Sad, lonely people more likely to be ‘natural’ social psychologists (2018)

https://news.yale.edu/2018/03/15/study-sad-lonely-people-more-likely-be-natural-social-psychologists

by penguin_booze • 5 years ago

77 71 5 years ago

news.yale.edu

runawaybottle2• 5 years ago

There’s a reason why they are sad. Humans in groups are particularly disappointing.

devoutsalsa• 5 years ago

None of us is as dumb as all of us!

pattusk2• 5 years ago

a new study by Yale psychologists found a surprising group of people are particularly good at accurately assessing truths about humans’ “social nature”

I am not a social psychologist (whatever authority that title may grant one), but I wonder about how one goes from a few conclusion that may hold true under certain conditions to "truth about human nature".

For instance, "Do people work harder in groups or as individuals? "

I could see peer pressure being a motivating factor to work harder as a group. Among highly accomplished and productive peers a new group member might strive to prove themselves by over contributing to the group. I would also expect cultural factors and (im)proper management to play a role.

Arnt2• 5 years ago

"Do people work harder in groups or as individuals?" is not a yes/no question. It's a question they study, but they're not looking for a simple answer.

pattusk2• 5 years ago

That is my point, it's a complex question with multiple possible answers. But the test the study is based on reduces it to a binary problem.

Micoloth• 5 years ago

Well yes, any sad, lonely 14 year old would have told you so…

(not that they’d conduct a study, so it’s good to have scientific evidence)

lovecg• 5 years ago

Sharing as a person who has on occasion been sad and lonely.

Much like the difference between reading and writing, it’s very much possible to be skilled at understanding a social situation while at the same time having no clue how to respond appropriately.

For me, “reading the room” is easy. “Writing the room,” so to speak, on the other hand will probably remain a lifelong awkward learning experience, and I don’t think I’ll ever be “fluent” in it.

As is probably common, I did wonder if there’s something clinically wrong with me, but most screening tests I can find emphasize lack of understanding of social situations/facial expressions etc. which I’m just fine with.

ultimoo• 5 years ago

Could it be that you hesitate to "write" because you've accurately "read" the room?

E.g. a toddler may find it easier to kick around a ball on a lawn vs. a kid kicking it around on a soccer field with boundaries, goal posts, and rules. To extend the analogy, everyone thinks the toddler is cute and doing a great job, but only the kid's parents think she's playing well.

Cthulhu_• 5 years ago

There's merit in that; being highly conscious of others' behaviour makes one think others are similarly highly conscious, making you self-conscious and awkward.

I mean it's projection too; I'm very judgmental about people, thinking they look stupid, so I tend to avoid doing anything weird in case people think I look stupid.

Aerroon• 5 years ago

Could it be that you hesitate to "write" because you've accurately "read" the room?

And because you don't try (or try less often), you don't have as much experience with it.

fighterpilot2• 5 years ago

Or could it be that they can "read" because they can't "write" the room? If you struggle to interact, you probably pay much more attention to what's going on than other people, as part of an attempt to learn how to do it.

gonehome• 5 years ago

I think it’s a skill that’s possible to get better at, but getting better at it requires some misery (trying, failing, being uncomfortable, making social mistakes)

Being able to read the social situation is a prerequisite so if you’re truly good at that then it’s possible to improve.

I think it’s a mixture of taking a genuine interest in other people, being good at story telling, and being able to gauge the interest of others in what you’re talking about. There’s also a lot to good delivery (part of good story telling) - watching good stand up comedy you can see this in action.

It also helps to be doing or learning things that make for good story telling too.

Xplune13• 5 years ago

It feels like my mind got scanned. It is exactly the same in my case that I can read the room but I don't know how to behave or respond appropriately.

I keep evaluating lot of scenarios in my head when I'm in the room and try to find how the outcome of doing/saying that specific thing might be rather than doing/saying that thing and around half the time, the time of saying/doing that thing has passed before I could make the decision.

ianai2• 5 years ago

In my experience, people can over analyze and place too much emphasis on nonverbals like facial expressions. Ie it’s useful, sure, but don’t use nonverbals for the significant portion of your decision. That’s probably how you let prejudice into your actions.

mouzogu• 5 years ago

You could say that an extrovert is someone who is more inclined or predisposed to seeing the good in others whereas someone who is "sad, lonely" is more predisposed to seeing the bad.

Reminds me of the film There Will Be Blood, where Daniel Plainview says something like "I can only see the bad in others" (not exact quote). It makes it hard for him to form long lasting relations with anyone, or a successor he can trust.

But as a somewhat neurotic introvert I can often understand that sentiment. It's like I'm preprogrammed to see the bad in people before the good.

knaik946• 5 years ago

There is a link to "Yale survey: Are you a natural social psychologist?" at the end of the article.

https://yalesurvey.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1XOUyQ4Ux6deFBH

I took it and got a 36/40. I have taken one intro to social psych course after taking gen psych.

