Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
Yesterday afternoon in the Scheuer room, Professor Andrew Ward lectured to a large audience about self control and regulating the self under conditions of limited attention. Introduced by Professor Frank Durgin, also a member of the Psychology department, Professor Ward kept his audience both entertained and engaged throughout the entire lecture with well made power point slides, and his signature sense of humor.
He began first by introducing us to the concept of self regulation and explained how it plays a very important role in understanding cognitive behaviors. He then explained how he first became interested in self control when he saw a study which found that drunk people are more helpful than sober people when asked to perform boring or tedious tasks.
He discussed how subjects can actually control their responses to tests that measure unconscious emotions or thoughts by describing a study involving a test for implicit prejudice. The study showed that prejudice scores could be reduced by half if subjects were told not to stereotype, suggesting that control relies in part on environmental cues. He then talked about arousal and aggression and how the most aggressive subjects in a study were those that were aroused and were in the presence of promoting cues, such as a poster of a violent film, a picture of an aggressive game, or Lord of the Rings battle music. The least aggressive people were not those that were not aroused however, they were the subjects that had been aroused but were in the presence of inhibiting cues, such as peaceful music, or pretty landscapes of beaches.
There are many implications suggested by the studies that were talked about in this lecture. For one thing, one study suggests that if you normalize thoughts they won’t be so difficult to suppress. This might very helpful in dealing with compulsions. And finally, when you are presenting the benefits of something, whether or not people pay attention to the best part or the negative aspect depends on what they are doing at the time and which side you make more noticeable. This is very beneficial for drug companies trying to advertise new supplements. This was a very interesting lecture that drew many connections between the psychology of self regulation and the real world.
