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The age of the superhuman Christian Jarrett gets to grips with cyborgs as part of a ‘super’ issue
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letters 702 news 710 careers 756 looking back 772
super-recognisers 726 super artists 733 the super altruists 734 would you want a super memory? 740 searching for superhuman 742
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letters ‘Psychological responsibility’; thoughts on the DSM-5 debate; assistant psychologists; clinical training; male suicide; and more
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news 710 Decline in psychotherapy; the happy mirror; a school with a difference; children’s sedentary lifestyles; police super-recognisers PETER TANGEN/THE REAL LIFE SUPERHERO PROJECT (WWW.REALLIFESUPERHEROES.COM)
From the Research Digest 716 We meet people who have or research ‘super’ abilities The age of the superhuman Christian Jarrett gets to grips with cyborgs
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‘I never forget a face!’ Josh P. Davis, Ashok Jansari and Karen Lander investigate super-recognisers
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Who will become a ‘super artist’? 730 Jennifer E. Drake and Ellen Winner consider the significance of exceptional drawing skills in childhood The super-altruists Tom Farsides considers whether there is such a thing, and its potential cost Big picture: Meet the real-life superheroes
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Would you want a super memory? A blessing or a curse? Catriona Morrison asks mnemonists and those in the field
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Searching for superhuman Chris French navigates the outer limits as he investigates extraordinary claims
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society 748 President’s column; Presidents’ Award 2013; Self-help books on prescription; AllTrials Campaign; and more careers and appointments
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we talk to Rhonda Cohen Head of the London Sport Institute at Middlesex University; and to environmental psychologist Birgitta Gatersleben; and third-year PhD student Mark Taylor turns the tables on his supervisor Angelica Ronald
october 2013
THE ISSUE Although, like many (see p.764), I’m fascinated by superheroes, I do worry that life with a superpower wouldn’t be all glamourous hideouts and cool gadgets… with great power comes great responsibility, and with two kids I’ve got plenty of that already. Until I find my inner caped crusader it’s not a concern, but some people with what we might call ‘super powers’ – extremely high levels of traits or abilities – already walk among us. What’s it like for them? How are people augmenting their bodies and minds? When confronted with extraordinary claims, how should psychologists respond? We tackle these questions and more in our ‘super’ issue! Also this month, I must welcome the many new students receiving this issue as a gift from the British Psychological Society as they set out to fulfil their destiny as heroic psychologists. Add to your armoury at www.bps.org.uk/careers and our extensive archive at www.thepsychologist.org.uk; set your spidey-senses tingling by following us @psychmag and @researchdigest on Twitter; and recruit a trusty sidekick at www.bps.org.uk/join. Dr Jon Sutton
reviews 764 The usual mix of books and other media reviews, including a review of Robin Rosenberg’s book Our Superheroes, Ourselves new voices 770 detecting lies about intentions; Lara Warmelink with the latest in our series for budding authors (see www.bps.org.uk/newvoices for information) looking back 772 treasures of knowledge: Keiran McNally on psychology, schizophrenia and the making of a modern concept one on one
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…with Chris Cullen
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Decline in psychotherapy The Improving Access to Psychotherapies programme in England has failed to curb the country’s steady, decades-long increase in antidepressant prescription rates, according to a new analysis. Professor Azeem Majeed (Imperial College, London) and his colleagues looked for any changes to prescription rates after IAPT was implemented in 150 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) across the country (British Journal of General Practice: tinyurl.com/m3wsfrp). From 2008 to 2011 they found that prescriptions for antidepressants rose 10 per cent per year and that the introduction of IAPT to a PCT made no difference to this increase. Their finding coincides with publication of the latest data for England showing that more prescriptions for antidepressants (over 50 million) were written last year than at any previous time. This is despite a growing literature showing that mental health patients prefer psychotherapy to drugs if given the choice, as confirmed by a newly completed meta-analysis conducted by Kathyrn McHugh at McClean Hospital and reported on our Research Digest (tinyurl.com/krjdnwz) The reason for IAPT’s failure to
reduce antidepressant prescriptions is unknown, but may be due to GPs prescribing while patients are on an IAPT waiting list, or perhaps the influence of IAPT needs more time to be felt. This news, which will disappoint many clinical and counselling psychologists, arrives in a wider context in which our colleagues across the Atlantic are concerned about the declining practice of psychological therapy and concomitant increase in drug prescriptions. Writing in the introduction to a special issue of Clinical Psychology Review devoted to the challenges facing evidence-based psychotherapy, Brandon Gaudiano (Alpert Medical School of Brown University) and Ivan Miller (Butler Hospital, USA) note that this decline is occurring even as the evidence base for cognitive behavioural therapy and other forms of talking therapy has grown substantially. ‘One might think that this deep and expanding evidence base would have promoted a similar increase in the use of psychosocial interventions,’ they write, ‘…but it decidedly has not. Thus, a time that should have been a relative boon for psychotherapy based on scientific
A-LEVEL POPULARITY Psychology remained the fourth most popular subject at A-level and ASLevel in 2012 to 2013, despite a slight drop in the number of candidates from the previous year (there were 56088 and 96908 candidates in the most recent intake, respectively). This is against a background of higher numbers taking physics, chemistry and biology. Grade attainment in psychology A-level and ASlevel pass rate was also slightly lower this year. In contrast, the psychology pass rate in the Scottish Highers was up by 5 per cent, and the entries increased by 9 per cent on the previous year (3099 to 3370). CJ
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standards, has become more of a bust.’ Gaudiano and Miller’s diagnosis is that the decline of psychotherapy is related to psychology’s failure to fully embrace an evidencebased approach, leaving it diminished in healthcare systems that are increasingly dominated by evidencebased medicine and treatment guidelines. The pair highlight a 2008 survey of 79 psychologists that found 30 per cent were using controversial, unsupported treatments. More recently, a team led by Gaudiano found that 42 per cent of practising therapists were using empirically unsupported ‘energy meridian therapies’. Related issues, according to Gaudiano and Miller, include the growing dominance of the biomedical model in psychiatry (an issue that’s dominated our own news pages over the last few months) and, in the USA, the influence of direct-to-consumer drug advertising and the fall in health insurance reimbursement rates for psychotherapy. Contributors to the journal special
The happy mirror Imagine looking into a mirror and seeing a slightly happier version of yourself looking back. Do you think it would affect how you feel? A team of researchers led by Shigeo Yoshida at the University of Tokyo have created a webcam system called ‘incendiary reflection’ that acts like a mirror depicting either a slightly happier or sadder version of those who look into it. The researchers were inspired by the ‘facial feedback hypothesis’ – the finding that the expression on our face affects our feelings. ‘We developed a method for deforming a user’s face and transforming a user’s facial expression in real time, using an image-processing technique,’ Yoshida writes on his website (www.shigeodayo.com). In initial tests people reported feeling more positive after looking at a version of themselves distorted to look happier; and said they felt more downbeat after looking at the sad reflection (see a video about the research at youtube.com/watch?v=1ORSFameZZI). A further study involved participants wearing a new scarf as they looked in the ‘mirror’. When the reflection was altered to show them smiling back, they were more likely to say they liked the scarf. The findings were reported in New Scientist (tinyurl.com/nkpa5x5) and presented at SIGGRAPH2013 (the 40th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) and the 4th Augmented Human International Conference. CJ
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Decline is occurring even as the evidence base for cognitive behavioural therapy and other forms of talking therapy has grown
issue were invited to ‘think outside the box’ and to ‘propose novel solutions’ to the challenges that lie ahead for evidence-based psychotherapy. Among the responses, a group led by Scott O. Lilienfeld at Emory University outlined six key reasons why many clinical psychologists remain resistant to
evidence-based practice, including: naive realism (a preference for clinical intuition over systematic research findings) and belief in myths about human nature (e.g. believing in the causal primacy of early experiences). They make several recommendations for psychology education and training practices on the back of these observations, including directly challenging the aforementioned myths in student training. Other contributions include Jerome Wakefield at New York University on the dropping of the bereavement exclusion criteria for major depression, and a team led by Steven Hayes at the University of Nevada with plans for an alternative way to develop new psychotherapy treatment approaches. CJ I The special issue is at: sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02727 358/33/7
Playing to learn A school with a difference opened its doors in Denmark in August. A partnership between the LEGO Foundation and Billund Municipality, it is the latest step in an ongoing project to make Billund a ‘Capital of Children’, ‘a unique center for children’s play and learning’. The International School of Billund, initially for three- to seven-yearolds, will combine the international baccalaureate with the Danish school system and the toy manufacturer’s creative philosophy of learning. LEGO have for many years sought to ensure that their products are informed by academic research in psychology and related disciplines, and that such evidence has the policy impact it deserves (see tinyurl.com/legopsych). We spoke to Bo Stjerne Thomsen, who directs research for the LEGO Foundation. ‘The best way
