Chapter one
Becky's Entertaining Presentation to her Psychology Class

Becky Bexley was one of the more abnormal students at her university, having gone there when she was only ten, to do psychology and media studies courses. Since she was a child genius, it wasn't as much of a problem for her as it would have been if she'd somehow got to try it without being one.

Partway through Becky's first term at university, In one of her psychology discussion groups, the students were asked to do presentations to the class, that had to be something to do with psychology the others would find thought-provoking. They'd been looking at quite a few psychology books, so they were expected to think up something inspired by what they'd read in one or more of those. They were each allowed to team up with another person. What they did could be a little play, a mini lecture, or anything else that would get across some useful information or increase people's understanding of something. They were given a week to prepare it.

Becky teamed up with a girl called Julie. At first, they struggled to think of something they could do. But soon, Becky got an idea, after she was walking across the campus and someone tried to give her a pamphlet encouraging her to join what sounded like some new political party or other.

She thought the pamphlet sounded like some spammy thing at first, and felt irritated by the person who stopped her to tell her what it was and to try to give one to her, especially because she was a bit late for a lecture and was hurrying to get there. She glanced at the one held out to her, and then asked in annoyance, "What would be the point in me joining this? For one thing, I'm way too young, and for another, this party must be way too small to get any political power, so what's the point of even having it?"

The person offering her the pamphlet said the party was bound to get lots of followers quickly because it had such an attractive name, the Party of Peace and Light.

Becky took a pamphlet and flicked through it, thinking she'd find other things wrong with the whole idea that she could point out, before haughtily walking away. But then she noticed that one policy it said the party had was to ban the driving of cars, loud music, and indeed anything that made much of a noise, from sunset to sunrise, except in especially designated places away from residential areas, where powerful lights would be set up to signify that day-time conditions still applied. They would be called party areas, and people would be free to party as much as they liked. Anyone who wanted a party outside those areas had to make it a very quiet one, but they would be encouraged to have lots and lots of quiet parties!

Becky realised it was probably a joke pamphlet, and said, "Oh, so you mean peace and quiet, and artificial light, and parties as in celebrations and things. And there was me assuming you meant world peace or something, and light as a symbol for something you think is good and enlightening, and that you meant it's a political party! I bet most people make that mistake!"

She laughed, and went away to her next lecture.

She met up with Julie later, and told her what had happened. They got the idea of doing their psychology presentation about how people can make judgments based on what they expect things are like, but how they can be wrong, so sometimes it pays not to make snap decisions, since their decisions might be much better if a bit of thought and extra fact-finding goes into them.

They both stood up in front of the group when it was their turn to do their presentation. Becky explained that they were going to perform a little act where she would be the teacher, and Julie would pretend to be the pupil, and she was going to ask Julie questions, and the audience could help Julie out if she didn't know the answers. She said the first questions she was going to ask were from a couple of quizzes and things she'd found on the Internet, that were meant to assess how good quick decisions could be.

Becky did her best to put on a deep voice, since she was pretending to be an adult, and Julie put on a high voice to pretend to be the pupil.

First of all, Becky said to Julie, "You're driving a bus from Brighton to London."

Julie interrupted in the high voice she was putting on, and said, "Do they let school children drive buses nowadays then? I bet my daddy wouldn't like me doing that!"

Their fellow students in the audience laughed. Becky laughed too. But then she said in a mock stern voice, "Concentrate! This is just an imaginary bus."

Then she said, "Anyway, you're driving this bus. At the first stop, two people get on, and four get off. At the second, six people get on and three get off. At the third, five people get on and four get off. You get into London, and then at the first stop after that, two people get off, and ten people get on. Eventually everyone gets off. ...

"What colour are the bus driver's eyes?"

Julie grimaced and said, "Oh, how can anyone be expected to know that!"

Becky said, "You should. You're the bus driver. Don't you remember?"

The other people in the room laughed, except the tutor, who wondered what on earth a joke had to do with teaching something psychological.

Then Becky said, "Now I'm going to ask you a serious question, Julie, about a subject that isn't very nice. Smoking increases a person's likelihood of getting lung cancer by ten times, and their likelihood of getting fatal heart disease by two times. Is a smoker more likely to die of lung cancer or heart disease?"

