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心理學 – 開欄文
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如我在拙作《大腦神經學：一般研究》中所說，我對大腦神經學的興趣來自倫理學--認識論--認知科學這個讀書過程。我的另一個讀書過程則是倫理學--社會學--心理學--文化研究(包括考古人類學)—基因學(包括生物學、演化論)。這些都可從本部落格二十年來轉載的相關評論和研究報導看出。
現在的確是把所有蒐集到的資訊和知識做個整理和整合的時候。它們應該是我玩到掛之前的最後一個計劃。不過，心理學和社會學一樣，有許多次領域和學派。我既不是科班出身，也談不上半路出家；自然沒有什麼師門、學派、傳承之類。各欄也只能是個炒雜燴的形式。如果我還有個三、五年時間又不退化成癡呆，或許能把自己在各領域的讀書心得寫下來。
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「以其人之道」還治操弄者的招數 -- Ross Akram
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下面這篇文章討論「招數」，本來可以放在《人際關係篇》這一欄。它涉及「言談行為」；所以，放在《語言和語言學》這一欄亦無不可(請參見該欄2025/10/27貼文)。不過，我認為它的精髓在指出：操弄者「其人之『道』」背後的指導原則，也就是說，「心理戰的理論根據」；因此，我最後選擇把它放在此欄。
中文標題為意譯。
5 Machiavellian Psychological Tactics to Outsmart Manipulators.
They manipulate. You Outsmart.
Ross Akram, 08/07/25
One who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him. — Niccolo Machiavelli.
In other words, if you want to survive, you must understand the game. And if you want to dominate, you must learn to play it better than anyone else.
This article isn’t a lecture. It’s a manual for psychological warfare, a battle plan forged in cold logic, sharp instincts, and ruthless clarity.
You’re about to learn how to spot manipulators in seconds, how to flip their power plays back on them, and how to walk through chaos with unreadable calm.
#5 The Mirror Defense.
Here’s what manipulators hate more than anything: Their own reflection.
They don’t want to be seen; they want to see you.
They rely on the illusion that they’re smarter, more composed, and always in control. The second you reflect their behavior back to them, the game shatters.
The mirror defense is simple. Stop reacting emotionally and start reflecting on behavior strategically.
* If they speak in riddles, respond with silence.
* If they push for answers, ask them the same question they just asked you.
* If they fake kindness to bait you in, match it. Coldly, calmly, but never deepen the emotional exchange.
You’re not giving them anything new to work with. You’re making them face themselves.
Why does this work? Because manipulation depends on asymmetry. They need to act, and they need you to respond.
When you mirror instead of engage, the manipulator becomes unsure.
* They lose their advantage.
* They’re no longer leading the dance.
* They’re watching their moves get thrown right back at them.
In real life, this looks like a calm stare when someone tries to provoke you.
You’re not fighting them. You’re showing them their own mask, and most people can’t stand looking at it for long.
Remember, the more they try to bend you, the more you become their mirror.
#4 The Emotion Vacuum.
The manipulator’s greatest weapon is not their words; it’s your reaction.
They test you with subtle digs, passive-aggressive smiles, or fake praise laced with hidden insults.
And the moment you flinch, defend, or over-explain, they win because now you’re inside the emotional cage they built for you. You’re playing by their rules.
But here’s the kill shot.
Remove emotion from the equation entirely. Become a vacuum. Cold, silent, and unreadable.
When you stop reacting, they lose control. The manipulator doesn’t know what move to make when the board goes still.
Your silence becomes a mirror they can’t stand. Your neutrality becomes a fog they can’t navigate.
This isn’t about being numb. It’s about being in command.
Motion is not your enemy. Public emotion is.
In private, you feel everything, but in front of a manipulator, you feel nothing because emotion is data, and you don’t give data to the enemy.
#3 Strategic Delay.
Manipulators thrive on urgency. They pressure you to answer fast, decide quickly, and react immediately.
Why? Because speed kills thinking. And when you’re moving fast, you don’t see the trap until you’re already in it.
This is where you break their rhythm with one of the most underrated power plays: Delay.
The art of not responding when they are expected. The strategy of slowing down time so they sit in their own uncertainty.
Silence isn’t passive. It’s surgical.
Strategic delay gives you space to observe their intent, their patterns, and their desperation. And that desperation will always expose them.
Use this tactic in person. When someone confronts you, don’t respond immediately. Pause, breathe. Let silence speak first. That moment of hesitation becomes unsettling.
They’ll start to fill in the silence with their own fears, their own doubts. You’re no longer on the defense; they are.
You don’t owe anyone instant access to your mind.
Delayed response is not a weakness. It’s proof that you’re thinking, calculating, and choosing when and if to respond on your terms.
This is how Kings operate. This is how power speaks without raising its voice.
#2 Reward Reversal.
Manipulators bait you with two tools: Praise and Guilt.
If they can’t seduce you with compliments, they’ll guilt you with obligation.
Both are psychological levers. One pulls your ego, the other, your conscience. And if you respond to either, you’re already under control.
But here’s the twist. Instead of resisting the reward, you flip it.
You reverse the dynamic. You stop chasing validation and make them chase yours.
This is called reward reversal, one of the coldest tactics in psychological warfare.
Instead of rewarding their behavior with approval, attention, or agreement, you selectively withdraw.
You remove the reward that manipulators seek most: the emotional response. And in doing so, you change the entire power structure of the interaction.
Let’s break this down. When someone flatters you excessively, you’re so good at this. No one does it like you; they’re trying to hook you with ego-stroking bait.
Most people take it. They smile, say thank you, and feel compelled to return the favor.
But when you respond with indifference, a simple nod, or better yet, a subject change, you signal one thing: I don’t need your praise. I already know my value.
#1 Ambiguity Armor.
Clarity makes you predictable. Ambiguity makes you dangerous.
Manipulators study people like maps. They watch your patterns. They listen for contradictions.
They bait you with questions that seem innocent:
* So what are you thinking?
* Why didn’t you respond right away?
* What’s your plan next?
But here’s the truth they don’t want you to know, the moment you give them clarity, you give them coordinates. And once they have coordinates, they start plotting how to use you.
That’s why the most powerful weapon in psychological defense isn’t aggression; it’s ambiguity, controlled vagueness, intentional silence, and the refusal to explain.
When they can’t figure out where you stand, they can’t form a plan to push you off balance.
Final Thoughts.
From this point forward, you don’t react, you calculate, you don’t justify, you observe, you don’t prove anything, because power never begs.
If you keep playing the good guy in a world of predators, you’ll keep getting eaten alive.
This world isn’t filled with fair fights. It’s filled with psychological warfare, hidden behind smiles, sentiments, and fake concern.
Manipulators don’t look for strength. They look for softness, open wounds, and signs of approval seeking. And the moment they sense hesitation in your voice or guilt in your eyes, they strike.
They’re watching you, not because they admire you, but because they’re calculating you.
Written by Ross Akram
MS in Phytochemistry. 3S of my life: Science, Sports, and Spirituality.
Published in Metacognition
Metacognition is an unbiased analysis of one’s own thoughts.
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尼切談「人性」 1 -- Ross Akram
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尼切深刻影響了我對道德的看法以及我在倫理學上的立場；自然樂於推薦這篇他談論人性的文章。
13 Psychological Truths From Nietzsche To Read Anyone’s Mind Instantly.
#13 Look at how people handle being told “NO”.
Ross Akram, 08/05/25
Picture this. You walk into any room and within seconds, you can read anyone:
* Who’s insecure
* Who’s lying
* Who’s pretending to be confident but secretly drowning
* Who’s strong
* Who’s fake
* Who’s weak
Not because you’re psychic, not because you studied body language for years, but because you understand brutal psychological truths about human nature.