of learning is to be playful and make things’, he said. ‘We’re engaged in a big, global efforts to cultivate and raise awareness of this, and to work with the growing academic network and an expanding agenda on the value of play.’ Thomsen says a key question is ‘What does “best” mean in terms of what we do for children?’ He feels the answer lies in the way we are with children when we are around them. ‘Children are not unfinished, they’re so powerful,’ he says. ‘Psychologists are people who understand this, that we need to be engaged with them, and to relax! Policy makers are stressed by the constant push for standardised assessment… how can we create confidence, in teachers and parents, that we can reach educational goals through playful learning?’ One prospective parent told The Guardian: ‘In the
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UK you’re taught how to pass exams. In Scandinavia you’re taught how to think.’ Thomsen backs this approach, saying: ‘There are so many different ways to build competence to learn – to support the core skills of being curious, keeping attention and selfregulating behaviour.’ Does the LEGO Foundation have a message for our readers? ‘There’s a lot of isolated work going on,’ Thomsen replied, ‘and academics often don’t have the time, interest or capacity to communicate their work to others. If you can explain why play is exciting, we need to work together for impact.’ LEGO have also launched Cultures of Creativity, a report coauthored by Thomsen that explores the role of play and creativity in the development of societies across cultures (see tinyurl.com/legococ). JS
Bias in expert testimony When forensic psychologists or psychiatrists provide expert testimony in court they’re supposed to be objective, but a new study shows that their judgement tends to be biased towards the side that recruited them – the prosecution or defence (Psychological Science: tinyurl.com/p74cgdb). Daniel Murrie at the University of Virginia and his colleagues recruited just over a hundred forensic experts (most were psychologists) to take part in what they were told was a contract to review sex-offender cases for either a public defender service or a specialised prosecution service. Following the cover story, the participants completed a two-day training workshop on use of two established risk instruments – Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) and the Static-99R that’s used to predict sexual recidivism. Three weeks later the participants met with either a defence or prosecution attorney (played by the same actor) and used these tools to review objectively four real-life sex-offender case files. Normally, inter-rater agreement for the PCL-R and Static-99R is very high, but in this context the participants’ ratings were significantly different depending on whether they thought they were acting for the prosecution or the defence. The finding raises concerns, Murrie and his team said, because it shows that ‘some experts who score ostensibly objective assessment instruments assign scores that are biased toward the side that retained them’. In fact, the researchers believe such biasing effects are likely to be larger in real life. The study involved just 15 minutes spent with the retaining lawyer, yet in real cases this contact could last weeks or months. Moreover, the current research required that the participants review the exact same files and interview transcripts whereas in real-life cases there could be the potential for seeking different sources or interviewing offenders in different ways. The researchers also noted the scope for bias could be greater for more subjective judgements, such as when assessing emotional harm. CJ
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Healthy behaviour and well-being things we can all do every day with our and other benefits of some forms of Public Health England (PHE) – an children to help improve their health and screen entertainment and social executive agency of the Department of well,being.’ networking activities. And in a Health established earlier this year – has We asked BPS member Pete Etchells government press release, PHE published a briefing paper claiming that at Bath Spa University what he thought of summarises the situation without young children’s sedentary life styles, the PHE briefing. He said it was strange equivocation, claiming that ‘Too much including too much time watching TV that there was no mention of recent time in front of screens – including TV and playing video games, is having an adverse effect on their social and emotional well-being (pdf at tinyurl.com/nk8hpm5). The claims will doubtless be welcomed by those experts who have attracted controversy for campaigning about the dangers of modern technology for children. The PHE document, aimed at parents and the providers of children’s services, uses the research literature to make specific claims about the negative outcomes associated with young children spending too much time watching TV, playing video games or using social networking sites. According to the briefing, these adverse outcomes include increased risk of attentional problems, reduced feelings of social acceptance, more loneliness and conduct problems, lower self-worth and self-esteem, and increased anxiety and depression. The briefing ‘How healthy behaviour supports children’s wellbeing’ also includes information from UNICEF and the WHO that shows Fewer than half of the children surveyed were engaging in at least half an hour of the UK is only middle-ranking among moderate to vigorous activity each day OECD and EU countries in terms of research (also based on the Millennium and computer games – combined with our children’s life satisfaction (with over Cohort Study) showing a more a sedentary lifestyle is taking its toll on 85 per cent rating their life satisfaction complicated relationship between screen our children’s wellbeing and increasing highly), and actually below average time and child development outcomes – their anxiety.’ Predictable headlines have among OECD countries in terms of most associations disappeared when other followed, such as ‘Video Games and children’s beliefs about their own health factors like socioeconomic status were TV “Make Children Depressed”’ from (with 96 per cent rating it as good or very taken into account. Also the results Sky News. good). varied between TV viewing and videoThe PHE briefing also cites evidence The PHE publication coincides with game playing (Archives of Disease in showing the positive effects of physical the release of new research based on the Childhood: tinyurl.com/phyg8h4). activity for children’s emotional Millennium Cohort Study that’s tracking ‘Screen time is a pretty useless development. The agency’s claims about the health of thousands of UK children construct,’ Dr Etchells said. ‘We find screen time and exercise are being used to born between 2000 and 2002. Lucy different effects depending on the type of support its Change4Life campaign which Griffiths at UCL and her colleagues screen-based technology that’s being used is encouraging families to capitalise on looked at activity data (derived from – video games vs. TV for instance. But the back-to-school period to establish accelerometers) for over 6000 of the even there, it’s not so simple – the types new healthy lifestyle habits, such as children when they were aged seven. The of video games, or the content of the swapping car journeys for walking and results show that fewer than half of the television programmes are surely of more setting limits on children’s non-work children were engaging in recommended interest. I think what this PHE briefing screen time. levels of physical activity – that is, at least does highlight is how little we still know Professor Kevin Fenton, PHE’s an hour of moderate to vigorous activity about the behavioural effects of modern Director of Health and Wellbeing said: each day (BMJ Open: tinyurl.com/offowax). technology. We really need to start taking ‘There are many complex factors that Although the PHE briefing document a more mature, nuanced approach to the affect a child’s well-being, such as the includes caveats about the correlational issue before issuing guidelines.’ CJ wider environment they live in and their nature of the data linking screen time social, financial and family circumstances, with adverse outcomes, it neglects to I Pete Etchells’ Guardian blog post on the but there are also some very simple mention research showing the cognitive PHE briefing: tinyurl.com/qap89o2
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Admitting mistakes Barbara Fredrickson, one of the world’s leading positive psychologists, has admitted that a highly influential paper she co-authored in 2005 is fundamentally flawed. Published in American Psychologist, the paper purported to show that flourishing mental health is linked to people experiencing a specific ratio of positive to negative emotions of over 2.9 (tinyurl.com/pvdhomk). The ratio was consistent with Fredrickson’s ‘broaden and build theory’ – the idea that positive emotions encourage attitudes and behaviours that help build emotional resilience. It also appears on the cover of Fredrickson’s critically acclaimed 2009 book Positivity: Top Notch Research Reveals the 3 to 1 Ratio That Will Change Your Life. However, in a paper published this summer, also in American Psychologist, Nicholas Brown and his colleagues
documented ‘numerous fundamental conceptual and mathematical errors’ in the nonlinear dynamic modelling used by Fredrickson and her co-author Marcial Losada (tinyurl.com/q84nnoc). Fredrickson published a response in the same journal issue accepting the errors. And in a letter written to the Chronicle of Higher Education in August she says that she and Losada have submitted a formal correction notice to the 2005 paper. She also plans to amend future editions of her book. But Fredrickson adds: ‘Other elements of the original [2005] article remain valid and unaffected by this change, most notably the empirical finding – replicated across two independent samples – that positivity ratios were significantly higher for individuals identified as flourishing relative to those identified as nonflourishing.’ CJ
Police ‘super-recognisers’ The Metropolitan Police claimed in August that it had deployed 17 police ‘super-recognisers’ to help spot known offenders at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival. ‘The highly skilled officers can recall the faces, names, birth dates and other details of
offenders, years after seeing them either in person or on file,’ the Met said in a press release. The concept of superrecognisers was only recently developed in psychology and came about through work on prosopagnosia – a specific
difficulty in recognising faces. Research suggests that super-recognisers substantially outperform most people on a variety of tests including identifying faces in poor light or from unusual angles (see p.726 for more on superrecognisers). CJ
ADDICTION CAPITAL
TWEET TROUBLE A prominent US evolutionary psychologist has been censured formally by his host institution after an investigation into a tweet he sent earlier this year. In June Professor Geoffrey Miller suggested on the social media site that obese PhD applicants are unlikely to have the willpower to succeed at their research. He later claimed the tweet was part of a research project, but the University of New Mexico found this to be untrue.