"Fantastic! Your score was better than approximately 99.5% of other people's scores. You have the ability to accurately infer how most people feel, think, and behave in social context without a background or little background in social psychology. In a way, you seem to be very good at capturing human's 'social nature'. This skill, which we call social psychological skill, has been linked to intelligence, a willingness to engage in complex thinking, melancholy, and introversion."

I think some of the questions I remember learning about in psych 101, like the bystander effect, but the ones I was surprised that I had intuition for were the questions that asked about how other people deal with strong negative emotions and what works for coping.

I think it's interesting that the article frame this skill as something that people in positions of power need but at the same time being introverted to begin with means people are less likely to try to attain those kinds of positions. I wonder if it'll continue to be a weakness of current governance long term because people prefer extroverts in those positions.

I also think it's worth mentioning the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie as a way to become better at some of the things people in the comment section are bringing up as an area that needs improvement for them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...

gauravjain132• 5 years ago

This is somewhat paradoxical, but I think leadership requires some level of delusion. If one truly sees things as they are, it’s hard to create narratives and mythologies requires to motivate/lead people.

Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field” comes to mind.

knaik946• 5 years ago

I don't think delusion is the best word for it. Delusion implies that the vision of people in leadership roles are unrealistic in some way. I think resiliently optimistic is probably a better term. I don't think most people are motivated by myth, they're motivated by good support.

ianai2• 5 years ago

I’ve thought it’s easier to figure a social situation out as an independent third party than to figure out a situation in the first person. That might be related to Jobs’ “reality distortion field”. But at the same time, people are finite and of course always going to be blind to the total context around them - in anything suitably complicated. So I wouldn’t put a lot into this.

chadcmulligan3• 5 years ago

I scored 34, but I just used the rule of thumb - people are stupid, particularly in groups.

antman• 5 years ago

Exactly the same score and strategy.

dusted• 5 years ago

I also scored 34, and I applied the same logic.. "whenever there's a possibility to do something stupid and selfish, that's what people will do" and it worked..

I'm also sad and lonely, I wonder why... :-D

Before reading the article, I'll speculate that the reason people are sad and lonely is because they understand how terrible humans generally are, but haven't found any way to benefit from this knowledge.

tux3• 5 years ago

Having had no psychology course, books, or other education, I get a 35/40 (97.3%).

Most of these sundry facts I suspect I learned by osmosis after spending too much time on the internet — but I would never have called myself a natural psychologist, so I don't know how much predictive power this study really has =)

fighterpilot2• 5 years ago

The bystander effect question that you mention was worded pretty poorly. The first sentence implied that the total probability is lower when there's more bystanders (which is definitely false in sufficiently large numbers), then in the second sentence their wording switches to marginal probability, which is correct. I of course knew what they meant, and answered correctly. But there were a handful of somewhat ambiguous questions like that. A handful I legitimately didn't know, such as whether people remember the last argument the best. 34/40.

paavohtl• 5 years ago

I got a pretty good score too (31/40, better than 81.9%). Though admittedly, while I have not studied university level social psychology I have read Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational [1], which covered many of the experiments presented in the quiz. It's an interesting and entertaining book, but it was a bit formulaic for my tastes, as every chapter tends to follow exactly the same structure. The experiments are presented well and are probably the best part of the book.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational

crazydoggers• 5 years ago

Also scored 36, 99.5%

After finishing I couldn’t believe it. I thought maybe it was part of a larger experiment telling you what you want to hear. So I took the test again answering randomly and got a horrible score and 20th percentile. (ie it’s a real score)

So much of this seems so incredibly obvious to me! I mean I guess it make sense when you think about it. If it was obvious to most people, then most people would make better (less selfish, less bias) decisions which we see they don’t do.

Some that particularly struck me were the ones about group think. Like passing someone in the gutter, in-group validation, group enhancement of extremism etc. I always have an almost knee jerk reaction to go against the group in lots of situations (if there’s a large group of people walking in a certain direction; I’ll assume they’re all lost and make my own way for instance)

Explains a lot! Thanks for the link.

And here’s a fun experiment. If I call out how much of downvoting and upvoting on sites like here on HN are about group think, other biases, rather than based on the individual comment, I bet it’ll get downvoted (because of those same reasons)!

nearbuy2• 5 years ago

Like seemingly everyone else in this thread, it told me I scored better than 99.5% of people (37).

By my count, of the commenters who posted a score so far, 5/13 (~40%) scored better than 99.5% of people and all of them scored better than 80% of people.

HN readers is obviously not an unbiased sample, nor is the subset that choose to reveal their scores. Still, I wouldn't put too much stock in this internet survey. They can be notoriously unreliable.