Truths that Nietzsche understood.
Truths that society hopes you never figure out. Because the moment you do, you stop being the prey and you start being the one who sees through everything: Every fake smile, every power play, every hidden agenda.
The world becomes transparent. People become predictable, and you become dangerous.
Because when you can read someone, you can control the interaction. When you can control the interaction, you can control the outcome.
And that’s how the quietest man in the room becomes the most powerful.
#1 Insecurity is loud, confidence is silent.
The ones constantly proving themselves, constantly flexing, bragging, name-dropping, talking about what they’ve done, are almost always the weakest in the room.
Because real power doesn’t explain itself, it doesn’t need validation.
When someone’s truly confident:
* They speak less
* They observe more
* They don’t rush to fill the silence because they know silence itself is power.
#2 People reveal themselves when they think you’re not judging them.
When you listen quietly without reacting, without challenging, without interrupting, people will start exposing their insecurities, their fears, their hidden motives.
They’ll tell you who they are:
* Not with words, but with patterns
* With the way they defend themselves unprovoked
* The way they brag without being asked
* The way they downplay others to feel taller.
All you have to do is shut up and watch.
#3 People are not as complicated as they pretend to be.
Most of what drives them is simple, predictable, and brutally selfish.
Behind every action, every smile, every compliment, every favor, there’s a hidden motive.
* It might be validation.
* It might be control.
* It might be manipulation.
* Or it might just be survival.
And the mistake weak people make? They listen to words. They believe in appearances. They trust in what people say about themselves.
But the powerful? They watch, they observe, not what someone says, but what they choose, what they tolerate, what they avoid, what they fear.
Because a person’s mouth can lie all day, but their patterns? Their patterns never lie.
1. If someone constantly gossips, they’re insecure.
2. If someone brags nonstop, they’re hiding their weakness.
3. If someone avoids conflict at all costs, they’re controlled by fear.
4. And if someone’s always the loudest in the room, it’s because they’re terrified you might hear the silence inside them.
#4 Watch how people treat those they don’t need.
It’s easy to be polite to someone powerful. It’s easy to be kind when there’s something to gain.
The real character shows in how they treat the waiter, the janitor, and the stranger who can’t offer them anything.
If they disrespect the powerless, trust me, it’s only a matter of time before they disrespect you.
#5 People mirror what they secretly want to be.
* The man who constantly mocks discipline wishes he had it.
* The one who laughs at ambition has already given up on his own.
* The one who tries to shame your confidence drowns in his own insecurity.
What someone hates most in others is almost always what they hate most in themselves.
Jealousy is always a window into what they secretly wish they had.
#6 When people try too hard to look strong, it’s because they feel weak.
The loudest man in the room, that’s not power, that’s a scream for help disguised as dominance.
The person who talks the most usually knows the least. Because real intelligence isn’t about proving how smart you are.
It’s about gathering data. It’s about asking. It’s about listening.
The person who fills the air with words is often terrified of what might come up in the silence. Terrified you might notice how little they actually know.
Real strength moves quietly; it doesn’t announce itself, it doesn’t beg to be seen, it lets others feel it without ever having to say a word.
#7 When someone tries to humble-brag.
* Oh, I don’t really care about money.
* Oh, I just got lucky.
* I’m not like those other people who care about status.
That’s not humility. That’s insecurity wearing a mask.
Real confidence never needs to hide behind false modesty.
#8 The fastest way to read someone’s real values is to watch where they break their own rules.
Everyone says they care about loyalty until they betray a friend for attention.
Everyone says they care about honesty until a little lie protects their image.
Don’t listen to the rules they say out loud. Watch the rules they break in silence.
#9 The person who constantly seeks validation is the person who never learned how to give it to themselves.
Every exaggerated story is a scream that says, Tell me I’m enough.
And the person who doesn’t get that validation, they crumble.
When someone tries to control how others see them — endlessly curating, correcting, managing their image — it’s not power, it’s fear.
Real power doesn’t explain itself. It lets the noisy stay noisy, and it moves in silence.
#10 Look at how someone treats time.
The one who’s always late doesn’t respect themselves or you.
The one who wastes hours on distractions is running from their own reflection.
#11 No Self ownership.
The one who never takes accountability is the most fragile person in the room because ownership is strength.
The man who can’t do that can’t handle himself.
#12 People who gossip to you will gossip about you.
It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when, because gossip is never about connection; it’s always about control.
A cheap way for weak people to feel powerful by shrinking the world around them.
#13 Look at how people handle being told “NO”.
The one who collapses, the one who gets aggressive, the one who manipulates, guilt-trips you, plays the victim.
But there’s also someone who respects a boundary without flinching, without punishing you for it. That person. That’s someone who’s dealt with their own demons, someone who isn’t ruled by scarcity, someone rare.
Because how someone handles disappointment tells you everything about how they handle power.
Written by Ross Akram
MS in Phytochemistry. 3S of my life: Science, Sports, and Spirituality.
Published in Write A Catalyst
Write A Catalyst and Build it into Existence.
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男人為何常發怒 -- A. Weiss
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Why Men Get So Angry
Men's anger is often fueled by fear.
Avrum Weiss, Reviewed by Margaret Foley, 06/28/25
Key points
* Men may channel emotions into anger, which may seem like a more masculine and socially acceptable emotion.
* Their anger often masks underlying emotions, such as fear.
* Recognizing the fears beneath anger can lead to more open, intimate communication.
While many men struggle to recognize and express their emotions, anger is often the emotion with which many men feel most comfortable. Ask a man how he feels, and you may get a puzzled expression, unless he is angry, in which case he will often be quite clear and forthcoming about what he’s feeling. Men are socialized to channel much of their emotional life into anger because being angry avoids feeling vulnerable.
Of course, men do have emotions other than anger. Men feel sad, glad, and scared, but anger is often the only socially acceptable emotion. There are numerous social prohibitions against men expressing emotions other than anger, and considerable social reinforcement for being angry. We think of men who are angry as powerful and more masculine, and men who express sadness or fear as weak and less masculine.
In contrast, women are socialized to direct their anger inward and to believe that open expressions of anger are not feminine. Men are socialized to express their anger overtly and to use their anger to control their partners and their own emotional experience. Being angry not only helps men to feel more in control of their own emotional experience, but many men also use anger in an attempt to control their partner’s expression of feeling as well.
Men get emotionally activated when their wives or partners are more emotional, so they often use anger to control their partners' expressions of emotions as well as their own. As a result, anger becomes the go-to emotion for many men, the default feeling they are most familiar with and comfortable with. Other feelings are either suppressed or hidden beneath their anger.
Although anger has gotten a bad name in our culture, anger itself is not a problem. In its simplest form, anger is just a way of letting someone know that you are not happy with the way things are going between you and that you want to find a way to make things better. Anger becomes a problem in relationships when it is either not expressed or acted out rather than discussed and resolved.
In many instances, men may resort to the familiar experience of anger to conceal from themselves and others what they are truly feeling. What men most often feel underneath their anger is fear. Men get angry to cover their fear.
See if you recognize yourself in any of these everyday situations:
* Your anger that your wife or partner spends so much time texting and talking on the phone with friends might mask your fears that she might not enjoy talking with you as much as she does with her friends.
* Your anger at your wife for coming home late from work and bringing work home with her might mask envy and fear about being less successful than her.
* Your anger at being criticized by your partner, to the point where you can’t seem to get it right, might mask your fear of not being able to please her.