NUDGE US The Obama administration is reportedly following British Prime Minister David Cameron’s lead and setting up its own Behavioural Insights Team or ‘Nudge Unit’ that will use lessons from psychology to inform public policy. Members of the UK Nudge Unit met recently with the head of the US team, Maya Shankar, ‘to discuss how we will exchange ideas and share research’. Shankar is a former Rhodes Scholar in psychology.
PROBLEM GAMBLING AWARD Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies at Nottingham Trent University, has become the first-ever recipient of a lifetime research award given by the US National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG). The award is given for exceptional long-standing research that assists problem gamblers and their families. Keith Whyte, the executive director of the NCPG, said: ‘His work has resulted in a much greater understanding of problem gambling among academicians, therapists, policy makers, and the general public.’
PREDICTING SUICIDE
The UK is the ‘addiction capital of Europe’ according to a new report No Quick Fix published by the Centre for Social Justice in September. The report claims that 40,000 addicts are ‘stranded’ on substitutes like methadone and that the government has failed to take the urgent action that’s required to deal with the rising number of people taking ‘New Psychoactive Substances’ – also known as legal highs. CJ I Download the pdf at tinyurl.com/pfrp3tc
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Researchers in the USA have discovered six genetic biomarkers for suicide in the blood of patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia (Molecular Psychiatry: tinyurl.com/pljuzlz). Alexander Niculescu and his colleagues found that when combined with clinical measures of mood, one of these biomarkers (encoded by the gene SAT1) predicted future suicide-related hospitalisations with over 80 per cent accuracy.
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Student Conference 7 May 2014, Birmingham ICC Confirmed speakers so far Professor Sir Simon Wessely Ben Shephard Professor Sergio Della Sala Professor Chris French Richard Gross Dr Roger Newport Dr Jamie Barker Followed by a networking reception. Early Bird Price: ÂŁ45.00
Visit the event website at
www.bps.org.uk/ac2014/students
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Gareth Lewis (University of Leicester) reports from the 16th International Reversal Theory Conference, in Reims Reversal theory emerged in the early 1970s, created and developed by K.C.P. Smith and Michael Apter, in order to account for observations of psychological, emotional and motivational states reversals, in child and family clinics. Apter has said: ‘The primary aim of reversal theory is to show that the various aspects of a wide range of types of experience and behaviour may be explained with reference to certain pairs of states and reversals which occur between them.’ For example, you can eat being serious and pursuing a goal in eating, or being in a spirit of seeking pleasure in the moment. Reversal theory has long been known for being an unusually general theory of motivation, emotion and personality. As Etienne Mullet put it in his Ken Smith Memorial Lecture here: ‘As reversal theory has deliberately been conceived as a theory of daily life, it is proving to be a convenient tool for intrepid researchers wishing to make a foray into untouched areas of human behaviour.’ This wide scope led to a stunningly eclectic mix of papers presented and interests discussed. New insights and ideas were presented on some perennial research contexts associated with the theory, such as sport (John Kerr, Joanne Hudson), therapy (Nathalie Duriez, Jonathan Wright), education (Kathryn Lafreniere, Ken Cramer, Gareth Lewis), leadership (Christophe Lunacek), smoking cessation (Brian Colwell) and other health issues. Reversal theory has a lot to say about the experience of rebelliousness, negative emotions and other problematic aspects of human experience, and new aspects of these themes were presented at the conference. For instance, Mark McDermott presented a study demonstrating the association of rebelliousness and attachment difficulties as a result of parental neglect. Mitzi Desselles presented evidence of the enjoyment of negative emotions using the reversal theory construct of parapathic emotions (negative emotions experienced pleasantly when in the playful state). Etienne Mullet and his research
students in Europe and West Africa presented a series of studies that looked at the complex motivational structures involved in socially and personally important choices. The studies all involved motives to perform or not perform health-related behaviours such as surgical amputation, organ or blood donation, bleaching skin, etc. The studies used a classical methodological approach involving the qualitative development of an inventory of motivational items, followed by collection of quantitative data, together with exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Mullet presented a synthesis of 10 studies that confirmed reversal theory’s capacity to fully account for these phenomena, in contrast to traditional two- and threefactor models of motivation. It was also refreshing to hear a number of exciting new applications of the theory in the commercial world. Design groups in the Universities of Delft and Twente in the Netherlands are using the theory to develop an approach to the design of products and services, such as the cabin experience in an aircraft, through the hospital experience for young people, to designing the environmental ambience of a train station. Another presentation (Leo Watkins) described how a global sports shoe company was using the theory to research perception of its brand image. There was also the opportunity to sample the champagne, to make new friends, and to catch up with some of the stalwarts of the reversal theory community, including Richard Mallows (now President of the BPS, who gave a keynote speech) and Michael Apter and Mitzi Desselles, who described how their team at LATech are expanding the empirical foundations of the theory through further research into basic concepts such as parapathic emotions, and the development of a definitive motivational state measure. We thank Fabien Legrand and his team for being generous hosts, and look forward to meeting in Canada in 2015. I For more on the sessions and the theory, see reversaltheory.net/org
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FUNDING NEWS The ESRC and National Institute on Aging (USA) have a joint call for two-year research projects to explore the potential for mid-life plasticity of biobehavioural or psychological systems affected by early life disadvantage. To be eligible for ESRC co-funding application must include a social science UK component, including one or more UK Investigators. Closing dates: letters of intent 3 January 2014; applications 4 February 2014. I tinyurl.com/oedcgre The following commissioning briefs for primary research are open under the NIHR Public Health Research Programme: I Interventions to promote social and emotional well-being among children aged under two years. The NIHR has a particular interest in interventions that investigate the most effective ways that fathers, grandparents and others who informally care for children, can promote social and emotional well-being. I Interventions to prevent elder abuse, including raising awareness of elder abuse, education to promote the care of older people and reduce stereotypes of older people, interventions for carers, and identification of abuse. I Interventions to maintain or increase physical activity in adolescents. Proposals should consider any possible adverse or unintended consequences or such research. Closing date for all calls: 18 December 2013. I tinyurl.com/nkpgdda Psychology Beyond Borders is an international non-profit organisation committed to international leadership in psychosocial responses in the face of disasters, armed conflict and terrorism. Via their Mission Awards they support research and service projects investigating: I Repetitive exposure to disaster: effects and specific interventions for such populations I Preparedness: teaching and evaluation of programmes preparing people for disasters I Resilience: assessing and building the resilience of populations I Prevention: peace building and non-violent conflict resolution and prevention. Funding of between $5000 and $10,000 is available for projects, lasting up to a year. Closing date: 8 November 2013. I tinyurl.com/q7kssdu
info
Moving forward on reversal theory
For more, see www.bps.org.uk/funds Funding bodies should e-mail news to Elizabeth Beech on elibee@bps.org.uk for possible inclusion
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FEATURE
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The age of the superhuman Christian Jarrett gets to grips with cyborg technology
ention cyborgs and thoughts usually turn to the deadly man–machine hybrids that stalk the world in sci-fi films. But cyborgs are already here. It’s not just pacemakers and replacement hips. Hundreds of thousands of people have bionic sensory implants interfacing with their brains; mass-market mind-controlled prosthetics are around the corner; and for most of us, our mobile
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Choi, C.Q. (2013, 20 February). Temporary tattoos could make electronic telepathy and telekinesis possible. Io9. Retrieved 18 April 2013 from tinyurl.com/adbw83e Clausen, J. (2008). Moving minds: Ethical aspects of neural motor prostheses. Biotechnology Journal, 3, 1493–1501. Cohen Kadosh, R., Soskic, S., Iuculano, T. et al. (2010). Modulating neuronal activity produces specific and long-
phones have become extensions of our minds. All the while, companies like Google are busy working on devices that promise ever greater person–machine integration.
