How academics face the world: a study of 5829 homepage pictures

It is now standard practice, at Universities around the world, for academics to place pictures of themselves on a personal profile page maintained as part of their University's web-site. Here we investigated what these pictures reveal about the way academics see themselves. Since there is an asymmetry in the degree to which emotional information is conveyed by the face, with the left side being more expressive than the right, we hypothesised that academics in the sciences would seek to pose as non-emotional rationalists and put their right cheek forward, while academics in the arts would express their emotionality and pose with the left cheek forward. We sourced 5829 pictures of academics from their University websites and found that, consistent with the hypotheses, there was a significant difference in the direction of face posing between science academics and English academics with English academics showing a more leftward orientation. Academics in the Fine Arts and Performing Arts however, did not show the expected left cheek forward bias. We also analysed profile pictures of psychology academics and found a greater bias toward presenting the left check compared to science academics which makes psychologists appear more like arts academics than scientists. These findings indicate that the personal website pictures of academics mirror the cultural perceptions of emotional expressiveness across discipline

An investigation of left/right driving rules on deviations while walking

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.When traversing through an aperture, such as a doorway, people characteristically deviate towards the right. This rightward deviation can be explained by a rightward attentional bias which leads to rightward bisections in far space. It is also possible, however, that left or right driving practices affect the deviation. To explore this possibility, Australian (left-side drivers) and Swiss (right-side drivers) participants (n = 36 & 34) walked through the middle of an aperture. To control for the sway of the body, participants started with either their left or right foot. Sway had a significant effect on participants’ position in the doorway and the amount of sway was greater for Australians—perhaps due to national differences in gait. There was a significant rightward deviation for the Swiss, but not for the Australians. It is suggested that driving practices have a small additive effect on rightward attentional biases whereby the bias is increased for people who drive on the right and reduced in people who drive on the left

The followership effect : charismatic oratory, hypnoidal and altered states of consciousness.

Charismatic leadership and hypnosis are frequently associated in the literature. This thesis contributes to charismatic theory by illustrating there may be more to this association than mere speculation. The research used Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (PCI), and adapted PCI-Hypnotic Assessment Protocol items, to explore the within-subject effects of world-class oratory compared to a baseline condition (eyes open sitting quietly) and pseudo attention placebo (archive film from the same date and context). Drawing on the PCI’s ability to generate predicted Harvard Group Scores (pHGSs) (a general measure of trance depth (or ‘hypnoidal state’)), charismatic oratory deepens trance but not to the same degree as found in prior Harvard induction research. Despite this, 8.26% of people attain trance depths commensurate with a high hypnoidal state (pHGS > 7.0). There are also similar relationships between self-reported depth, imagoic suggestibility and hypnoidal state to those found in prior hypnosis studies. Oratory, in addition, generates an altered state of consciousness. However, while it yields a similar PCI major dimension intensity profile to hypnotic induction, it appears to produce different pattern effects (notably the association of amplified levels of negative and positive affect and bonding relationships to altered state, altered experience and visual imagery). Additional analyses, applying methods previously used to define hypnotic type, identify five follower types with (for those obtaining high and low depth of trance during the speech) characteristics similar to high and low hypnotic susceptibility individuals during hypnosis. Paralleling recent theorising about the nature of hypnosis, charismatic effects could also be seen as a sub-domain of the wider domain of suggestion, but one placing greater emotional demands on consciousness. In the right circumstances, world-class oratory (or similar charismatic media) could fulfil a comparable function to the suggestibility test during stage hypnosis (i.e. as a selection mechanism for identifying those most susceptible to influence)

Keeping your distance: attentional withdrawal in individuals who show physiological signs of social discomfort

No author version is available for upload (MF 8 Dec 2015)Being in close social proximity to a stranger is generally perceived to be an uncomfortable experience, which most people seek to avoid. In circumstances where crowding is unavoidable, however, people may seek to withdraw their attention from the other person. This study examined whether social discomfort, as indexed by electrodermal activity, is related to a withdrawal of attention in 28 (m=8, f=20) university students. Students performed a radial line bisection task while alone or together with a stranger facing them. Physiological arousal was indexed by a wrist monitor, which recorded electrodermal activity. Correlational analyses showed that individuals who displayed physiological discomfort when together showed a withdrawal of the perceived midpoint of the line towards them (and away from the stranger). Conversely, individuals who showed no discomfort exhibited an expansion of the perceived midpoint away from them. We propose that participants shift their attention away from the stranger to increase interpersonal distance and reduce anxiety/arousal.This research was supported with funding from a Discovery Project from the Australian Research Council (DP 130100541)