* Your anger that the kids always come first with your partner, and she never seems to have any time for you, may mask your fear that you don’t know how to have the kind of close relationship that she has with the kids.
Once you begin to recognize some of the deeper fears underlying your anger, you may consider the truly intimate act of discussing your fears with your wife or partner. This act of loving vulnerability may be very frightening to consider, but the rewards often far outweigh the risks.
Excerpted, in part, from Hidden in Plain Sight: How Men's Fears of Women Shape Their Intimate Relationships. Lasting Impact Press.
Avrum Weiss, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist and speaker who writes about the internal lives of men and their intimate relationships.
Online: Avrum Weiss, Ph.D., Facebook, X, LinkedIn
THE BASICS：
* How Can I Manage My Anger?
* Take our Anger Management Test
* Find a therapist to heal from anger
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容格5個幫助你自知的睿智 -- Singh Bhai
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Jung, Carl：容格
我不是心理學科班出身，自然沒有身份對容格這樣的大學者說三道四。乍看之下，作者所介紹的5個榮格「睿智」的確有些道理。但是，下文所介紹的容格理論完全建立在「潛意識」的概念/理論上。根據我對社會建構論和大腦神經學的一知半解，容格和弗洛依德的「潛意識」缺乏一個堅實的科學依據，如果「潛意識」的確有「非容格/非弗洛依德」學說的解釋，則容格的觀點就難以成立。
我希望能擠出一點時間和聚集幾根腦筋來談談這個有趣的議題。
5 Carl Jung Concepts That Beat Pop Psychology By 100 Years
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order — Carl Jung
Singh Bhai, 05/25/25
Most people don’t really want to know themselves.
What they want is to feel good about their bad habits, see their past in a quote that makes them feel seen, and call that “healing.”
That’s why Modern Self Improvement is so popular. It tells you what you want to hear.
Carl Jung said things that still make people angry, like maybe your biggest problem is actually you.
Let’s look at five things Jung said that, aren’t trendy, but actually matter.
1. If You Don’t Bring the Unconscious to Consciousness, It Will Dominate Your Life and You Will Call It Fate
This is the Jung version of, “Your patterns are showing.”
You keep selecting the same profession, same person, same soap opera, but with different clothing and terrible cologne. That maybe not just destiny, That is your unfinished issues with a sock puppet.
Our unconscious are not dreams and weird yearnings. It is everything you have suppressed, tuned out, or have considered not “you.”
And it doesn’t remain silent. It guides your decisions with all of the elegance of a toddler driving.
* Maybe, you’re just unaware.
* What you suppress, you repeat.
* Your unconscious already influences your life.
* Recognize the pattern.
To know the unconscious is to finally read the play you’ve been acting out for 20 years and understand you didn’t write it, your wounds did.
2. The Inflated Ego Is Perpetually on the Brink of Collapse, It Is Not Strength, but a Fragile Shell
A healthy ego can have a sense of humor about itself. An inflated one can’t joke, or be corrected.
* Fragile egos need applause.
* Real strength tolerates doubt.
* Big ego = deep insecurity.
The larger the ego, the greater the fall. Because it is founded upon achievement, not reality.
If your whole sense of self cracks under gentle pressure, it might be time to stop inflating and start grounding.
The ego is not bad. You need one to function. And to push yourself and raise that bar, It’s just don’t fill it up with helium and expect it to hold you up, it will blow up someday.
3. The Persona Is a Mask. To Equate It With the Self Is to Be Lost in One’s Own Acting
Every time a person says “I’m such an empath” on the third date, I have an urge to scream this quote.
The persona is what you present the world. It’s polished, convenient, and often lies through its teeth.
What this means? You built your personality to get by, not to thrive (Maybe blame school and collage for this? idk). It was used to placate others, avoid conflict, conform and be “normal,” or whatever the game was.
* The persona is survival, not self.
* Masks can become cages.
As time goes by, you begin to think that the mask you wear is the real you. That’s why the appearance of confidence can be hollow.
Am I the only one who feels that kind, gentle people suffer from this more?Maybe pretending a little in different situations isn’t always a bad thing.
4. Active Imagination Makes the Unconscious Speak, True Vision Begins Where Fantasy Ends
Jung did not enjoy passive daydreaming. He believed that if you really listen to your imagination, it can show you what’s going on inside you.
He wanted people to pay attention to the voices, images, and feelings that pop up, not ignore them or suppress them due to your responsibilities and stress.
Because they’re not just random.
The distinction between imagination and insight is finer than you realize. One whirs you around in circles. The other goes directly into the areas of yourself that you’ve been sidestepping.
5. Individuation Is Not Improving Yourself, It Is the Birth of the Whole Self in Suffering
Self improvement asks:
“How can I fix what’s wrong with me?”
Individuation asks:
“Can I live with the parts of me I’ve spent my whole life trying to hide?”
I want you to Try this instead of another to do list:
* What part of you are you trying to change right now?
Write it down without judgment. Is it your anger? Neediness? Anxiety?
* Now ask: Why do I want this part of me to disappear?
What fear is underneath that?
* Imagine that part of you could talk.
What would it say? What does it need? What is it trying to protect?
* Who taught you that this part of you was unacceptable?
Was it a parent? A teacher? Culture? Yourself?
You might ask why? So why does that matter? Because the more you reject parts of yourself, the more those parts run your life from behind the scenes. You don’t heal by deleting traits. You heal by understanding them. And doing it over and over again until it becomes second thought.
Final Thoughts
If you’re reading Jung, chances are, you’re not here for ten ways to be our best selves by 9 AM and make $100k per month.
Maybe, You’re here because you know that there is something more, even if you don’t yet quite have the words for it.
Maybe that’s the point.
Wait a Sec
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Thanks for stopping by.
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史丹佛監獄實驗 -- Augustine Brannigan
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我過去在書籍和論文中，偶而會看到史丹佛監獄實驗被引用或討論，次數還不算少。只是因為當時專注手頭的閱讀，從來沒有去進一步了解這個實驗的具體內容。前一陣子可能因為辛巴斗教授過世，再次看到評論它的文章，所以決定讀讀這篇分析並存檔。
Should Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment be retracted?
Augustine Brannigan, Retraction Watch, 03/10/25
A prisoner and guard in the Stanford Prison Experiment. | PrisonExp.org 請至原網頁觀看照片
Philip G. Zimbardo passed away in October 2024 at age 91. He enjoyed an illustrious career at Stanford University, where he taught for 50 years. He accrued a long list of accolades, but his singular and enduring contribution to scholarship was the Stanford Prison Experiment, a simulation carried out in the university’s psychology department in August 1971. The research project became the best-known psychological analysis of institutionalization at the time.
The study has always been treated with skepticism by penologists and psychologists, and recent scholarship by social scientist Thibault Le Texier has raised fundamental questions about the scientific validity of the investigation, the originality of the research design, the unethical treatment of the subjects, and the credibility of the reported results.
Many consider Zimbardo’s SPE to be one of the classic studies of experimental psychology in the post-war period. It continues to be reported as a landmark achievement in many psychological textbooks today, despite drawing decades of criticism both in and out of the scientific literature. But considering Le Texier’s findings, should Zimbardo’s work be retracted?
For the prison simulation, Zimbardo recruited 24 college-aged men and randomly assigned half to the role of guards and half to the role of inmates. “Inmates” were housed in mock “cells” in the basement of the psychology department, and “guards” worked three at a time over three eight-hour shifts. Everyone was paid $15 per day. A camera was installed surreptitiously in the main hallway of the “prison” to film the interactions.
