their dubious theories. Scientific advances that occur under such circumstances are difficult to defend by appeal to a special scientific method.

For example, it is generally assumed that scientists take observable facts seriously and build theories consistent with them. But history reveals otherwise.

One of the earliest debates in the history of science concerned the question of whether the earth on which we live is stationary, or in motion around its axis and around the sun. While it may be difficult for us to imagine today, there were plausible arguments against a moving earth that were based upon appeals to the evidence of our senses. After all, it is impossible for us to have knowledge of the motion of our planet using earthbound sensory experience alone.

In an intriguing passage from his historic book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo praises Copernicus and the astronomer mathematician Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 B.C.) the historical proponents of a moving earth cosmology, for their ability “to make reason so conquer sense that, in defiance of the latter, the former became mistress of their belief.”

The interesting point is that Galileo presents us with a seemingly paradoxical view of scientists needing to overcome the evidence of their senses by reason, in order to arrive at a more accurate understanding of our world. Episodes like this create problems for philosophers who wish to understand the distinguishing characteristics of science. Questions concerning the nature of science constitute an ongoing debate that is unlikely to be settled anytime soon.