Replacing broken parts Definitions of cyborgs vary, but a popular criterion is that there is an embedding or melding of technology with the biological human form, especially the brain. The most ubiquitous way this is already happening is in the use of bionic implants to replace lost sensory functions. Take the cochlear implant. Many deaf people have an intact auditory nerve but they have lost the function of the hair cells found in the snail-like cochlear located in their inner ear. The cochlear implant acts as a replacement for these cells and translates sounds into electrical impulses that stimulate the still-functioning auditory nerve. After several experimental prototypes through the 1960s and 70s, effective cochlear
lasting changes in numerical competence. Current Biology, 20(22), 2016–2020. Cohen Kadosh, R., Levy, N., O'Shea, J. et al. (2012). The neuroethics of noninvasive brain stimulation. Current Biology, 22, R108–R111. Dagnelie, G. (2012). Retinal implants: Emergence of a multidisciplinary field. Current Opinion in Neurology, 25(1), 67.
implants have been commercially available since the 1980s. For people born deaf, the timing of the implantation makes all the difference. Because of the way the auditory cortex develops, the earlier a congenitally deaf child can receive a cochlear implant, the better, at least in terms of their speech development. In a review published last year, Andrej Kral and Anu Sharma wrote that implantation at primary-school age or later means normal speech production and understanding will not be achieved. But this is a controversial issue – deaf children with an implant tend not to learn sign language and so don’t become part of the mainstream deaf community. Kral who’s based at the Institute of Audioneurotechnology and Department of Experimental Otology, Hannover School of Medicine, makes a distinction between the vast majority of deaf children who are born to hearing parents, and the minority of deaf children born to deaf parents. The latter he believes should be raised bilingually with speech and sign. ‘The best therapy is the very early implantation that gives the child the opportunity for taking the best of both worlds – the signed and spoken,’ he says. Although at a far more experimental stage of development, implants are also available to compensate for blindness caused by degeneration of photoreceptors in the retina. The implant converts light into a signal that stimulates the retinal ganglion or bipolar cells, which would normally receive input from the lost photoreceptors. In turn, these intermediate cells pass on the signal to the optic nerve and into the brain. In 2011 the Argus II, made by the California company Second Sight, became the first retinal implant to receive a licence for use in Europe (FDA approval in the States followed earlier this year). Users vary in what they can see, but most report patterns of light, movement and colours, and in some cases even the ability to read short sentences. An early patient, Ron ‘the man with a bionic eye’, told the BBC in a 2009 documentary: ‘After you’ve seen nothing for 30 years but darkness,
Giles, J. (2012). Implantable gadgets get closer. New Scientist, 214(2864), 22. Hochberg, L. R., Bacher, D., Jarosiewicz, B. et al. (2012). Reach and grasp by people with tetraplegia using a neurally controlled robotic arm. Nature, 485(7398), 372–375. Iuculano, T. & Cohen Kadosh, R. (2013). The mental cost of cognitive enhancement. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(10), 4482–4486.
Kral, A. & Sharma, A. (2012). Developmental neuroplasticity after cochlear implantation. Trends in neurosciences, 35(2), 111–122. McGee, E.M. & Maguire Jr. G.Q. (2001). Implantable brain chips: Ethical and policy issues. Information Liberation. Retrieved 18 April 2013 from tinyurl.com/mg5epka Peters, T., Klingberg, S., Zrenner, E. & Wilhelm, B. (2012). Emotional
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suddenly to be able to see light again is truly wonderful.’ These results sound promising, but Gislin Dagnelie at the Lions Vision Research and Rehabilitation Center, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, warns us not to get carried away. ‘All types of implants that connect with the remaining retinal cells in patients whose rods and cones have been destroyed by disease will have to become much more sophisticated before the information they convey will allow implantees to perform routine everyday tasks like reading and fine hand–eye coordination,’ he says. Aside from the inevitable risks and strain of the surgery required to insert an implant, the initial programming of the device and subsequent visual training also remain lengthy, arduous procedures. From a psychological perspective, there’s a need to manage and monitor patient expectations and coping. Promisingly, the first ever study to look at the well-being of retinal implant patients, led by Tobias Peters, found that levels of psychological distress actually improved over the course of a retinal implant trial.
Connecting with external technology Another form of cyborg technology that may soon be licensed for clinical use is a brain implant that allows patients to interface mentally with an external prosthetic limb or other device. In 2012 researchers reached a new milestone by demonstrating that this technology could enable paralysed patients to use thoughtpower to reach and grasp objects with a robotic arm. The research, led by John Donoghue at the Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, involved a microelectrode array – ‘BrainGate’ – being implanted onto the surface of the patients’ motor cortex. This was an advance on earlier attempts at brain–machine interfacing, which relied on recording the surface electrical activity of the brain and required weeks or months of training. Patients were
wellbeing of blind patients in a pilot trial with subretinal implants. Graefe's Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology, 1–5. Regalado, A. (2013, February 13). The brain is not computable. MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 18 April 2013 from www.technologyreview.com/ view/511421/the-brain-is-notcomputable/ Reis, J., Schambra, H.M., Cohen, L.G. et
Advocacy and ethics At what point should society treat an item of technology as part of someone’s body? Neil Harbisson, a colour-blind man, confronted this issue when he was prohibited from appearing in his passport photo wearing an eyeborg – a sensory substitution device that converts colour into sounds that vibrate the user’s skull. After campaigning and winning permission to wear the technology, Harbisson claims to be the world’s first official cyborg recognised by a government. In 2010 he started the Cyborg Foundation based in Barcelona, its mission to ‘promote the use of cybernetics as part of the human body and to defend cyborg rights’. Other prominent cyborg advocates include Guiseppe Vatinno, the world’s first transhumanist politician (in the Italian parliament), and Kevin Warwick, a cybernetics professor at the University of Reading who has previously wired his own nervous system to the internet (see ‘Kevin Warwick: real-life cyborg’, p.723). Other commentators, such as the ethicists Jens Clausen and Ellen McGee, warn there is an urgent need for a discussion about the ethical implications of cyborg technology. Until recently the emphasis on technological implants has mostly been on restoring lost function, but in the near future the extension and augmentation of normal function is likely to become ubiquitous. This raises the potential for social division Deep brain implants that alter behaviour between those who can afford and wish to raise further specific concerns become cyborgs and those who can’t or don’t. Another risk is that a burden will be placed on people with disabilities to use technology to compensate for their impairments, rather than society adapting to their needs. Deep brain implants that alter behaviour and interfere with reward processing raise further specific concerns about a loss or alteration to personhood. Brain–machine interfaces pose other issues around volition and responsibility. Who is culpable if a gun shot is fired by a mind-controlled prosthesis that malfunctions, and how easy will it be to prove that malfunction? McGee and others have gone further – what if implanted technology is exploited by governments or corporations to monitor and control citizens?
also unable to converse or engage in other activities while concentrating on controlling their brainwaves. The BrainGate device works differently: patients imagine moving their lost limb and hair-thin electrodes record the
al. (2009). Noninvasive cortical stimulation enhances motor skill acquisition over multiple days through an effect on consolidation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(5), 1590–1595. Santiesteban, I., Banissy, M.J., Catmur, C. & Bird, G. (2012). Enhancing social ability by stimulating right temporoparietal junction. Current Biology 22(23), 2274–2277.