Advertisement for the experiment | PrisonExp.org 請至原網頁觀看照片
The inmates were picked up at their homes by a member of the Palo Alto Police, “charged” with a serious felony and driven blindfolded to the mock prison, where they traded their clothing for a prison gown that included an identification number on the chest and back. The inmates wore nylon stockings on their heads to symbolize being shaved. Zimbardo played the role of prison director, a senior undergraduate student played the role of warden, and two doctoral students were cast as psychological counselors.
Participants began to exhibit pathological behaviors almost immediately. According to the videotapes, the guards showed signs of dominance and brutality, and the inmates exhibited signs of depression and defiance.
This interpretation was based on the proposition that the primary determinants of social behavior are situational: Personal autonomy was assumed to be overshadowed by situational roles. What started as mocking antagonism — play-acting — degenerated into degradation and abuse on the one side, and depression and rebellion on the other. According to the conventional interpretation, an experimental simulation increasingly came to approximate the real thing.
請至原網頁觀看照片
In 2014 Le Texier started researching the SPE, initially planning to make a documentary film for French media. He delved into the archives of the experiment, including the documents, videos, and interviews Zimbardo had cataloged and archived in the Stanford Library. Le Texier later interviewed about half of the original participants by phone to reconstruct what happened.
He realized how flawed the conventional interpretation was, and ended up writing a book on it, originally published in French in 2018 and translated into English in 2024. “My enthusiasm gave way to skepticism, then my skepticism to indignation, as I discovered the underside of the experiment and the evidence of its manipulation,” Le Texier wrote in the introduction of Investigating the Stanford Prison Experiment: History of a Lie.
Four main themes come to light in Le Texier’s book that undermine the credibility of the SPE.
1. The scientific credentials of the study
As Le Texier points out, Zimbardo had no expertise in criminology. His doctoral training was behavioristic and his subjects were lab rats. His interests at Stanford changed to questions of deindividuation of people in mass society. Consequently, the SPE began as a kind of observational study, not of a real prison but a drama enacted by subjects pretending to be guards and inmates.
On the Saturday before the experiment started, the guards were briefed about how they were expected to behave. The message: essentially to make the lives of the inmates miserable. Zimbardo equipped them with riot batons borrowed from the Palo Alto police department, without training the recruits to use the weapons.
In the following days, several guards were reprimanded by the experimenter’s assistant for not displaying sufficient dominance to make the situation realistic. The apparent spontaneity of the pathological behavior captured on film was due in part to coaching. On Monday, their first full day together, the inmates planned a prison break to defy authority. This action suggests the subjects also drew from their own background knowledge of prison experience portrayed in popular media.
Le Texier argues the SPE was not a scientific experiment at all, but a demonstration created to depict the evils of incarceration based on the supposition that institutions can make normal people act in pathological ways. Although Zimbardo’s results were not reported in peer-reviewed journals until 1973, he communicated his “findings” by press release at the end of Monday, the first full day of the experiment. The experiment started to attract press coverage by the following Thursday.
Prison breaks following the SPE | PrisonExp.org 請至原網頁觀看照片
A bloody attempted prison break at San Quentin State Prison the day after the experiment ended was followed within weeks by a major prison riot at Attica Correctional Facility. In the shadow of these events, Zimbardo’s findings skyrocketed to national prominence as the SPE was invoked as context to this violence. Within a month, Zimbardo found himself speaking as an expert to a congressional subcommittee on criminal justice policies.
The SPE became a cause célèbre before it underwent peer review. Interest in the findings revived in 2004 following reports of inmate abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison. According to Le Texier, despite the publicity it attracted, the SPE was never a credible scientific experiment. The research lacked a defined theory and a priori hypotheses, did not use any validated sociometric instruments to measure behavioral differences, had no tests of significance, and did not include a control group.
2. The originality of the SPE design
The official history of the SPE is recorded in a large slideshow, which Le Texier employed as one of the main sources for his research. Zimbardo also produced a 19-minute video for circulation.
One of the items Le Texier discovered in the archive was a term paper by David Jaffe, a senior undergraduate in a seminar Zimbardo offered in the spring of 1971 – several months before the launch of the SPE. Jaffe and two classmates had created a prison simulation in their dormitory at Toyon Hall as a course assignment. They scripted a typical daily schedule for the inmates as well as a list of prison rules. The objective of the simulation was to mimic the effects of real prison by trying to create feelings in the “prisoners” of the loss of freedom, total dependency on the guards and feelings of worthlessness.
In his various reports Zimbardo insists the routines and rules in the SPE were improvised spontaneously by the guards. However, when Le Texier compared the rules and schedules in Jaffe’s term paper with those allegedly concocted by the SPE guards, he found them to be virtually identical. Jaffe was also employed in the SPE as the “head guard.” However, his role in designing Zimbardo’s experiment is rarely credited.
“Instead of acknowledging the foundational importance of the Toyon Hall experiment, Zimbardo completely obscured it for 40 years,” Le Texier wrote. “He does not mention it in the slideshow he used for 20 years to present the experiment, nor in the documentary Quiet Rage that succeeded it in 1992.”
3. Ethical Issues in the treatment of subjects
In the protocol submitted to the Stanford Human Subjects Research Review Committee, Zimbardo indicated subjects would only be released prematurely for “emergency reasons” and would be “discouraged from quitting.” However, the committee appears to have mandated that if anyone wanted to quit, “they would be released; no explanation needed.” In fact, the experimenters did not release inmates when several individuals expressed a desire to quit. They were told voluntary departure was not an option and they would have to apply to the parole board. Consequently, the loss of freedom was not simulated.
Prisoners await a parole hearing with bags over their heads | PrisonExp.org 請至原網頁觀看照片
The loss of privacy was not simulated either. The prison gown was worn without underwear, so when the guards forced inmates to play “leapfrog” their genitals were exposed. The inmates were denied access to showers and deprived of access to the toilets at night and had to use a bucket as a commode in their cells.
Questionable treatment raises ethical issues as well. Guards interrupted inmates’ sleep with blasting whistles, and called the inmates out of their rooms for meaningless head counts in the middle of the night. They handcuffed and blindfolded inmates to march them to the toilets. When a guard assaulted rebellious inmates by spraying them with a fire extinguisher, or struck them with a riot baton, neither act was simulated.
In the search for verisimilitude in a role-playing environment, Zimbardo exposed his subjects to a series of ethically dubious conditions and was reckless in his gamble that no one would get seriously offended, injured or sick.
4. The credibility of the results
The six days of interaction between the inmates, the guards and the experimenters created emotionally provocative moments even if the participants knew, at least initially, the “prison” was a pretense, everyone was more or less acting, and they were being paid as subjects in an experiment. As Le Texier reported: “His experiment had effects on all of its participants, inducing stress, tension, aggression, indifference, resignation, or even apathy.” By analogy, audiences sometimes weep at the theater even when they know the play is fiction. But to what extent were the significant changes observed by Zimbardo cases of deliberate play acting?
Zimbardo reported five inmates experienced “nervous breakdowns” over six days and were released. However, post hoc debriefings suggest at least one of these subjects said he faked emotional trauma by screaming, crying, threatening suicide and acting out physically to trigger a “medical emergency” — after being told he could not leave. According to Le Texier, what that suggests is that “Zimbardo strongly encouraged the prisoners who wanted to leave the experiment to simulate a nervous breakdown.”
On the guards’ side, one of the subjects who adopted a tough guard persona and was most aggressive toward the inmates adopted a fake Texas accent and admitted his facade was an act played for the camera. In fact, he was a drama major.
Should the SPE be retracted?