(As an aside, a number of questions are obvious because they're phrased as "True or false: X can never happen" (answer is false). The true ones don't use an absolute qualifier like "never". The use qualifiers like "usually" or "mostly".)

jodoherty• 5 years ago

38/40

I feel like I spent an entire decade mostly in contemplative reflection and observation as I searched for intrinsic meaning and purpose.

I imagine many others who score well have some similar period they've been through where it almost feels like they spent more time observing themselves and others living than actually living.

okokwhatever• 5 years ago

Your comment touched my heart so deeply it hurt! I feel exactly the same.

raynr• 5 years ago

After the first few questions in that link, I decided to choose the most cynical answer instead of the one I thought was "correct". Apart from one or two, most had answers that I could classify as more cynical than the rest.

32/40.

I'm not sure what this says about me or the survey.

Gunax• 5 years ago

I was writing something else, but I think you nailed it. If you give a quiz where the cynical answers are correct, then (gasp!) cynical people do well.

Of course I understand their point that social psychology is cynical, but I hope it isn't all cynical. I think there might be a publication bias here--studies which find that people act predictably and rationally don't become famous. No one would have heard of the Milgram experiment if everyone refused to shock the man.

Many of the questions are directly out of famous experiments where if you have read/heard about it, you know the correct answer. I do question if perhaps bored introverts just spend a lot of time reading books and articles instead of possessing some sort of innate insight into humanity.

rogual• 5 years ago

After spending that long answering their survey, the least they could do is tell me which ones I got wrong.

Twisol• 5 years ago

...Is the question corpus randomized? Why is nobody talking about this completely incomprehensible grapefruit question?

Bob experiences numerous positive things when surrounded by a grapefruit. He wins a little money at the lottery, listens to his favorite music, and eats his favorite meal. Is it possible that Bob infers that he likes this particular grapefruit more than other grapefruits, because he has experienced all these positive feelings around this grapefruit?

I can kind of understand what it's asking, but this is worse on my brain than "colorless green ideas sleep furiously". It feels like I've stepped into a surrealist novella.

Mordisquitos• 5 years ago

I also got confused by the grapefruit question. I was particularly confused by the “Bob infers that he likes this particular grapefruit more than other grapefruits” bit and had to read the question a few times to be sure I was parsing it right. If instead it said “Bob infers that the he likes grapefruits more than other fruits” it would make much more sense to me (as a question, not as a way to decide personal food preferences).

knaik946• 5 years ago

I had that question as well, I imagine only the order is randomized.

I took that question to be asking about tbe effects of positive mood and positive luck on the enjoyment of the grapefruit. If he had instead had bad luck, had a flat tire, and got an annoying ad jingle stuck in his head, would he feel he disliked that particular grapefruit more than other grapefruit? I personally said yes.

I agree though, some questions were very awkward in wording and I wonder what the optional questions about the symmetric vs asymmetric shape groupings was about.

00deadbeef2• 5 years ago

I read it as meaning Bob is superstitious and might consider that specific grapefruit to be his lucky grapefruit

99_00• 5 years ago

I'm naturally interested in psychology and pay attention to any media that discusses it stuff including popular books.

initplus• 5 years ago

Like the other commenters here, I scored >90% and have no education in psychology.

I would be more interested to hear from commenters who got a poor score on the test.

paperoli• 5 years ago

36/40 never studied psych but have read a couple of books. This test seems too easy, though I'm a natural test taker and can usually tell what answers most tests want.

nearbuy2• 5 years ago

Did anyone else do the optional survey at the end? It contains the following question:

If you wanted to create a company that is fair in terms of hiring practices, what percent of each of the following groups of people would you hire? [...] Please make sure the amounts you enter add about to approximately 100%. (The groups are Hispanic, White, Asian, and Black.)

What are they trying to learn from this, and how are you supposed to answer it?

1. You can't intentionally hire percentages of employees by race because that's illegal.

2. How do I make the amounts add up to approximately 100%? They left out some of the larger demographics (indigenous, and arab/Middle-Eastern are both larger populations than Black or Hispanic in my country).

Baeocystin• 5 years ago

I answered that I fundamentally reject the premise. It didn't throw an error. For all we know, they could actually be testing to see if people follow along with a contentious prompt or not.

_y5hn• 5 years ago

Not learned formally, and take with grains of uncertainty: 38/40 (which is also ~99.5% percentile). Some of the questions had very unclear framing though, so just picked the most likely choice to get through it fast. I guess the solitary type likes deeper thoughts and ponderings, rather than standard tests.

xtiansimon• 5 years ago

Obviously I earned the grade I made in social psy course 30 years ago. Still not meeting the expectations.

On another note I passed a particularly bizarre question about x and y random groups and wanted to go back. Can’t do this, so I ended up taking the quiz over again and screen shot a few of my (least) favorite questions. And I noticed complete willingness to answer differently on some questions and confidently the same on others.