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resulting neural activity, translating it into commands for the robot arm. Despite these advances, significant hurdles remain. Implantation of the electrode array requires significant surgery, and to function it has to be connected to
Sparrow, B., Liu, J. & Wegner, D.M. (2011). Google effects on memory: Cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips. Science, 333(6043), 776–778. Thomson, E.E., Carra, R. & Nicolelis, M.A. (2013). Perceiving invisible light through a somatosensory cortical prosthesis. Nature Communications, 4, 1482.
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a computer via bulky cables (Donoghue’s group say they are working on a wireless version that will soon overcome this problem). Another limitation is the lack of proprioceptive and tactile feedback from the robot limb – sensations which we take for granted when controlling our natural limbs. However, progress is being made on this front too. At the Association for the Advancement of Science conference held in Boston this year, Miguel Nicolelis, a neurobiologist at Duke University in North Carolina, presented new research showing that rats were able to detect infrared light after an electrode (receiving infrared information) was inserted into their somatosensory cortex. This development paves the way for prosthetics that release pulses of infra-red light, detect the rebound, and send the information to the brain where it could be interpreted as a touch-like sense for the artificial limb. It also demonstrates a proof of principle for technology to support sensory extension, potentially allowing humans to detect information, such as X-ray light, that is currently beyond their reach.
A team led by Janine Reis at NIH showed in a 2009 paper that anodal (positively charged) stimulation over the motor cortex led to enhanced learning of a complex motor task. More recently, in 2010, Cohen Kadosh and his colleagues reported that tDCS over the parietal lobes enhanced numerical skills. And just last year a team at UCL targeted the temporal-parietal junction and found that stimulation here improved participants’ performance on a social task that required perspective taking. Part of the reason for the raised expectations around tDCS is that the equipment is extremely portable (unlike the machinery required for transcranial magnetic stimulation – another technique used for cognitive enhancement). Indeed, home tDCS kits can already be purchased on the internet for less than $200 and there are YouTube videos explaining how to build your own device. The accessibility of the technology and the hype around its potential applications has prompted several neuroscientists to warn about the urgent ethical issues this raises (see ‘Advocacy and ethics’, p.721). In an essay published last year Cohen Kadosh and his colleagues warned that little is known about the best way to use the technology, and that it would be especially easy for amateurs or untrained clinicians to stimulate the wrong brain areas. The authors raise particular concerns in relation to young children – the effects of stimulation are particularly unpredictable when it comes to the developing brain and there are issues around children’s ability to give their informed consent. ‘tDCS alone is of little use,’ says Cohen Kadosh. ‘The advantage of it is when it is combined with a cognitive training, rather than just applied alone to the brain. You need to know which brain region to target, and this is defined based on different factors including the type of training, the age of your subject, and his/her cognitive
abilities. In addition, people might be tempted to stimulate too much, and by this cause damage, rather than any improvement.’ Another worrying factor is the possibility that enhancement in one domain could lead to a detriment of function in another. This possibility was made plain in a study Cohen Kadosh published with Teresa Iuculano earlier this year, in which 19 participants spent time learning new numerical symbols. tDCS over the parietal lobes accelerated the learning, but it impaired the process whereby this knowledge became implicit. Stimulation over dorsolateral prefrontal cortex had the opposite effect. ‘I am not against enhancement,’ says Cohen Kadosh, ‘but we need to know the best way to optimise it, and at the moment we are still experimenting.’
Extending the mind
The cyborg revolution is not just about replacement parts, brain recording and brain stimulation. There’s also an increasing sense that we’re outsourcing our minds to digital technology. ‘When I write with a browser open in the background, it feels like the browser is Stimulating the brain an extension of myself,’ said psychologist As well as recording brain activity, neural Stephen Kosslyn in answer to an annual implants can also be used to deliberately Edge.org question about the effects of the alter brain function. Implants that internet. For Geoffrey Miller at the stimulate the brain are being investigated University of New Mexico, sites like BBC as a therapeutic treatment for mental News are extending his perception, illnesses like anorexia, major depression ‘becoming my sixth sense for world and OCD. However, it is for the events’ (find all the answers at neurodegenerative condition Parkinson’s tinyurl.com/aht2zat). that the technology has already been These feelings were lent empirical adopted in clinical practice for patients support in a 2011 study that tested who don’t respond to drug treatments. In people’s memory for trivia facts they’d this case, the electrical stimulation is used typed into a computer. Those told that the to rebalance function in the motor computer would save their entries were far systems of the brain. less likely to recall the correct facts than So far, we’ve heard about embedded those told that the entries would be technology being used to replace or deleted. A follow-up study ameliorate lost sensory or found that people were better motor functions. However, at remembering which folder a run of recent studies has they’d typed entries into, rather also shown the potential for than the entries themselves. external brain stimulation ‘One could argue that this is techniques to augment an adaptive use of memory,’ healthy mental functioning, Sparrow and her colleagues thus raising the prospect of concluded, ‘to include the the proverbial ‘thinking cap’ computer and online searches becoming a must-have as an external memory system accessory. that can be accessed at will.’ Generating particular Any merging of our minds excitement is transcranial with Google is only likely to direct current stimulation increase in the near future as (tDCS), which involves the company joins others in placing electrodes directly the industry in seeking new on the scalp to apply weak ways to incorporate the electrical currents to the Google glass – a form of wearable computing that feeds the wearer internet into our daily brain, affecting its function. information from the internet about what’s in front of them
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Kevin Warwick: real-life cyborg In March 2002 a 100-electrode ‘BrainGate’ implant was fired into the median nerves of my left arm in a two-hour neurosurgical operation in Oxford. This was the first time the implant had been used in any human and it successfully remained in my nervous system for just over three months. Once the implant was in place the experiment involved several features: 1. The control of a robot hand directly from neural signals, along with proprioceptive tactile feedback from sensors in the hand’s fingers. 2. This was repeated with myself in New York and the hand in England, so I could feel the force applied by the hand. My nervous system was extended over the internet. 3. Use of extra-sensory, ultrasonic input to give me a good sense of distance to objects. 4. My wife also had electrodes implanted and we communicated telegraphically, nervous system to nervous system. I did not need the implant for medical reasons, this was carried out for scientific and medical experimental purposes. Partly it was to assess the potential use of such an implant for paralysed patients (for which it subsequently is being successfully used) and partly to investigate the potential of the human brain to take on, understand and make use of opportunities such as new senses. So it involved both therapy and enhancement aspects. Carrying out such an experiment in 2002 raised many technical challenges in getting the human nervous system and a computer network to communicate with each other. It proved to be an enormous learning experience as well as an exciting, pioneering experiment into cyborg technology. Whilst it is clear that such technology can enable those who are paralysed, it is worth remembering that all humans are severely limited in what we can do and how our brains perform. Such technology opens up the distinct possibility of human enhancement, co-evolving with our technological inventions, just as science fiction has predicted.
activities. In January this year, Google cofounder Sergey Brin was spotted on the New York subway sporting a pair of hitech glasses that feature a miniature screen that displays data to the wearer. Known as Google Glass, the soon-to-be-available device is a form of wearable computing that feeds the wearer information from the internet about what’s in front of them, as well as, potentially, broadcasting the user’s perspective to the world.