At some point, when the credibility of a classic study has received so much critique, official retraction, while desirable, becomes redundant. What Le Texier added to the record is not only the dubious value of Zimbardo’s findings but his virtually unacknowledged appropriation of the ideas of his students and his exploitation of mass media to promote his ideas in advance of peer review. If we were seriously talking about retracting the SPE, what exactly would be retracted?
The first refereed paper, “Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison,” appeared in the International Journal of Criminology and Penology in 1973. By that time, the popular press had papered the walls with the news of the study. Le Texier identified a dozen newspaper reports in the weeks following its termination including Life, The Daily Mail and The Washington Post.
The SPE provided context in news reports of the lethal breakout at San Quentin the day after the experiment ended and the bloodbath following the riot at Attica three weeks later. Another wave of newspaper stories in October and November covered Zimbardo’s congressional testimony. In 1972 Zimbardo submitted a short report to Society, a popular sociology magazine, called “Pathology of imprisonment.” And recounted the experiment in The New York Times Magazine in April 1973 in “The mind is a formidable jailer: a Pirandellian prison.”
By the time the study was reported in the International Journal of Criminology and Penology, it was common knowledge. The IJCP ended publication in 1978. It was superseded by the International Journal of the Sociology of Law (1979-2007) which was itself superseded by the International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice. Consequently, a retraction in the IJCP is not even possible. If Le Texier’s findings are credible, arguably the best outcome we can expect is more responsible reporting in contemporary textbooks.
Augustine Brannigan is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Calgary.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on X or Bluesky, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.
相關評論：
Criticism of the Stanford Prison Experiment
Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment
Philip G. Zimbardo on his career and the Stanford Prison Experiment's 40th anniversary.
Rethinking the nature of cruelty: The role of identity leadership in the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Stanford Prison Experiment | Summary, Ethics & Impact
The past and future of U.S. prison policy. Twenty-five years after the Stanford prison experiment.
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10個導致心理學家們齟齬的「不可說」話題-Ross Pomeroy
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Ten Taboo Topics Dividing Psychologists
Ross Pomeroy, 06/08/24
Psychology – and the social sciences more broadly – seem to be riven with discord of late. Stories abound of censorship, self-censorship, deplatforming, and suppression of uncomfortable findings.
Is academic freedom truly at risk? Is ideology supplanting the scientific method in the "soft" sciences? And exactly what topics are splitting the social sciences asunder? In a recently published study, a team of social scientists explored these pressing questions.
The group's work began in early 2021. The team interviewed 41 scholars with PhDs in psychology or related disciplines to identify taboo research conclusions dividing social scientists.
"Overwhelmingly, the most taboo conclusions involved genetic, evolutionary, biological, or otherwise natural explanations for group differences in socially important outcomes, particularly in domains in which women underperform relative to men or Black people underperform relative to White people," the interviewers found.
The most taboo conclusions were:
1. “The tendency to engage in sexually coercive behavior likely evolved because it conferred some evolutionary advantages on men who engaged in such behavior.”
2. “Gender biases are not the most important drivers of the under-representation of women in STEM fields.”
3. “Academia discriminates against Black people (e.g., in hiring, promotion, grants, invitations to participate in colloquia/symposia).”
4. “Biological sex is binary for the vast majority of people.”
5. “The social sciences (in the United States) discriminate against conservatives (e.g., in hiring, promotion, grants, invitations to participate in colloquia/symposia).”
6. “Racial biases are not the most important drivers of higher crime rates among Black Americans relative to White Americans.”
7. “Men and women have different psychological characteristics because of evolution.”
8. “Genetic differences explain non-trivial (10% or more) variance in race differences in intelligence test scores.”
9. “Transgender identity is sometimes the product of social influence.”
10. “Demographic diversity (race, gender) in the workplace often leads to worse performance.”
In late 2021, the researchers sent out this list of topics to 4,603 psychology faculty at some of the top academic institutions in the United States. Faculty were asked to review the conclusions and take an anonymous survey. Chiefly, they were asked to rate their confidence in the truth or falsity of each statement, from 0 to 100. They were also asked various other questions to gauge their opinions on freedom of speech in the social sciences. Roughly one in ten psychological professors responded to the survey.
Broadly speaking, there was scant consensus on any of the taboo topics, though academics tended to acknowledge that biological sex is binary (66.1% average confidence) and that men and women have evolved psychological sex differences (65.5%). They also generally disagreed with the notion that demographic diversity worsens performance in the workplace (21.4% confidence) and that genetics accounts for significant differences in IQ (29.1% confidence).
Despite the lack of consensus on the taboo topics, the psychologists surveyed generally agreed that scholars should be completely free to pursue research questions without fear of institutional punishment and that scientific truth should take precedence over social-equity goals.
A slim majority of professors (52.3%) reported that scholars should be completely free to pursue research questions without fear of institutional punishment for their conclusions. By contrast, 1.6% said scholars should not have this freedom, and 46.0% said it’s complicated.
A slim majority of professors (56.5%) reported that scientists should prioritize truth when truth and social-equity goals come into conflict. By contrast, 3.1% prioritized social equity over truth, and 40.5% said it’s complicated.
Refreshingly, there was scant support for taking actions against scholars who draw taboo conclusions. Just one in five of those surveyed supported disinviting them from talks and one in ten said that their work shouldn't be published.
The findings suggest that, despite wide disagreement amongst prominent psychologists on various controversial topics, belief in academic freedom remains fairly strong.
"A vocal minority and silent majority may have created a seemingly hostile climate against taboo conclusions and the scholars who forward them, even if the silent majority has great contempt for the vocal minority," the researchers wrote.
Source: Clark, C. J., Fjeldmark, M., Lu, L., Baumeister, R. F., Ceci, S., Frey, K., Miller, G., Reilly, W., Tice, D., von Hippel, W., Williams, W. M., Winegard, B. M., & Tetlock, P. E. (2024). Taboos and Self-Censorship Among U.S. Psychology Professors. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916241252085
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優質生活心理療護對部份嚴重的心理病患者有幫助 ---- Anand Kumar
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庫瑪醫師這篇文章在鼓吹將優質生活護理的概念和方式運用到心理病患者的治療，尤其是即將走到生命盡頭的患者。
他提到的一些概念例如：生活品質、治療的有限性、告訴病人病情實況與展望、以及將它們成為可接受的話題等等，都值得大家深思。
索引：
debilitating：使人身體虛弱的；削弱性的
evidence-based treatments：根據臨床療效的醫治方法
hospice：安寧護理 ：臨終前的照顧，意味不再使用傷害性治療方法
mainstreaming：使…主流化
Palliative care：優質生活護理：同時維持病人高生活品質的照護，但並未放棄各種治療方法
relapses：(病好轉後)復發，故態復萌
remission：(疾病的)緩解期，減輕期；減少，減刑;減少服刑時間；(宗教)寬恕，饒恕
Palliative psychiatry offers a new path for some people with serious mental illness
Anand Kumar, 02/27/24
The Canadian surgeon and urologist Balfour Mount is considered the father of palliative care in North America. He was inspired and mentored by Cicely Saunders, a British nurse and social worker. Before she became a physician, Saunders developed the first modern hospice, St Christopher’s in London in 1967. Mount adapted and transplanted approaches to the care of the terminally ill he had learned at St Christopher’s to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal.
Palliative care is based on Saunders’ concept of “total pain,” which says that while suffering may be based on the underlying disease, the pain associated with it can have psychosocial, existential, and spiritual dimensions. The main objective of palliative care is to maximize the patient’s comfort and quality of life by effectively controlling symptoms, especially pain, while providing psychological and spiritual support. Palliative care is gaining traction in the United States and is used in the care of patients with cancer, stroke, kidney failure, and other terminal medical conditions.