I wonder if I’m more concerned about this grapefruit that’s missing from my fruit bowl.

00deadbeef2• 5 years ago

I got 29 which apparently is better than 71.4% of people. I expected to score far lower because I’m on the autistic spectrum.

rajnathani• 5 years ago

31/40 (81.9% percentile) here. Just for another data point. No background for me in psychology academically, but out of passion a little bit (eg: did read Thinking Fast and Slow).

robarr• 5 years ago

Whatever ‘human nature’ is, cultural and social layers make any answers rarely applicable to anything other than a relatively small universe of people, not universal truths.

“Do people work harder in groups or as individuals?” For example can be answered in one way or the other depending on social values, cultural traditions, and those even change thru time.

Ask your parents, ask younger generations, ask other ethnics groups or even ask yourself the same question in twenty years.

autosharp• 5 years ago

Is this article trolling?

He stressed that individuals who scored high on tests about human nature do not possess the same knowledge and skills as trained social psychologists. However, he also noted that while “natural” social psychologists will not replace actual psychologists, they could be important players in the real world.

They have found a new class of humans?

guerrilla2• 5 years ago

It's supposed to be like people eho are gifted in math but not actually educated in math.

tnzm• 5 years ago

Introverts are "naturally" underrepresented in normative discourse.

dmos62• 5 years ago

What is a social psychologist? Or, what is an asocial psychologist? Is it someone who's interested in people's psychology, but not in the people? What a term.

knaik946• 5 years ago

A social psychologist examines an individual in group dynamics and interpersonal relationships. It is still focused on the individual. Thing like personal prejudice, the sense of belonging, implicit bias, and effects of bullying are what social psychologist study.

On hacker news I expect the consequence of moving away from physical relationships to digital relationships, otaku, and parasocial relationships are pretty fascinating topics that fall under the research of social psychology.

It's different from sociology because it's focused on the individual. Sociology would instead be focused on the development of groups as a whole.

I am assuming by asocial you're referring to otaku as a concept and not someone's trauma response.

guerrilla2• 5 years ago

Social psychology is the scientific study of how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, and implied presence of others, 'imagined' and 'implied presences' referring to the internalized social norms that humans are influenced by even when they are alone.[1]
Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as being a result of the relationship between mental state and social situation, studying the conditions under which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors occur and how these variables influence social interactions.

npunt• 5 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_psychology

Borrible3• 5 years ago

It's sad that I have to ask, and I may become pretty lonely because of it, but has this study been replicated in the meantime?

...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

Just asking.

Isinlor• 5 years ago

The questions are fairly complex, so I could easily see that people better at reading comprehension, and people who generally read more, will answer better.

Additionally, the correct answers maybe compromised, since social psychology is one of the worst offenders in the replication crisis.

Borrible3• 5 years ago

Through self-replication stabilized replication crisis.

Now that sounds fun.

I smell infinite regress there.

Somebody should feed it.

knaik946• 5 years ago

This study isn't about the relationship in both directions. It's only really saying that lonely people might have a implicitly better understanding on the bigger trends that will face society. A total of six studies were examined.

https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/full/10.1027/1864-9335/a000...

Borrible3• 5 years ago

Thanks for pointing out.

And self-reported feelings of sadness and lonelyness could also be interpreted as symptoms of a more or less mild depression.

Which makes this study prone to the same problems of the hypothesis of depressive realism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism

ggm• 5 years ago

Fantastic! I am apparently a perceptive amateur sociologist despite disbelieving I had selected the 'appropriate' answers.

I am now convinced everyone gets this score, and the actual experiment is to test something else like extrinsic motivation to conform to an ideal, or suggestibility or something..

amelius• 5 years ago

Now I wonder if Covid turned everybody into natural social psychologists.

midjji• 5 years ago

Astonishing this is considered news, its been a story trope for centuries.

chadcmulligan3• 5 years ago

I thought the same, its a recurrent theme in Agatha Christies stories, amongst others.

cesarvarela• 5 years ago

34/40 here, I guess reading Dan Ariely stuff finally paid off. /s

I'm curious if there exists people getting scores of 20 or less, most answers are pretty obvious.

knaik946• 5 years ago

This same author published a more questionable conclusion based on the quiz linked at the bottom of this original article. "Those with autism make good social psychologists"

https://news.yale.edu/2019/09/09/those-autism-make-good-soci...

The original article is pretty interesting but I don't understand how the author was able to make the jump from a short 40 question survey to positing about ASD. The optional questions at the end of the survey were about how you feel about shapes. I am surprised that this passes as meaningful evidence of anything.

frizdabble• 5 years ago

Explains the arm-chair discussions on Clubhouse :-)

Sad, lonely people more likely to be ‘natural’ social psychologists (2018)

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