The future The cyborg developments discussed so far are either already here or soon will be. Looking further into the future we find the promise of substitute brain parts, implanted gadgets, and even virtual immortality. In 2011 Matti Mintz of Tel Aviv University in Israel replaced part of a rat’s cerebellum with a chip that imitated the lost function. Unlike a brain implant that sends signals from the brain to an external device, this research demonstrated it’s possible to record a signal from one part of the brain, analyse it and then send an onward message to a different brain system. It’s an exciting proof of principle that could lead to digital solutions for tomorrow’s braindamaged patients.
Meanwhile software researchers at Autodesk in Toronto reported last year on their grisly research with human cadavers, which demonstrated conventional consumer gadgets still function and interface as usual when they’re embedded in human flesh. According to a report in New Scientist, there are still issues around infection prevention and the replacement of broken devices, but the day is surely coming closer that we will have our mobile devices fully merged with our bodies. In a related development, another group based at the University of California at San Diego is working on tattoo-like circuits that can detect surface brain waves, or localised muscle activity from the body. This increases the feasibility that we might soon control domestic products or vehicles merely with our thoughts. What if we end up with so many embedded computer parts that we’re more machine than person? Bruce Hood at the University of Bristol and author of The Self Delusion believes this could pose an interesting challenge to our sense of self and identity. ‘Like the proverbial Ship of Theseus, most of us believe that we are more than the sum of our parts,’ he says. ‘We cut our hair or nails but we do not feel we are diminished. We can even lose an organ or a limb and remain the same
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person. But where does one draw the line? What about losing one neuron or two? Or indeed replacing them with someone else's or an artificial mechanism? Inevitably as our technologies develop to repair and replace our bodies, we must eventually accept that we are not the individuals that we think we are.’ The 2045 initiative launched by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in 2011 takes this idea to the extreme. The movement accepts the prediction by influential US futurologist Ray Kurzweil that within a few decades it will be possible to replace all human parts with technological substitutes. The project’s ultimate goal is for us to be able to upload our minds into a non-biological body, thus making us immortal. There are, not surprisingly, serious grounds for scepticism – Nicolelis, for one, is on record saying it will never happen because the brain is ‘not computable’. Nonetheless, you may want to put 2045 in your diary. This, according to 2045.com, is ‘the time when substanceindependent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive!’ I Dr Christian Jarrett is The Psychologist’s staff journalist. chrber@bps.org.uk
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Searching for superhuman Christopher C. French navigates the outer limits as he considers how psychologists should respond to extraordinary claims No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless that testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish. David Hume, Of Miracles, 1748
How should a fair-minded rational person respond when confronted with claims of apparently superhuman abilities? Is it wise to simply reject any such claims that exceed your personal assessment of what is humanly possible? This article argues that it would be a mistake to do so without a proper consideration of the quality of evidence in their support. Although most such claims will not withstand proper critical scrutiny, a few will do so. Such cases highlight the responsibility that psychologists hold in terms of providing accurate information regarding the limits of human nature.
questions resources
French, C.C. & Stone, A. (in press). Anomalistic psychology: Exploring paranormal belief and experience. London: Palgrave Macmillan. (Publication date: November 2013) Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit: www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/apru The Skeptic magazine: www.skeptic.org.uk The Skeptic’s Dictionary: www.skepdic.com
references
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What is best strategy for minimising both Type 1 and Type 2 errors in the context of claims of superhuman ability?
Barber, T.X., Spanos, N.P. & Chaves, J.F. (1974). Hypnosis, imagination, and human potentialities. New York: Pergamon Press. Carroll, R.T. (2003). The skeptic’s dictionary: A collection of strange beliefs, amusing deceptions and dangerous delusions. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons. French, C.C. (1992). Factors underlying belief in the paranormal: Do sheep
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hat is the appropriate response to reports of superhuman powers? Back in 1748 the Scottish philosopher David Hume defined a miracle as an event that violates a law of nature, a definition that would include most, if not all, claims of superhuman powers. Hume went on to argue, however, that such testimony is, to all intents and purposes, never available. After all, the evidence that laws of nature are sometimes violated is, to say the least, thin on the ground. Most scientists would probably argue that it is nonexistent. In contrast, the evidence that people sometimes make mistakes or even deliberately deceive others is all around us. Therefore it is always more rational to assume that someone reporting a miracle, including the witnessing or even possession of superhuman powers, is either mistaken or lying. Although Hume’s argument is indeed powerful when applied to miracles defined as violations of laws of nature, it clearly begs a question: In the absence of a comprehensive and totally accurate understanding of such laws, how can we actually be sure that a law of nature has indeed been violated? As the other articles in this issue clearly demonstrate, many of the feats achieved by those at the high extreme end
Is it always necessary to fully evaluate all available evidence relating to a particular claim of this kind before rejecting or accepting it?
and goats think differently? The Psychologist, 5, 295–299. French, C. (2009, 12 May). Scientists put psychic’s paranormal claims to the test. The Guardian. Retrieved 15 July 2013 from tinyurl.com/o26l2p French, C. (2012, 31 October). Halloween challenge: Psychics submit their powers to a scientific trial. The Guardian. Retrieved 13 January 2013 from tinyurl.com/boyu2tc
of the distribution of normal human abilities might well initially be viewed with considerable scepticism, they appear to be so mind-boggling. But these abilities can be demonstrated repeatedly under wellcontrolled conditions, and so we must accept that any such initial reaction of knee-jerk rejection is unjustified. Do extraordinary, innate talents exist? Howe et al. (1998) largely rejected the traditional view of innate talent, in particular finding little evidence for advance indications of domain-specific talents. Instead, they drew attention to other factors such as, with few exceptions (e.g. savants), high levels of performance requiring long-term practice and training. It should be noted, however, that not all commentators on this target article accepted their conclusions, and we can point to seemingly contradictory case studies. For example, Luria’s (1968) classic The Mind of a Mnemonist documents the amazing memory feats of Solomon Shereshevsky, who lived from 1886 to 1958. Despite being of only average intelligence, Shereshevsky could memorise complex mathematical formulae, huge matrices of random numbers, or long poems in foreign languages in a matter of minutes. What is more, he could recall such information accurately several years later. His incredible memory appeared to be based largely upon exceptionally strong synaesthesia and not the result of deliberate practice with mnemonic techniques. Regardless of the status of innate talent, many stunning mental feats, such as those demonstrated by many competitors in the World Memory Championships, do appear to be the result of natural ability plus expertise gained through many years of practice. Take Ron ‘Suki’ King’s achievement of simultaneously playing draughts against 385 opponents in 3 hours and 44 minutes – and beating every single one of them! Whereas his opponents could ponder each move for some time, King could devote only about 35 seconds to each entire game (Myers, 2002). And would you believe that anyone could identify a piece of music merely by looking
French, C.C. & Stone, A. (in press). Anomalistic psychology: Exploring paranormal belief and experience. London: Palgrave Macmillan. French, C.C. & Wilson, K. (2007). Cognitive factors underlying paranormal beliefs and experiences. In S. Della Sala (Ed.) Tall tales about the mind and brain: Separating fact from fiction (pp.3–32). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Howe, M.J.A., Davidson, J.W. & Sloboda, J.A. (1998). Innate talents: Reality or myth? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21, 399–442. Hyman, R. (1977). ‘Cold reading’: How to convince strangers that you know all about them. The Zetetic, 1, 18–37. Hyman, R. (1989). The psychology of deception. Annual Review of Psychology, 40, 133–154. Kuhn, G., Amlani, A.A. & Rensink, R.A.