While it is increasingly accepted when it comes to physical illness, determining where it fits in clinical psychiatry is far more complicated. Now that Canada plans to implement a program of medical aid in dying for certain people with mental illness (though it has been delayed repeatedly), discussing palliative psychiatry is all the more critical.
Psychiatry deals primarily with behavioral states including depression, bipolar disorder, disorders of the psychosis/schizophrenia spectrum, eating disorders, and addiction. Unlike, say, oncology, the mental health field rests on an underlying assumption that substantial symptom remission, if not cure, is possible with most serious mental disorders — it is only a matter of finding the right combination of medications and the appropriate psychotherapist.
But that assumption is erroneous and does not apply to all patients with serious mental illness. Some will not find a cure or long-term remission. For them, the right thing to do is offer an honest discussion of their clinical situation and a therapeutic approach that helps them live with their condition and lead productive lives. Making that happen requires frank conversations, including using the term palliative psychiatry.
There are, of course, important differences between physical and mental disorders. Nevertheless, as a psychiatrist, I have to acknowledge that there are principles and concepts from palliative general medicine that are relevant and applicable in the sphere of mental disorders. Many mental disorders are chronic, long-standing, and characterized by remissions and relapses — periods when patients do well and function with few symptoms interspersed with periods when the disease appears to return to its original, full-blown form.
Neuropsychopharmacology — medication treatment for mental illness — has been transformational in the lives of millions of individuals afflicted with major mental disorders. Most patients receive substantial relief and symptom remission from evidence-based treatments. But others fail to respond to multiple trials with evidence-based interventions. These patients are characterized as having serious and persistent mental illness. Most notably, this includes treatment-resistant depression, cases of schizophrenia that do not respond to antipsychotic treatment including Clozaril (the medication that is frequently considered the “last hope” in the treatment of psychosis), post-traumatic stress disorder, and anorexia nervosa.
In these targeted situations, a palliative approach, similar to the one utilized in the case of medical disorders, can improve a person’s quality of life, reducing emotional pain and helping the patient adjust to life given the limitations imposed by mental illness. In the case of chronic/long-term psychosis, for example, programs that provide rehabilitation for the chronically mentally ill like Assertive Community Training (ACT) implement palliative care-based approaches while avoiding the term. This includes teaching patients to live with their symptoms and improve the quality of their lives while reducing the emphasis on symptom control with medications.
Palliative psychiatry involves an interdisciplinary team working collaboratively with patients to accept the incurable nature of their illness given currently available treatments; acknowledge its distressing symptoms; and offer a support system that will help patients and families cope with the consequences of the illness and live active, productive lives. More broadly, it requires taking mental illness outside the domain of intense and sometimes aggressive medical and psychological interventions into a more realistic, quality of life space.
“The futility of treatment” is a concept that licensed clinical social worker Amy Lopez and colleagues introduced into the psychiatric lexicon in the context of anorexia nervosa, a debilitating psychiatric disorder. The term is not easily embraced in the mental health world, where hope and optimism are often embedded into the clinical experience, sometimes because of therapeutic confidence, bordering on hubris, that complicates the clinical picture. Clinicians can be reluctant to acknowledge to patients and their families that there is nothing more they can offer in terms of evidence-based treatments. It is a threshold that most clinicians are reluctant to cross even when the clinical state demands a more realistic discussion of the overall picture. The optimism-realism divide is difficult to navigate in psychiatry.
Palliative psychiatry is more precisely defined by its major goals and objectives and not exclusively by treatment resistance. As a geriatric psychiatrist, I’m more familiar and comfortable with both the concept and its application than colleagues involved in the care of younger adults with mental disorders. The term frequently conjures up images of end-of-life situations that appear hopeless. That may be why, for instance, many programs embrace the concept without the term. But mainstreaming the term could be helpful both for practitioners and for patients. Making it acceptable to talk about a realistic life, one that does not involve hoping for a remission that may never occur, is both respectful of patients and achievable.
Despite the unease, palliative psychiatry is a realistic, compassionate approach for a small subgroup of patients who have not responded to multiple trials of evidence-based treatment. It does not preclude the concurrent use of new evidence-based treatments. It does, however, acknowledge the limits of evidence-based pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments and shifts the emphasis to a more broad-based approach to illness, treatment, and quality of life.
Canada is on the threshold of passing a law that would enable patients with mental illness to receive medication assistance in death – MAiD – presumably from a physician or qualified clinician. Palliative psychiatry offers a compassionate and appropriate approach for people who may feel hopeless. Validating them and helping them find a way to live is far better than offering medical assistance in death, as Canada plans to do.
Anand Kumar, M.D., MHA, is a professor and head of the department of psychiatry at the University of Illinois in Chicago; past president, American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry; and director of the University of Illinois Center on Depression and Resilience.
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輸球大腦神經心理學-Joshua Rapp Learn
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Why Do Some People Go Crazy When Their Teams Lose in Sports?
Why are we so connected to sports? Learn more about the psychology behind extreme sports fans and their reactions.
Joshua Rapp Learn, 02/14/24 3:00 AM
In the qualifying matches for the FIFA World Cup of 1970, Honduras won the first match in its capital Tegucigalpa, and El Salvador won the second in San Salvador. Violence broke out at both matches between the visiting and home fans, and thousands of Salvadorans left Honduras after their victory in the second match, avoiding persecution. At the time, there were historical tensions between Honduras and El Salvador that escalated within the matches.
This soccer war isn’t the only example of an extreme reaction from fans. Hooligans, ultras or barras bravas — terms used to describe football fan associations in Latin America — often commit violence, property damage and even murder in supposed support of their teams on the field.
Francisco Zamorano, a medical biologist at the University of San Sebastian in Conception, Chile and the Clinica Alemana, wanted to understand why some fans experienced these extreme reactions, and discovered it has a lot to do with the brain.
Why do Sports Fans Feel so Connected to the Teams?
Zamorano knows what it feels like to go crazy for a sports team. While growing up in an underprivileged community in Chile, he was a fan of Colo-Colo, a soccer team based in Greater Santiago that plays in the Chilean premier division. Colo-Colo’s arch rival is the Universidad de Chile club — also based in Santiago.
“When Colo-Colo lost against Universidad de Chile, I’d feel a sadness for several days,” Zamorano says — something he wouldn’t experience when they lost to other teams. Conversely, when Colo-Colo won, he’d experience a feeling of well-being.
“[Colo-Colo] is very important for my identity as a person,” Zamorano says, adding that super fans can experience a vicarious sense of winning and loss as if they were the players on the field. “Football can give you some kind of value that you don’t have.”
When Zamorano began his research, he used an MRI to learn more about how the brain of an extreme fan worked. He used the machine on himself and replayed old matches between Colo-Colo and Universidad de Chile out of curiosity.
Zamorano discovered that certain parts of his brain were activated only when Colo-Colo scored for or were scored against Universidad de Chile. Conversely, when other teams scored against his club, he didn’t feel the same sense of loss.
What Does the Brain Look Like for a Super Fan?
To expand the study, Zamorano added 62 participants to his research that is published in F1000Research. The MRI scans revealed that in super fans, some parts of the brain become more active while others become less active. When the teams of super fans scored goals on their arch rivals, the reward sections of fans’ brains were activated.
Conversely, when scored against, the mentalizing network — regions of the brain that help us think of ourselves and others — was sometimes activated in super fans. When this section of the brain is more involved, it usually means that fans will get more introspective — perhaps to cope with the sadness or negative feelings they experience.
