As media technologies become more ubiquitous and intertwined with everything we do, the more we need to understand their impact and potential. Without people there is no technology. It is psychology that gives us insight into people, as individuals, groups, cultures and society. Therefore, psychology is also instrumental to understanding media technologies because people are not separable from the media communication eco-system. 

The use of the term ‘media psychologist’ is evolving over time. It is confusing because, in fact, its origins did come from clinicians who appeared in the media. This is a bit misleading since a more accurate and informative way to describe a media psychologist who appears in the media is as a media personality or a clinical psychologist who appears in the media. We don’t call Dr. Oz a media cardiologist because his ‘patients’ or the focus of his expertise is the person, not the media technologies. When I use the term media psychologist or refer to the field of media psychology, I am referring to psychologists who apply psychological theory to understanding the development, experience, use and impact of different types of media technologies and how media impacts content perception and messaging. There are psychologists who appear in the media who also know a lot about media technologies and whom I would consider media psychologists.  There are also psychologists who appear in the media because that is an effective way to disseminate information, both therapeutic and otherwise. That does not make them a media psychologist as I define it. To do so devalues the expertise of the many psychologists who dedicate their efforts to understanding the interaction of human experience with the use and development of media technologies and the individual, social, and global ramifications. 

An additional point of confusion is the fact that there are many kinds of psychologists. Psychologists who do clinical work (clinical psychologists) are only one professional avenue within the broader field. Clinical psychology requires a specific type and focus of training and, in order to practice with patients, licensure in the state where the practice is offered. Not all psychologists are clinicians, in fact, there are as many, if not more, psychologists teaching in academic institutions, performing research or contributing to everything from organizational management and leadership to technology development and user experience. A clinician is no more equipped to do those things without training than an organizational psychologist is to do therapy without training. (It is also illegal and unethical for the any psychologist without licensure to do therapy, even if they have clinical training.)

The field of psychology is rich with theories that are applied in many ways outside of a therapeutic context. Areas in psychology include developmental, positive, cognitive, behavioral, political, social, educational, cultural, neurological, and narrative, to name a few. A field within psychology is a descriptor of the theory and focus of the psychologist’s training and work. A cognitive psychologist will be trained in areas of cognition, meaning, perception, etc., for example. A media psychologist will be trained in applying areas of psychology to media technologies. For a specific example, see the curriculum for the new master’s degree program at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology which shows how different areas in psychology are applied to media technologies, ranging from educational technology and media literacy to persuasive communications and social marketing. 

To make matters more confusing, psychology also has ‘theoretical orientations’ that inform the way a psychologist approaches their work no matter what the venue. A cognitive psychologist, who is also trained as a clinician, may use a predominantly cognitive-based therapeutic approach. This is not just true for clinicians, however. A media psychologist may also be trained as a cognitive psychologist and focus their work with media technologies on the cognitive and perceptual aspects of technology use and development. I consider myself a media psychologist because my background combines academic training in psychology and in the human impact and technological affordances of media and emerging technologies. I draw from cognitive, positive, and narrative psychologies in my consulting, research and analysis. I, however, focus on individual, social and commercial implications and trends and, although I have clinical training, I am not licensed and do not have a clinical practice. 

The dissertation you cite by Dr. Macari tests whether or not a population of 115 randomly selected respondents (psychologists and non-psychologists) had a bias for or against a clinical psychologist who appeared in the media based on the respondents' reactions to transcript of a fictitious session given by each 'category' of psychologist. I am assuming that respondents who were psychologists were, in fact, clinical psychologists, but I have not read the full dissertation. There is a big difference, however, in making a judgment about the quality of a therapy session from a transcript and from what a person might observe of Dr. Phil's approach. The fact that Macari defines ‘media psychologists’ for the purpose of her research as a clinician who appears in the media doesn’t make it a universal definition. It makes it the operational definition of that variable in her research, which is a necessary and important component of her project. Every research project must specifically define terms and variables under analysis as part of the methodology. Understanding research methodology and analytical tools and practices is an important component in any psychology curriculum at multiple levels: designing research, interpreting results, and disseminating the information accurately. Those same skills are used ‘in reverse’ to evaluate the research of others.  This is a particularly important skill in media psychology as journalist's reports of psychological research do not always accurately reflect the findings, especially when the topic lends itself to a provocative headline.

The American Psychological Association (APA) Division 46 (Media Psychology) has been working through this definitional transition as well. As media technologies become more ubiquitous and intertwined with everything we do, the more we need to understand its impact and potential. That is my definition of media psychology and the goals of a media psychologist. 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/

The Imagined and the Real

Metaphors of action can depend on making the actions mentally.