"Must you ask such gruesome questions, teacher?" asked Julie in her high-pitched pupil's voice.

"Yes!" said Becky in her deep teacher's voice, with a commanding tone.

Julie said, "More smokers must die of lung cancer if their chances of getting it increase ten times."

"Wrong!" said Becky. "A lot more people get heart disease to start with, so if the risk doubles, a lot more people will get it; but far fewer people die of lung cancer, so even if the chances are increased ten times, not as many people will die of it as will die of heart disease."

Then Becky said, "OK, I'll ask you some more light-hearted questions now: Say toast four times."

Julie said, "Hang on teacher, that's not a question!"

"Don't argue with me!" said Becky in a mock cross deep raised voice. "Just say it!"

Julie did.

Then Becky asked her, "What do you put in a toaster?"

"Toast!" said Julie.

"Audience, do you agree?" asked Becky.

A few murmured, "Yes," and nodded their heads.

"No!" shouted Becky in mock scorn. "You put bread in toasters!"

A couple of the students who'd said yes blushed. Then Becky said,

"OK Julie, try this question: "There are two maternity hospitals. One averages fifteen births a day, and another one averages forty-five. In which hospital is it more likely that on any given day, sixty per cent of babies born will be boys?"

Julie said, "Oh how can I possibly know that?"

Becky said, "Audience, would you like to try to help her out?"

Most of them remained quiet, but one ventured, "Wouldn't it be the bigger hospital with more patients, since the percentage is bigger?"

"No!" said Becky firmly. "Julie's right this time. It's impossible to know. After all, sixty per cent in the big hospital isn't a higher percentage than sixty per cent in the little hospital, even if it's got a bigger number of patients in it. The ratio of girls to boys might well be around the same in both."

Then she said to Julie, "Now Julie, say the word 'silk' five times."

Julie said, "Oh no, not another one of These!"

"Just say it!" commanded Becky in her deep teacher's voice.

Julie did so.

Then Becky said, "Now spell it."

"What, five times?" asked Julie.

"No!" Becky stormed in mock rage in her teacher's voice, stamping her foot. "Just spell it once!"

"Sorry teacher!" said Julie meekly. Then she did.

Then Becky asked, "What do cows drink?"

"Silk." said Julie.

"Silk?" asked Becky. Then she laughed and asked, "How could a cow drink silk? Or what would you have to do with the silk in the first place to turn it into a liquid so they could?"

Julie grinned and said, "I don't know. But I bet scientists could think of a way."

"Well I don't suppose they ever would!" said Becky, still laughing. Then she said,

"Audience, could you help Julie out again? What do cows drink?"

"Milk," said one of them.

"The rest of you, do you agree?" asked Becky.

One or two nodded their heads. But after a couple of seconds, another one said, "No, I'm getting the hang of this now. This is a trick question, isn't it. Cows don't drink milk, except if they're calves. I expect they're given water."

"Correct!" said Becky. "OK, now I'll ask a different kind of question. Audience, this is for you. Be warned, it's not a nice question. If a horrible disease broke out, and a couple of drugs were invented for it, What would you prefer: A. a drug that would cure 300 out of 500 people who took it, or B. a drug where 200 out of 500 people taking it wouldn't get well? Hands up the people who'd prefer the first one."

Most of the people in the room put their hands up.

Then Becky said, "Actually that was another trick question. The two drugs would cure people at exactly the same rate. It just sounded different because of the way I phrased it. But the mistake you made is one that psychologists say is very common: The thing that's phrased the most positively sounds the most attractive, so people will often decide that's best without really thinking about it. The point of the presentation me and Julie are doing today is to illustrate what some psychologists say about how people often make decisions without really thinking, and how if they know that, they can try to get into the habit of thinking more before they make them. Everyone probably makes mistakes at times because they don't think about things enough."

Finally, the tutor realised what the point of the presentation was, and stopped worrying that they'd just decided to use the time to mess around and make jokes. He'd been wondering whether to interrupt and say something.