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deals with alleged superpowers that, upon at the groove patterns on a vinyl record closer inspection, turn out to be not so (younger readers please note: this was an super after all. ancient method for recording sounds)? Although it is hard to believe, Dr Arthur B. Lintgen possessed this very ability, as confirmed by none other than the archNon-superpowers sceptic, James Randi (Carroll, 2003). The Sometimes we fall into the trap of good doctor never pretended that his attributing superpowers to individuals amazing ability was based upon anything when the truth is that virtually anyone other than his own vast knowledge of who is reasonably healthy would be able orchestral music from Beethoven onwards, to perform the feats in question without combined with an ability to tell from the any special training. Most of us have just slight variations in texture such aspects as never tried. the duration and volume of a passage. This Perhaps the prime example of such an superpower is unlikely to form the basis of alleged ability is fire walking, the practice next summer’s Hollywood blockbuster but of walking on hot coals or cinders (Carroll, it is still the case that few people would bet 2003; Leikind & McCarthy, 1991). This on such an ability being possible. particular feat forms part of religious The lesson here is simple. Do not rely rituals in many parts of the world and has solely upon your initial boggle rating as an been embraced by members of the New infallible guide when you hear about some Age movement as proof of the power of amazing feat. Being properly sceptical mind over matter. There is no doubt that demands the sight of someone suspending calmly strolling across judgement until glowing embers with bare you have had feet certainly looks the chance to impressive, and the embers assess the are indeed extremely hot evidence in (typically between 1000° support of a and 1200° F). Yet if the claim. On rare bed of hot coals has been occasions, the properly prepared, this is outcome may something that anyone surprise you. can do. Of course, The explanation lies the ghost of purely in the physics of David Hume the situation. Different would be fully substances at the same justified in temperature contain pointing out that different amounts of heat none of the energy and also differ in examples given terms of heat conductivity. so far actually Think of a cake baking in violate a law of an oven. If you open the nature (although oven door, you’ll feel a rush of A sceptical friend of mine once the existence of warm air. If you quickly touch did a fire walk while chanting Hume’s ghost may ‘burn in hell, burn in hell’ the cake to see if it is done, you well do so). My will not get burned. But if your point here is that hand happens to make brief it is not immediately obvious that these contact with the metal baking tin or oven feats are actually within the bounds of rack, you will end up with a painful blister. human capability. The rest of this article The truth is that the air, the cake and the
(2008). Towards a science of magic. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 349–354. Lamont, P. & Wiseman, R. (1999). Magic in theory: An introduction to the theoretical and psychological elements of conjuring. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press. Leikind, B.J. & McCarthy, W.J. (1991). An investigation of firewalking. In K. Frazier (Ed.) The hundredth monkey
and other paradigms of the paranormal (pp.182–193). Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. Luria, A.R. (1968). The mind of a mnemonist. New York: Basic Books. Macnick, S.L. & Martinez-Conde, S. (2010). Sleights of mind: What the neuroscience of magic reveals about our everyday deceptions. New York: Henry Holt and Co. Myers, D.G. (2002). Intuition: Its powers
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metal are all at the same temperature but they differ greatly in terms of the heat energy they can hold and their ability to conduct heat. Air can hold very little heat energy and is a poor conductor. Metal holds a lot of heat energy and is an excellent conductor. The glowing embers of a well-prepared fire walk do not contain as much heat energy as their red glow might lead us to believe. Provided that you walk across at a reasonable pace and you do not try to walk too far, your feet will not burn. There is no need to maintain the correct mental state by chanting a mantra such as ‘cool wet grass, cool wet grass’. In fact, a sceptical friend of mine once did a fire walk while chanting ‘burn in hell, burn in hell’! A word of warning before readers rush out to prepare their own fire walks. Accidents can and do happen, sometimes because the coals have not been properly prepared. Last year, 21 people were treated for burns at a fire-walking event in California organised by motivational speaker, Tony Robbins. Some years ago, Professor Richard Wiseman collaborated with BBC1’s Tomorrow’s World programme to test the belief that successful fire walking is a paranormal phenomenon involving a protective ‘force field’ around the fire walker’s body. Three fire walkers holding this belief put their faith to the test by attempting to walk across the coals for longer than physics dictates should be humanly possible. They jumped off the coals after about 20 feet, suffering burns to the soles of their feet (much to the amusement of the commentators). Another example of a feat that strikes the casual observer as requiring extraordinary powers is one that is commonly featured in performances by stage hypnotists. The hypnotist will often give a susceptible volunteer the hypnotic suggestion that their body has become totally rigid. The volunteer’s rigid body is then suspended horizontally between two chairs and, just for good measure, the hypnotist may then sit or stand upon the still-rigid body. The fact is that when subjects are positioned in the correct way
and perils. New Haven, CT & London: Yale University Press. Nickell, J. (1993). Looking for a miracle: Weeping icons, relics, stigmata, visions and healing cures. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus. Nickell, J. (2013). The science of miracles: Investigating the incredible. Amherst, NY: Prometheus. Nickerson, R.S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in
many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2, 175–220. Randi, J. (1982a). Flim-flam: Psychics, ESP, unicorns, and other delusions. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus. Randi, J. (1982b). The truth about Uri Geller. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus. Randi, J. (1987). The faith healers. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus. Randi, J. (1990). The mask of Nostradamus. New York: Scribners.
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Once convinced, sick villagers pay for worthless and ineffective ‘healing’ for their ailments. The Rationalists turn up during performances by the god-men, proclaiming that the stunts are based upon nothing more than trickery. They repeat the stunts themselves, explaining the techniques that lie behind them. In one memorable sequence, two volunteers pull a heavy jeep along by means of two ropes tied to the vehicle and to hooks threaded through the skin on their backs. So far we have considered amazing feats that only a few people could perform, followed Superhuman strength? Bert Trautmann continued by feats that in fact pretty much playing after suffering a broken neck in the 1956 anyone could manage. Yet in both FA Cup Final cases the ‘superpowers’ do involve what they appear to involve: you really mentalists, etc.). Magicians can be could believe your own eyes. I will close described as engaging in ‘honest will some examples of alleged superpowers deception’. As members of the audience, that are not at all what they appear to be. we know that what we are seeing is a trick that does not involve any true violations of the laws of nature even though we You can’t always believe your probably do not have the faintest idea how the effect is being achieved. We simply own eyes enjoy the surprising effects and the skill There is no shortage of people around required to produce them. the world who claim to have miraculous Whereas experimental psychologists powers and are eager to convince others get excited about, say, a perceptual bias of their claims. In general, such claimants that results in the misperception of the fall into two broad categories: those who length of a line by a few percentage points, are deluding themselves (as well as magicians can apparently make elephants others) and those who are simply and even skyscrapers disappear! It is deliberate con-artists. In the world of the surprising therefore that it is only relatively psychic con-artists, these two categories recently (with a few notable exceptions are often referred to as ‘shut eyes’ and such as Jastrow and Binet; see Hyman, ‘open eyes’, respectively. In principle, 1989) that the psychology of magic has there is a potential third category: those received the attention it deserves (see who genuinely possess superhuman Kuhn et al., 2008; Lamont & Wiseman, abilities. However, given the general lack 1999; Macnick & Martinez-Conde, 2010). of individuals who appear to be able to It would certainly appear that demonstrate their superhuman powers psychologists might learn something reliably and repeatedly under welluseful about attention, perception and controlled conditions, it seems quite memory by considering the techniques likely that this may well be an empty set. used by magicians. It is worth mentioning one other In particular, the theme of cognitive category in this context, that of magicians bias is key in magic and runs through (also known as conjurors, illusionists, anomalistic psychology in general. Although our cognitive systems perform amazing feats every second of our waking lives, we are also prone to systematic telepathy. Journal of the Society for cognitive biases that can affect perception, Psychical Research, 67, 184–199. memory and judgement. There is a large Wagstaff, G.F. (1999). Hypnosis. In S. and growing body of research that such Della Sala (Ed.) Mind myths: biases often lead individuals to believe that Exploring popular assumptions about the mind and brain (pp.187–204). they have had a paranormal experience Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. when in fact they have not (French, 1992; French & Wilson, 2007; French & Stone, in press). Perhaps the most pervasive cognitive bias is that of confirmation bias, the all-too-human tendency to favour
they can support a much heavier weight than most of us would naturally assume – no hypnosis required (Barber et al., 1974). It is often assumed that hypnosis can lead to superhuman levels of performance in a wide range of areas including improvements in memory, eyesight, strength and pain tolerance. In experimental studies, differences of this kind are typically only found when an inappropriate repeated-measures design has been employed (Wagstaff, 1999). The demand characteristics in such studies are pretty obvious: participants have a tendency to ‘hold back’ in the nonhypnotic condition and then try harder after being put through the hypnotic induction procedure. In between-group studies, volunteers who have been through a hypnotic induction procedure typically do not outperform properly motivated control groups. Such findings are no doubt relevant when considering reports of amazing feats of strength or endurance in everyday life. There is only a limited amount of anecdotal evidence to support claims of superhuman strength (e.g. mothers lifting cars to rescue their children), but if such reports are accurate they may be another indication of extreme levels of performance in highly motivated individuals. Think of Bert Trautmann, goalkeeper for Manchester City, famously playing the final stages of the 1956 FA Cup Final with a broken neck. An impressive stunt demonstrating just what ordinary healthy adults can achieve without any special training was featured a few years ago in a wonderful documentary called Guru Busters, produced and directed by Robert Eagle. The programme followed the activities of the Indian Rationalists, a campaigning group of sceptics whose aim is to protect poor villagers from exploitation by the socalled ‘god-men’. The god-men perform apparently amazing stunts, such as walking through fire, hanging themselves on hooks, and materialising objects out of thin air in order to convince the villagers that they possess superhuman powers.