Published on April 20, 2012 by Keith Oatley, Ph.D. in The Psychology of Fiction

Brain scans have shown something of what happens in our heads when we read statements that prompt the imagination as compared with those that are literal.
In the Sunday Review section of the New York Times (March 17th, 2012, page R6; click here), Annie Murphy Paul wrote an article on recent research in which she says "new support for the value of fiction is arriving from an unexpected quarter: neuroscience."
Paul discusses brain imaging studies on how fiction is processed. In one of these, Véronique Boulenger, Olaf Hauk and
Friedemann Pulvermüller (2009) used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the brain's responses to idiomatic sentences that referred to movements of the arm and hand such as "John grasped the idea," or of the leg and foot, such as "Pablo kicked the habit," as compared with literal statements such as "John grasped the object" or "Pablo kicked the ball." The researchers found that reading either the idiomatic or the literal sentences that had to do with the arm activated the motor and premotor cortex concerned with the arm, and reading the idiomatic and literal sentences that had to do with the leg activated the parts of the motor and premotor cortex concerned with the leg. Comprehension of the idioms, then, appears to involve a mental-neurological version of the actions indicated by the idiom. Boulenger et al. argue that this shows that figurative abstract language can be grounded in concrete sensory-motor information and its specific brain circuits.
After describing the study of Boulenger and her colleagues, Annie Murphy Paul goes on to say:

The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated. Keith Oatley, an emeritus professor of cognitivepsychology at the University of Toronto (and a published novelist), has proposed that reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that “runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers.” Fiction — with its redolent details, imaginative metaphors and attentive descriptions of people and their actions — offers an especially rich replica.

Boulenger, V., Hauk, O., & Pulvermüller, F. (2009). Grasping ideas with the motor system: Semantic somatotropy in idiom comprehension.Cerebral Cortex, 19, 1905-1914.
Oatley, K. (2011). In the minds of others. Scientific American Mind, 22(6), 62-67.
Paul, A.M. (2012). Your brain on fiction. New York Times, Sunday Review section, March 17, p. 6.
Image: From figure 5 of Boulenger et al.'s (2009) article showing activation of the motor and pre-motor areas of the brain for arm-related idioms (in red) and leg-related idioms (in blue); the brains at the top of the image are seen from the side, and those at the bottom are seen from above.
source

5 Tips to Improve Your Scientific Writing

1. Omit needless words. Edit out "it is" "it was" "there is" "there are" and "there has been" constructions.
Each year, the Bulwer-Lytton prize for bad writing (prize money: "a pittance") is bestowed upon a writer who can "compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels." Edward Bulwer-Lytton earned the dubious distinction of this eponymous award for publishing this literary gem:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
Perhaps you'll rise to fame (or infamy) on the wings of sentences filled with "it is" and "there are" constructions. More likely, your career will crash-land. These constructions are weak and wordy, and their elimination from your manuscript will greatly improve the conciseness and persuasiveness of your writing.
For example:

• "...it is in London that our scene lies" becomes "...our scene lies in London"        

Some common phrases to edit out of research manuscripts:

• "It is important ..."
• "It is hypothesized that..."
• "It was predicted that..."
• "There is evidence suggesting that..."
• "There is a significant relationship..."

 One of my own cringe-worthy constructions:

• "It is hoped that these regulations in affect and cognition would lead to decreased isolation..."

A better option:

• "Regulating affect and cognition could lead to decreased isolation..."

2. Use the active voice.
Passive sentences are like passive people: dull and distant. In the active voice, the person or thing doing an action is the front and center subject of the sentence. "I fed the dog" is active. In the passive voice, the object comes before the actor (or no actor is present). "The dog was fed by me," or "The dog was fed" are passive.
Passive voice sentences generally have verbs preceded by "is" "are" "was" or "were".
An antiquated belief holds that passive voice is needed in science writing to distance the subjective scientist from the objective science. This belief not only promotes misguided thinking (you can't take the scientist out of the science), but also encourages cumbersome sentence structures and dull writing.
Examples:

• "Participants were given self-report questionnaires..." versus "Participants completed self-report questionnaires..."
• "Patients and their legal guardians were approached for consent..." versus "Research staff members approached patients and their legal guardians for consent" or even "Patients and their legal guardians provided consent to participate in the study."

Researchers often resort to passive voice in an effort to avoid using the first person point of view, using, for example:

• "The items are written to measure..." instead of "We wrote items to" or "We created a measure of..."
• "The data were analyzed..." instead of "I analyzed the data..."