But when arch rivals scored against their team, super fans also experienced a deactivation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). This is an area that connects your feelings and emotions with the rest of your brain. This is important because the dACC regulates our ability to not act on our emotions — it disconnects feelings with rationalizing areas in the brain.
Perhaps this is what happens with hooligans, who have “a notorious lack of self-control” when they become violent, Zamorano says. Their dACC may be deactivated, which means they are more prone to this kind of behavior.
What Is Our Connection to Sports?
For Zamorano, the issue is compounded in sports because they can become so wrapped up in people’s identities. Sports teams can often serve as a symbol of nationalism, or civic pride.
The combination of lacking the right mental tools to deal with loss and being around others experiencing the same thing can lead to larger problems with extreme violence in sports fans after and during games.
“It produces these echo chambers that are very gratifying,” Zamorano says.
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什麼是真正的魅力 ----- Alex Hughes
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索引：
colloquialised：口語化
mirroring：「鏡像行為」，心理學術語；仿效對方的言談行為和/或肢體動作；讓對方感到自己在照鏡子一樣。這類行為有時是有意識的，其目的在讓對方認為你跟她/他感同身受，或心有戚戚焉。有些是自然而然的，下意識的。
off-putting：討人厭的，惹起反感的
Why everything you know about charisma is wrong
Want to become a more charismatic person? That could be harder than you might think
Alex Hughes, 01/27/24
Charisma is a trait we all desire to have. Being able to command a room, win over strangers in a matter of words, and generally be a seemingly charming person through and through – there is a reason charisma became 2023’s word of the year in its colloquialised form of ‘rizz’.
But unfortunately, it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. So how do you become more charismatic? There are seas of books, experts and online courses claiming to have all the answers but unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
The world of charisma is somewhat misunderstood, with plenty of myths that muddy the water. With this in mind, it is important to understand how charisma works, whether it can be learned and what to avoid.
Charisma is a genetic lottery
Like a chiselled chin, inherited wealth, and a metabolism that an all-you-can-eat buffet quivers at, great charisma is a genetic lottery that not everybody is lucky enough to win.
“There is a lot of research examining how our behaviour is genetic. And overwhelmingly the evidence suggests that pretty much every single behaviour is genetic,” says Dr Ryne Sherman, a renowned charisma and personality expert.
“There is no single charisma gene, but instead it is factors like how naturally charming we are, how good we are at winning people over and getting their attention, and even how much we want that attention. These are the more genetic traits that inform charisma.”
Research shows that genetics shapes around half to two-thirds of our personality and psychological traits. That’s a pretty daunting figure for those who are looking to turn on the charm and learn to be more charismatic.
“The other sizable chunk has to do with all kinds of environmental factors, mostly learning and practice. Most of our life revolves around socialisation and interacting with people,” says Sherman.
“Along the way, you get feedback of negative and positive behaviours, and you learn how to behave in a way that wins people over. Some are just better at that than others, but we all improve.”
For example, learning to deal with difficult conversations with compassion is a behaviour that will be greeted with a positive reaction. On the other hand, showing clear disinterest in other people and their conversations will likely be met with negative reactions, and, if you were particularly rude, maybe some advice to change.
Charisma is a hard skill to learn
A little bit of genetics and a little bit of life experience and learning. Is that all that goes into an individual’s overall charisma? Surely it's possible to learn to be more of a winning personality?
This is the goal of many YouTube courses, and even books from a variety of experts, claiming to be able to help you become more charismatic with a list of simple tips. But it isn’t quite as easy as that.
“There are these YouTube channels that analyse charismatic people, or list ways to become a more interesting person. I think there’s a big question about whether any of this works,” says Sherman.
“There isn’t much evidence that specific charisma training courses work, but I suspect through practice and enough feedback, people could slightly improve their charisma.”
Charisma courses, while often popular, aren’t always based on science. If someone wants to become more charismatic, the focus needs to be on practising their social interactions, and understanding where they might be falling short.
The issue is that personality is very much a natural trait, and therefore can be difficult to change. While research does show it is possible, it requires a lot of work and discipline, as well as the longevity to keep working on it even when you see changes.
While a lot of the behaviours like body language and confidence tend to form naturally, other skills can be learnt and worked on. Charismatic people are good listeners and attentive people. Learning how to be an active listener, and empathetic to other people is a crucial part of being charismatic.
Equally, being passionate, both in your interests and what other people have to say, has been linked to charisma. As part of that passionate outlook, charismatic people have been found to have clear goals, and tend to be driven about their future, expressing their plans to others.
If you think about these changeable factors, they tend to be more skill-based, or mental aspects of charisma. What is harder to change is the physical attributes like body language, responsive smiling or touch (more on all of that below).
Improving these changeable characteristics is a two-fold process. It requires some self-reflection to understand your goals and build passions. The second part requires social practice, speaking to people and getting feedback on your listening skills, empathy and general confidence.
“Another way to think about your personality is like your tennis stroke. A coach will tell you that you’ll need to spend as many hours practising your new stroke as you need learning the original,” says Sherman.
“Think about that with your personality, you have been developing it since you were born. How long have you practised that current set of behaviours, become used to it, and how difficult is that going to be to change? It really is a major challenge.”
For those who do put in the time and effort, and learn to change their personality in such a way that they become more charismatic, there is a second factor to consider – how much will you actually improve?
Because charisma and any emotion or personality trait are hard to quantify, it can be tricky to actively note changes. If someone is actively trying to change, they are more likely to notice these changes or believe they have improved. But it is better to ask those around you.
On top of that, reaching noticeable levels of improvement, even with hard work and discipline can prove to be a challenge. While there are courses that promise a mastery of charisma, it is more likely that a small change will be accomplished.
“Through intentional training, you can make small improvements. But the personality change literature would predict that you’re not going to become a real charmer, a James Bond type if you will,” says Sherman.
You can't fake body language
When it comes to charisma and a range of other personality traits, one factor is associated with success frequently: body language. Small body movements and suggestions that can be suggestive of your confidence, feelings and overall personality.
While there are plenty of courses out there happy to teach you the tricks and tips to perfect your body language, once again, it isn’t quite as simple as that.
“Body language is an unintentional behaviour, and there is research that suggests that doing these behaviours intentionally will result in you screwing it up. Charismatic people build rapport easily, and that can often be achieved through an open style of body language,” says Sherman.
One of these behaviours that is often mentioned in charisma courses is mirroring. Mirroring is a natural behaviour, babies mirror their mother’s heartbeats, and we unintentionally mirror people we like or respect. It’s a non-verbal way to display empathy.
“There is research that outlines that this is a natural behaviour and that doing it intentionally actually makes conversations more awkward. It can go the opposite way and reduce trust.”
Equally, naturally charismatic people can be quite physical. They confidently shake hands, put their hands on people’s shoulders when they speak or engage with people physically in quite natural ways.
While this behaviour has been shown to make people more likeable, it can equally be off-putting if done unnaturally. Mirroring, physical touch, and other forms of body language are effective, but only when performed naturally.
Charisma isn't always a good trait to have
This all sounds quite negative for anyone trying to seek some self-improvement in their lives, but it’s not all bad. As Sherman points out, it is possible to make improvements in your personality, however small.
By focusing on easily changeable factors, like smiling more, being a more focused listener, and developing social confidence, it is possible to come across as a slightly more charismatic person.
The research is also varied in this field, with some research pointing to increased abilities to be more charismatic, especially in leadership roles or workplace scenarios which can trickle into your personal life.
Equally, while it is easy to view ‘rizz’ as a positive trait, that isn’t always the case. “Charisma is often viewed as something positive, but it equally is something negative, used to trick or persuade those around them,” says Sherman.
