Why You Don't Always Have to Believe Psychological Research

A comment from a client turned my mind to something that has been exercising me lately. He was seeing me because of anxiety, something that had long plagued him but which had worsened over the last months, perhaps not unsurprisingly.

I asked if he had any techniques that he used regularly as a means to help himself. He frowned. "I used to end my day by listing three things I was grateful for that had gone well. But I don’t do that anymore."

"Why not?"

His eyes widened. "Because it doesn’t help lift anxiety or depression. Didn’t you know? I read it in the paper."

Source: Photo by Susan Yin on Unsplash

I did know that a research study had arrived at this finding. Indeed, we published it in our own professional journal, Human Givens. We quoted lead author David Cregg from Ohio State University, who said, "For years now, we have heard in the media and elsewhere about how finding ways to increase gratitude can help make us happier and healthier in many ways. But when it comes to one supposed benefit of these interventions—helping with symptoms of anxiety and depression—they really seem to have limited value."¹

The researchers had looked at the results from 27 studies on gratitude, involving over 3,600 participants. The reported findings added to the unease I have long been feeling about research studies on human behaviour.

Anthropologist Joseph Henrich was the first to note that most studies are carried out with WEIRD participants, as he called them—a grabby term that stands for something very specific: Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic.²

The majority of the world’s population does not fall under this umbrella, yet the findings that emerge from studies on them are blithely generalised to all and sundry. Indeed, even weirder, most of the results generated emerge from the tiny WEIRD category known as American undergraduates.

Worse, a large amount of social psychology research is carried out on groups of people who are not the target population (for instance, researchers may use normal-weight people to test out weight-loss measures designed for obese people), in places they don’t normally go to (e.g. laboratories fitted out to look like restaurants), doing things they don’t normally do (e.g. eating soup from self-refilling bowls) and for periods of time too short to reveal anything truly useful (one mealtime instead of over weeks or months, to see if the novelty of whatever is being tried might have worn off).³

Add in the gentle manipulation of statistics, for all sorts of apparently genuine or not-so-genuine reasons, and we may have outcomes that are hard to take seriously.

So what should we make of all those stories in newspapers, magazines, and online about whether finding things to be grateful about can help with anxiety and depression, or whether eating off a smaller plate helps us eat less food, or whether we feel more powerful and assertive when we strike a confident pose?

I suggest we start where the researchers themselves start—by thinking of such possibilities as avenues to explore (they call it coming up with a hypothesis).

Researchers then go on to check out these possibilities "scientifically," which is where the troubles begin. It might be more helpful if they merely suggested conclusions from the results of their narrow testing, rather than dressing these up in the imposing language of "p-values," "Bayes factors," and "confidence intervals"—the equivalent of the emperor’s new clothes.

So, when we read about "findings," let us consider them suggestions, and try them out for ourselves, if we think that they could be beneficial to us or to others. If contemplating three things to be grateful about each night helps lift mood, keep doing it. If eating from a smaller plate helps with the goal of losing weight, use one. If you feel more confident standing tall, go for it.

It is a win/win situation. Because, if whatever it is has no effect, far from meaning we have "failed" (something else to beat ourselves up about), it just means that the finding might not be valid in the first place, or works for some and not others. We are individuals, after all.

Interestingly, unlike WEIRDness, there is some evidence that our emotional needs may be universal, as human givens practitioner Ezra Hewing found, when invited to carry out a mental health training in a rural part of Zimbabwe. It was the language of emotional needs that bridged the huge gap in cultural understandings about mental health.⁴

Getting our emotional and physical needs met in healthy, positive ways is ultimately what matters, no matter what "the science" claims through its contortions.