I've noticed that some still wrongfully cling to the belief that writers are not supposed to use first person pronouns in their research manuscripts. The APA style manual encourages the use of first person point of view when you are describing your research actions. Where possible in other situations, however, the research should hold the foreground (e.g., "the results suggest...").
3. Maintain parallelism throughout the paper.
A simple rule, but one easy to overlook (and a problem that shows up in manuscripts more often than you might think). Your hypotheses, measures, and analyses should be presented in the same order whether in the abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, or tables. If hypothesis 1 is that self-esteem and depression are linked and hypothesis 2 is that self-esteem increases with age, do not present self-esteem and age analyses before you present self-esteem and depression analyses. The self-esteem measure should be described in the measures before the depression variable, and a table would list descriptives for self-esteem, depression, and age in that order. Measure and variable names and labels should also be consistent throughout.
4. Do not excessively repeat words and phrases.
Variety is the spice of life and of research papers. Excessive repetition makes writing sound dull and hollow. Do a visual scan of your paper or read it out loud looking for words and phrases that appear too many times within and between sentences and paragraphs. Some repetitions can be corrected by eliminating needless words. Others can be fixed with alternative word choices. Find that you're using the word "investigate" too often? Don't be afraid to use a thesaurus to come up with alternatives like "examine", "explore", "inspect", or "review". Never use a thesaurus just to come up with big, impressive sounding words that you don't actually know how to use.
Example:

• "Although there are several self-report symptom measuresavailable that evaluate symptomatic distress, the utility of such instruments for measuring outcome is limited. Many symptommeasures group symptoms into categories and provide clinicians only with information about specific problems rather than a globalmeasure of symptom severity."

versus

• "While several self-report inventories evaluate psychiatricsymptoms, the utility of such instruments for outcome research is limited. Many of these measures group items into highly specific syndrome categories, providing little information about global symptom severity."

Two exceptions to this suggestion are when repetition is used for either parallel constructions ("What counts isn't how you look but how youbehave") or purposeful rhetorical emphasis ("We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender."—Winston Churchill).
5. Do repeat sounds.
Consonance and assonance are terms that describe the repetition of sounds across words. These poetic devices improve the flow and lyrical quality of writing, helping to eliminate "tin ear" writing that sounds stilted and stiff when read out loud.
Consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds. Alliteration (recurrence of consonants at the beginning of a word) is one form:

• "pick a peck of pickled peppers"
• "two times in short succession"
• "psychiatric services"

However, consonance also occurs within words:

• "Crying in sports is an appropriate and typical response in light ofpersonal tragedy or exceptional adversity."

Alternatively, assonance refers to the repetition of vowel sounds:

• "adverse personal circumstances"
• "social and emotional" (my favorite psychology phrase)

Edgar Allen Poe, having mastered these techniques in his poetry and prose, wrote my all-time favorite sentence (sorry, Edward Bulwer-Lytton):

• "During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher."

But, you might protest, the APA style manual explicitly suggests "avoiding poetic language". Although you should generally avoid literary flourishes (don't write your dissertation in iambic pentameter), figurative language (your study is not a tree of knowledge standing strong against a blustery wind of critiques), and rhyme schemes (do not "correlate the rate of late blind dates with irate mates"), a deafness to rhythm and harmony will hurt the clarity of impact of your research writing.

Examples:

• Doesn't the assonant title "Ecology, Sexual Selection, and theEvolution of Mating Systems" (which happens to be written byEmlen and Oring, 1977) sound pretty good?
• Is "Self-Reports and Finger Movements in Psychology Research" a better title for the Baumeister, Vohs, and Funder (2007) paperthan their alliterative "Psychology as the Science of Self-Reports and Finger Movements"?
• Would you get rid of this spectacular sentence from that same paper: "Whatever happened to helping, hurting, playing, working, taking, eating, risking, waiting, flirting, goofing off, showing off, giving up, screwing up, compromising, selling, persevering, pleading, tricking, outhustling, sandbagging, refusing, and the rest?" (p. 399)

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Conducting quality research takes patience and hard work. Doesn't your research writing deserve that same determination and diligence? Communicating your scientific work in a way that is concise, clear, and creative will enhance your chances at publication and will generate enthusiasm and impact for your papers.

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© March 1, 2012.  Special acknowledgments go to: Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style" and Drew Westen for their writing wisdom.
The "Grammar Girl" website is an invaluable resource for all those nitty-gritty grammar, punctuation, and style rules you forgot from or never paid attention to in school.
Thesaurus.com: The thesaurus of champions, winners, victors, top dogs, and numero unos.
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By Jared DeFife, Ph.D.
For information about research, speaking engagements, and Atlanta-based psychotherapy practice, visit http://www.jareddefife.com/

MIT: The advantage of ambiguity in language

MIT: The advantage of ambiguity in language

Conscious of the Present; Conscious of the Past: Language (cont.); Vision and Memory

Watch it on Academic Earth

Maltreated children show same pattern of brain activity as combat soldiers

Maltreated children show same pattern of brain activity as combat soldiers