Roe, C.A. & Roxburgh, E. (2013). An overview of cold reading strategies in C. Moreman (Ed.) The Spiritualist Movement: Speaking with the dead in America and around the world. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Rowland, I. (2002). The full facts book of cold reading (3rd edn). London: Ian Rowland. Sheldrake, R. & Smart, P. (2003). Experimental tests for telephone
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evidence that supports beliefs that we already hold (Nickerson, 1998). People are very poor intuitive statisticians. In many everyday situations, we make decisions based upon probabilities but we are simply not very good at doing so. Our intuitions often lead us astray. One classic example of this is the so-called Birthday Problem: How many randomly selected people would you need to have gathered together to have a 50/50 chance that at least one pair shared the same birthday (ignoring year of birth)? The actual answer is only 23, a number that strikes most people as being far too low. In many situations, therefore, we might feel tempted to reject ‘mere coincidence’ as an explanation for an ostensibly paranormal event and prefer instead to believe that we have tapped into some mysterious psychic superpower. The same principle lies behind ‘precognitive dreams’: with over seven billion people on the planet, even if we only remember on average one dream each per night, that is a huge number of opportunities for the events in that dream to subsequently ‘come true’. It would be more spooky if that never happened! Or consider so-called ‘telephone telepathy’, where we think of a friend we haven’t heard from for ages, and at that precise moment they call us. Some claim this can be demonstrated under properly controlled conditions (e.g. Sheldrake & Smart, 2003). Yet my students and I have consistently failed to replicate such effects. The same applies to an entire gamut of claimed superpowers – psychic healing, dowsing, psychokinetic metal-bending, divining the contents of sealed envelopes, levitation, bilocation (i.e. being in two places at once), inedia (i.e. surviving without eating), stigmata, serpenthandling, prophecy, and thoughtography (i.e. the alleged ability to psychically produce images on film). If you would like to learn more about these and many other fascinating claims of superpowers, books by James Randi (e.g. 1982a, 1982b, 1987, 1990) and Joe Nickell (e.g. 1993, 2013) are a good place to start. Suffice it to say that neither of these veteran investigators has yet been convinced that they have witnessed a miracle.
With great power… It is not unreasonable to adopt a sceptical stance when you hear claims of amazing abilities, provided that your stance is one of scepticism in the true sense of the
The ‘mind readers’ Psychic readers, whether they channel the spirits of the dead or tune in to vaguely defined ‘psychic vibes’, can apparently tell strangers all kinds of personal information about themselves. Yet despite typically claiming to be at least 90 per cent accurate in their readings, the performance of psychics and mediums under properly controlled conditions falls woefully short of that (for a couple of recent examples, see French, 2009, 2012). Why the difference? The answer may be that these apparently impressive performances under less wellcontrolled conditions involve a mixture of cold reading and hot reading. Cold reading is a technique that you could use to convince complete strangers that you know all about them, a very useful skill to have if you want to pretend that you are psychic (Hyman, 1977; Roe & Roxburgh, 2013; Rowland, 2002). The most basic type of cold reading depends upon the Barnum effect, named after the entertainer whose shows were said to have ‘something for everyone’. A typical Barnum profile consists of statements which, although they sound very perceptive, actually apply to just about everyone, e.g. ‘You have a lot of unused potential that you have not used to your advantage’ and ‘You have found it unwise to reveal too much of yourself to others’. Typically, when people are presented with profiles consisting entirely of Barnum statements, they are impressed by their accuracy. Of course, if the cold reader is directly interacting with the sitter, many more sources of information can be exploited. A skilled cold reader can tell a lot about a person by simply observing them and will vary the reading according to whether their sitter is old or young, male or female, upper class or working class, and so on. But it is a mistake to think that you can deduce lots of detailed and specific information about a person by picking up on subtle nonverbal communication cues – even if Sherlock Holmes and Derren Brown appear to be able to do so! The success of cold reading relies much more upon the clever use of language than the rather unreliable art of decoding such cues. For example, psychics ask a very large number of direct questions of their clients but do so in a subtle way that implies that they are just asking for confirmation of something they already know. It is important to point out that many, perhaps most, self-professed psychics are probably not deliberate con-artists and instead genuinely believe that they do possess a special psychic gift. Those who are sincere appear to be picking up on the same sources of information as the deliberate fraudster but in a rather less systematic way (and hence their readings are typically less impressive). Many psychic fraudsters are not content to rely upon the somewhat hit-andmiss approach of cold reading and instead resort to hot reading – that is, doing their background research on their sitters before the reading even begins. Traditionally, such techniques have included surreptitiously going through the contents of a sitter’s handbag, using stooges to feedback information from members of the audience, or simply using Google, Facebook and Twitter. The challenge with hot reading is often to ensure the reader does not appear too accurate! Their credibility is enhanced by occasionally getting things wrong. After all, if the performance was just based upon trickery, they would get it 100 per cent right, wouldn’t they?
word: adopting an attitude of openminded doubt towards all unproven claims until you have had the opportunity to properly assess the evidence. It is not about dismissing claims simply because they exceed your personal ‘boggle threshold’. Very occasionally, amazing claims do turn out to be true – but more often than not, they don’t. We, as psychologists, to a certain extent define what is considered to be ‘human nature’ and therefore what is ‘beyond human nature’. This means that we carry great responsibility for informing the public about what is and is not ‘miraculous’ when examining claims of superhuman powers. All too often, even with respect to less controversial claims, we fail to adequately test alternative explanations for our findings, preferring
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instead to explain results in terms of our favoured hypothesis. It may surprise many psychologists to learn that parapsychologists are often much more rigorous in this respect, as they know that their sometimes controversial findings will be subjected to rigorous critical scrutiny. To apply Hume’s advice properly, we must have a clear understanding of the bounds of human nature. How else can we know when they have been violated? Christopher C. French is at the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit, Goldsmiths, University of London C.French@gold.ac.uk
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