“We love our politicians who are charismatic, but they are the same ones who often let people down. The same goes for leaders of some big companies, who use their charismatic nature in a negative way.”
Charisma has been linked to higher rates of psychopathy in the past and unethical pro-organisational behaviour in businesses. Like all behaviours, charisma is ultimately a double-edged sword.
Read more:
How to change your personality according to a neuroscientist
Is there any link between handwriting and personality
Schadenfreude: A psychologist explains why we love to see others fail
Failing upwards: How charismatic leaders fail their way to success
Online self-diagnosis culture is subtly failing your mental health
Why we need to stop stigmatising borderline personality disorder
About our expert, Dr Ryne Sherman
Ryne Sherman is the Chief Science Officer at Hogan Assessment Systems, a personality research company. Previously he was an associate professor of psychological sciences at Texas Tech University.
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從演化學與心理學看紅顏色 -- Jonathan Jones
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Super Bowl 2024 uniforms: Chiefs' decision may play key role in rare red-on-red game, just like it did in 2020
Like I wrote four years ago, studies have shown that red's status on evolutionary change has an effect when it comes to uniform colors
Jonathan Jones, 02/02/24
The Kansas City Chiefs are in red jerseys for Super Bowl LVIII next week because they won in them four years ago against this same opponent, and because the color will give them a slight advantage thanks to tens of thousands of years of human behavior.
There's a clash -- quite literally -- of reds in Las Vegas as the Chiefs take on the 49ers. When they met in Super Bowl LIV in 2020, I wrote a couple thousand words for this website about the meaning of these colors in this game. At that point, it was the first Super Bowl with two teams who both wore red. And as the designated home team, Kansas City got to choose its jersey color and stuck with the red tops that got them through the playoffs, as well as their lone Super Bowl win in 1970.
Yet again, the Chiefs are the designated home team. And instead of going with the white tops that won them road games in Buffalo and Baltimore the previous two weeks -- as well as the Super Bowl last year against the green-clad Eagles -- the Chiefs went with the dominant red color. That puts the 49ers back in white tops, which they've wore in three previous Super Bowls.
San Francisco's only Super Bowl loss in white? Super Bowl LIV to the Chiefs. While the color red hasn't changed, some other things have since I last wrote this piece, which is now becoming a quadrennial affair. You can read the full story from four years ago here, but I'm also going to pull passages from the piece throughout this story (which will be italicized).
Here's what red means to both a color expert and a biologist.
For all of recorded human history, color expert Leatrice Eiseman says, red has represented activity, assertiveness, blood and bloodshed. Red is aggressive, dynamic and an activity producer.
"There's never anything reticent or quiet about red," Eiseman told me by phone while in France on a tour for "More Alive with Color," her latest book. "And in recent years there's another buzzword that's been used. It isn't just power but empowerment. So that if you adorn yourself in red, if you use red, psychologically that can give you the feeling that you are more powerful."
Anger and aggression are associated with reddening of the skin, while fear produces a paling effect as blood drains from one's face. While we understand red can also be symbolic of love, romance and fertility, in the animal kingdom red usually correlates with male dominance.
Russell Hill is a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Durham University in the United Kingdom. A trained biologist, Hill has long been interested in what primate behavior can tell us about human evolution and human socialization.
Take, for example, the mandrill (山魈). That's the primate with the beautiful red and blue-colored face that you've seen on wildlife television or, better yet, the type of primate Rafiki (拉飛奇) was in "The Lion King." For millennia, life on this planet has immediately and readily understood what the color red signifies.
"That bright, intense red coloration is actually present only in dominant male," Hill said. "If you're not a dominant male that red color just washes out. It's a badge of status. If you look across a lot of other mammal species, red is the color. It's used to signify dominance and aggression in a wide variety of animals."
Red may mean something to mandrils, but it didn't mean anything to the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time). A year after the Chiefs beat the 49ers, 31-20, in Super Bowl LIV, Kansas City donned red again in Super Bowl LV and lost, 31-9, to the white-jersey'd Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The red that Kansas City's backup tackles cloaked themselves in couldn't help them enough in that game. But there is evidence that wearing red in sporting events has an impact on the mind, even if that doesn't exactly play out with the body.
We know humans perceive those in red as more aggressive and dominant. And there are self-reported studies of people feeling more confident when wearing red.
"What we know from those primate examples linked to that red coloration is higher levels of testosterone (睪丸素) that is often involved in these competitive encounters," Hill said. "And we know that male sports teams playing at home go onto the field with higher levels of testosterone than when they're playing away from home. It primes (誘發) the body for competition.
"The evidence is less clear -- in fact there's no clear evidence -- that wearing red influences your physiological preparedness in that way. It clearly has a psychological impact, but it's much more difficult to test these physiological responses. As it stands at the moment, nobody's been able to find evidence that I would be confident in claiming is irrefutable."
Just like in the 2019 season, the Niners ran through the NFC playoffs in their red jerseys just to end up in white. But actually, both of these teams this year have been more successful in their white tops.
San Francisco is 5-1 in white jerseys this year and 9-4 in its reds. Kansas City went 7-4 in its red jerseys and 7-2 in the whites.
If you ask me, Super Bowl LIV between these two teams was not aesthetically pleasing. Both teams have the same colors, except they don't. The 49ers are in gold pants, and the Chiefs have that yellow in their color scheme. The Chiefs have a more vibrant red than the darker red the 49ers wear.
The official color system is known as the Pantone Matching System. The Chiefs' red is PMS 186 C, with the 49ers' red as PMS 187 C. So they are officially one pantone apart. Eiseman, the color expert, told me the deeper tone in the 49ers' red adds more depth, more focus and more intention.
"Now, not to say that the other team doesn't have focus. I don't want to put that on them," Eiseman told me in 2020. "But if we're looking at from the standpoint just of the messaging of the color, I think that's the biggest distinction between the two of them. One is a little more adrenaline pumping and the other is a little bit more thoughtful, if you will."
How's this going to look on television? I would expect the end zones to be painted the same as their Super Bowl LIV meeting. The Chiefs end zone was yellow with red lettering, and the 49ers had a red end zone with gold lettering. In the two Super Bowls the Chiefs have played in since then, they've had yellow end zones.
Trust me, the CBS broadcast is aware of the colors. In the CBS broadcast of Super Bowl LV, the Chiefs and Buccaneers actually had the same color red (PMS 186 C). In the score bug, CBS went with the Chiefs in red and the Buccaneers in pewter, which was the color of Tampa Bay's pants. Next week, the score bug on CBS will have the Chiefs in red and the 49ers in gold.
But does any of this really matter? Are the Chiefs actually going to win simply because they're in red? Sure, Kansas City won wearing red against the Niners four years ago, but then it got spanked a year later by the Bucs in white.
Twelve previous Super Bowls have featured at least one team with red as their dominant color. The teams in red have gone 6-6 in those games.
Hill told me the team in red jerseys may have one small, slight advantage over the team in white. Just maybe.
"The way we would probably expect it to operate anyway is not the buildup to the game but on the field itself ... athletes on the line of scrimmage, in opposition of another. They very much are facing one another as the ball is snapped," Hill said. "I think in those particular contexts where it could have an impact on the San Francisco players, those athletes all looking at athletes dressed in red, each of whom is displaying this color that has this evolutionary association with power and dominance.
"It's in that particular context and in those very fine margins that we expect it to have a difference. If it just takes one or two percent off the degree that these players go into impact, the energy that they put into it, and these games are fine margins, that can be enough to tip the balance between winning and losing."
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