One student thought to himself, "It's funny how Becky refers to humans as 'they', as if she doesn't think she's one herself." He smiled, and joked to her about it afterwards. She joked back, "Ah, but I'm an alien species. I've come to crush the spirits of mankind by making everyone believe they're always making mistakes, so they haven't got the confidence to resist when my fellow aliens invade the world!"

In most of the rest of the presentation, Becky gave a serious mini lecture; - at least, quite a bit of it was serious. She said:

"It's not just when people are answering trick questions that they can make mistakes, but when they're making much bigger choices too. Just think of what else might sound positive and better than other things but isn't really. For one thing, a salesman might do his best to seem friendly, and tell you about all the good points of a product he's selling. Some psychologists reckon people can make the mistake of being more willing to trust someone like that because he's friendly, so people think he's on their side; and if the product sounds good, they can go for it on impulse, instead of being more thoughtful and trying to find out if it has any bad points, and also shopping around to find out if there's anything better, or just as good but cheaper.

"Or a political party might promise all kinds of good things, like increased spending on the health service and pensions; and some people might get all enthusiastic about them and want to vote for them, instead of stopping to ask how they think they're going to pay for all that. It's just human to be carried along by emotion, instead of really thinking. But anyone who knows that can try to remember to think about things more before making important decisions.

"The first question I asked, about the bus driver, was one where people tend to get the wrong answer, partly because by the end of the question, - especially because they're distracted by what they wrongly think is the most important thing - all the numbers about the people getting on and off, - they've forgotten what it said at the beginning about how they're the bus driver, especially because chances are, they didn't pay too much attention to it in the first place. When people are making much bigger decisions, too, they can make mistakes because they forget to pay attention to details, in all kinds of ways, and they've got their minds focused on something they think is the most important thing but isn't really.

"So, for example, a person like that can sometimes be a car driver in a hurry to get somewhere, who's so focused on feeling anxious to get there on time and on thinking he'd better get there soon that he forgets to pay attention to the fact that if he drives less safely, he'll risk injuring or killing himself in a car crash and then he'll Never get there, and he overtakes someone when it's a bit dangerous to do that, risking his life for the sake of a few seconds' advantage, without realising that's what he's doing. He might get away with it a lot of the time, but one day, he might not.

"Or to give a less serious example, it can be someone who hears on the weather forecast that the day's going to be mostly sunny, and optimistically goes out of the house in the morning without a coat, so pleased about it that he forgets that it's still quite early in the year, so till the temperature rises later in the day, it's likely to still be cold.

"Or it can be someone making a big decision, who can't remember all the things it's a good idea to take into account before making it.

"Some psychologists reckon that a good way of making decisions about how to solve problems is to write down all possible solutions that come into your head - write them down so you don't forget them, and write them all down even if you think up ones that seem a bit daft, since they could still give you ideas for new ones. Then work through each one in turn, thinking of all the pros and cons of each of them, and write those down too, giving each one numbers according to how important you think each pro and con is. Then you can work out which solution seems the most attractive, by working out which one has the most pros and least cons, or the most important pros and least important cons."

"Does writing down all the cons make you a conman?" joked one student with a grin.

"Well it wouldn't make Me Any kind of man," joked Becky.

They all laughed.

Then Becky continued: "Another kind of question I asked Julie was one where a lot of people expect the answer to be a certain thing because of what the question reminds them of, so if they don't really think about it, they can get the answer wrong. I mean the questions where I asked her what you put in a toaster and what cows drink, and she said toast, and - well she said silk, but a lot of people say milk, instead of answering those questions by saying bread and water. That's mostly because people tend to answer them straightaway, before they have time to think, which they're often told to do by the person asking the questions, because it makes it more likely they'll fall for the trick, which makes it more fun.

"But people can do things llike that even when they're not being asked trick questions. For instance, if they read an article about discrimination in the workplace, and it says most disabled people don't have a job, a lot of them might assume it's because of discrimination, and think it's terrible. But if the article was about stress in the workplace and said most disabled people don't have a job, the same people might assume it's because the difficulties disabilities cause can make work a lot more stressful for disabled people than it is for most people, so it's harder for them to cope in the workplace, and that puts them off trying to get work. In reality, there might be a whole range of reasons why disabled people are less likely to be employed than the average person is. But it's easy to make quick assumptions about the causes of things."

Julie said, "Before we go on with the lecture, I'd like to ask you some trick questions now, to see how You do."

Becky said that was OK. So Julie asked, "What was the highest mountain in the world before Mount Everest was discovered?"

Some of the audience tried to think of what other high mountains there are in the world. But after a few seconds' thought, Becky said, "Hang on! Mount Everest would still have been the highest mountain in the world before it was discovered! ... Actually, being warned that these are trick questions does help with getting the answers right."

Some of the students giggled. Then Julie said, "But I bet your first instinct was to try to think of another mountain, wasn't it?"

Becky said, "Yes. It's as if the wording of the question kind of programs your brain to think it must be a different mountain, unless you concentrate on it."

Then Julie said, "OK, try this: A man's just been condemned to death."

"And you accused Me of asking gruesome questions!" Becky said, grinning.

Julie said, "Well the rest of it's not all that gruesome. He's given a choice of three rooms to go in to have the sentence carried out: In the first there's a fiery inferno. In the second there are 50 assassins with loaded guns. And in the third, there are a load of lions that haven't eaten for three months. Which room is the safest?"

Some of the audience laughed, because Julie had said the question wasn't that gruesome and then she'd said that!

Becky thought for a few seconds, knowing that since it was a trick question, the answer would likely be something unexpected. Then she said, "Um, the loo? They'd be bound to have one of those there! You could plead with them to grant you a last request before you died, which was to be able to go to the loo first, and then you could lock the door and not come out till it was dark and they would probably have gone home, so you could escape."

"No!" Julie said. "You wouldn't be allowed to hide In there! It's the room with the lions; if they haven't eaten for three months, they'll all be dead!"

"Oh yeah," said Becky.

The other students laughed. Then Becky said, "It's easy not to pay attention to all the details, especially when you just wouldn't expect people organising a man's execution to make such a massive blunder as to give him the choice of going in a room where the worst that could happen was that he'd have to hold his nose all the time he was in there because of the fumes from the decomposing lions."

The audience laughed again.

Then Julie said, "OK, here's another question: Which word is always spelled wrong?"

"Always?" asked Becky in mock horror. "We'll have to get the spelling police onto this!"

Some of the audience chuckled.

"Well, it's spelled wrong most of the time anyway," said Julie.

"I know!" said Becky with a sudden burst of inspiration. "It's 'wrong', isn't it!"

Julie said it was, and the other students giggled again.

The tutor hoped Becky and Julie were going to get around to saying something serious again at some point.

It was a few more minutes before they did though, as Julie asked, "A monkey, a squirrel and a bird are racing to the top of a coconut tree. Who'll get the banana first, the monkey, the squirrel or the bird?"

"Let's throw this one out to the audience," said Becky.

The other students thought for a few seconds. No one seemed to want to dare say anything, feeling sure it would be wrong.

Then one of them said, "Hang on! What's a banana doing at the top of a coconut tree?"

They laughed, and Julie said, "You've got it. They wouldn't be racing up a coconut tree to get a banana."

Then she asked Becky, "If an electric train was going north over a hill at 100 miles an hour and the wind was blowing from the west at 20 miles an hour, what direction would the smoke go in?"

A few of the audience wondered whether the wind would be powerful enough to change the direction smoke from the train went in; but Becky said, "Why would an electric train be smoking? Hopefully most of them don't!"

"Gosh yes," joked Julie with a smile. "Just think of how bad it must be for their health if they do! Trains with smokers' coughs might really worry the passengers! And they certainly wouldn't be setting them a good example! And if a train can't set a good example, well really, what can!"

The audience laughed again.

Then Julie said, "Allright, you're right; you don't get smoke coming from electric trains ... or at least, you shouldn't."

Becky said, "I expect one reason people get that question wrong is because they subconsciously just assume the details are accurate, and pay more attention to the ones at the end because they're easiest to remember, so the brain thinks, 'Oh there was smoke', and forgets the bit at the beginning where it says it was an electric train. The questions are probably easier to answer accurately when they're written down, so people can read them carefully, or remind themselves of everything in them by reading them a second time before answering, as long as it occurs to them to do that, ... which it might well not, actually, if they haven't been told they're trick questions! They wouldn't think there was a need to."

Julie said, "OK, OK, stop talking about that now, and see how you do with this question; it's shorter so it'll be easier to remember: Is it legal in California for a man to marry his widow's sister?"

Becky said, "Hmmm, I've heard of men marrying their brother's sister; ... oh no I haven't; that would mean they were marrying their own sister. I mean I've heard of men marrying their wife's brother's sister; ... oh no I don't mean that either; what was the question again? OK, even My brain's beginning to hurt now."

Julie repeated the question. Then Becky said, "Hang on! a man couldn't possibly marry his widow's anything, - at least I hope not, because if he had a widow, it would mean he was dead! What kind of a spooky marriage would that be!"

Julie giggled. So did the audience.

Then she said, "You're right. OK, last question: Imagine there are ten birds in a tree, and a hunter shot one of them. How many are left?"

"Why do some of these questions have to be so gruesome?" asked Becky.

"I don't know; you started it!" said Julie with a smile.

Then Becky tried to think of what the trick in the question might be, and said, "Perhaps there would still be ten birds. Maybe birds don't always fall out of trees after they've been shot."

Julie said, "No. Come on! If you shot a bird in a tree, do you think the rest would hang around waiting for what else might be coming? They'd all fly off like a ... well, a shot."

Becky said, "Oh yeah. I think my brain's been programmed by maths classes at school not to come up with answers like that. I mean, I know from experience that you get told off if the teacher asks you something like, 'If you've got two sweets and I give you two more, how many have you got,' and instead of saying four, you say something like, 'None; I'd have eaten them all within seconds!'"

The audience laughed again.

Becky waited for them to finish, and then said, "OK, now it's time to get serious. Those trick questions are meant to illustrate what this presentation's about, which is that people can make mistakes because of the way the brain's wired, and also just because it's easy not to think deeply enough about things. People's brains seem designed to take shortcuts quite a lot of the time, so life isn't so much effort, and people don't have to spend so much time working things out, so they can spend it on more interesting things if they're lucky, which is good a lot of the time. I mean, for example, if someone mentions your favourite food, something perks up in your emotions and you instantly know you like it; you don't have to think about whether you do each time. But the problem is that the shortcut system can mean people make mistakes sometimes, and also people who know about it and want something from others can use it to their advantage.

"For instance, if you go into a shop and see something on sale for £5.99, you might think, 'Great, only about £5!' and buy it, when really, it's only a mere penny under £6; so people should really think of it as about £6. Sales people know a lot of people make the mistake of thinking things are cheaper than they really are when they take that penny off, which is why they do it. People's brains take the shortcut of thinking more about the bigger number at the beginning of the price than the last bit, because they assume the bigger one's the one that really matters. When people realise that's what they're doing though, they can think about things more.

"Or people trying to sell a product might put a fancy picture on it to attract people, or give it a nice name, and people can expect it to be nice just because of those things, especially if they get a nice feeling when they look at it because it reminds them of something they're fond of. So they can buy it, when really there's no evidence it's any better than something similar that doesn't have such a nice picture on it, which is perhaps on the shelf below, that might actually be quite a bit cheaper.

"People can make mistakes because of their expectations in lots of ways. Another way is if they're writing an email and they make errors, and they look over it quickly after they've written it to check it's allright, but they don't notice them, because it's as if they're seeing what they expect to see. So for example, say someone emailed his boss one morning to say he couldn't come in because he was sick: He might have the flu, and intend to say that. But imagine if he emailed the boss's secretary saying, 'I've fot the glu.' She might tell the boss she'd had an email from him saying he couldn't come in, but she didn't really understand it, because he said he'd 'fot the glu'. The boss might think she's saying 'fought the glue', and say, 'He's had an accident with a tube of glue, has he? Perhaps he's stuck himself to his chair or something, and he's desperately trying to unstick himself!'

"Or someone might email a friend, saying, 'I've just gassed a teography pest at school', when they really meant to say, 'I've just passed a geography test'. Or they might say, 'I'm just off to shake a tower', when they mean 'take a shower'."

Becky and Julie's presentation had gone on way past the time it was supposed to take. The tutor felt as if Becky was taking over the lesson. But he didn't want to stop her, because he'd just begun to enjoy what she was saying, smiling at her examples of people swapping the letters in their words around by accident. So he let her continue as she carried on:

"I read that swapping letters around like that is called a spoonerism. It's named after someone who used to do that a lot when he talked. He was a priest and a professor at Oxford University about 100 years ago. He taught history, religion and philosophy.

"I read that one day he angrily told a student, 'You've hissed my mystery lecture! You've tasted two worms!' He meant to say, 'You've missed my history lecture. You've wasted two terms!' And one day he accused a student of 'fighting a liar in the quadrangle', when he meant to say lighting a fire.

"Once he proposed a toast to Queen Victoria, saying, 'Three cheers for our queer old dean!' when he meant to say 'dear old queen'! During the first world war, he tried to cheer some people around him up by saying, 'When our boys come home from France, we will have the hags flung out', meaning to say 'flags hung out'. And he was trying to praise farmers one day when he called them 'noble tons of soil', meaning to call them 'noble sons of toil'. He once announced a hymn in church by saying it was called, 'Kinkering Congs Their Titles Take', when he meant to say 'conquering kings'.

"Those are things he's reported to have said anyway, although he wouldn't admit to having said them all, so it is possible that some of his students made some of them up for fun.

"But anyway, maybe some people can swap letters of their words around without ever realising they've done it sometimes, at least when they're writing.

"But people can make mistakes in much more serious ways because they expect things to be a certain way when they're not, so they do things without thinking much; and then bad things can happen. I heard about a psychotherapist who had a great grandfather from Belgium she loved. He had a soft French accent and nice white hair. One day she wanted some work done in her home, and one of the men who offered her a quote was a man with the same accent and white hair. She thought she had a gut instinct that he would be a good person to hire; but he conned her out of quite a bit of money; and she later discovered he'd done that to quite a lot of people. She realised the reason she'd liked him in the beginning was just because her first impressions of him were that he was similar to the man she'd been so fond of when she was a child, and she'd thought he was like him just because of his accent and white hair. Then she realised she should have thought more about whether he'd be a good person to hire before she hired him.

"But people can sometimes take a dislike to certain people too because they remind them of people who weren't very nice, when they're not like them really.

"But another way people can make harmful mistakes because they expect things to be a certain way and don't think enough about what they're doing is when they sign up to join some organisation or cause because it sounds good at first, and they think it must be.

"Say you're walking across campus, and someone comes up to you and asks if you want to join something that sounds like a new church you've never heard of, ... say, the Church of the Almighty Clucking Frog, or the Cult of the All-Knowing Baked Bean, or the Society for the Veneration of the All-Seeing Invincible Squawking Blue Crocodile, or the Chapel for the Glorification of the Super-Intelligent Noble Lettuce or something. ... No, I don't suppose anything would have a name like that.

"But I've heard there are lots of groups and cults that send their members out to try and get new members, but they aren't nice organisations at all; they teach people things that aren't good for them, and make them do things that just give the leaders more power and money, like spending hours recruiting new members and begging for money that they pass on to the people in authority in the organisation.

"If someone came up to you and started talking about love and spirituality, and asked if you wanted to join a group that could show you the way to a better future, you might think it sounded attractive. People are especially likely to be attracted if they're feeling upset about things, so they really like the idea of someone knowing how to show them a better way forward.

"But it's far better to go away and think about things than to agree to go along to any of their meetings right there and then. Then you can look on the Internet to see what other people say about them. People ought to try to find out whether the teachings of the organisation are likely to be correct, and whether they might do harm. A person who's upset might not want to, because they think if they find out bad things about them, it might take all their hope away. But there will probably be other ways of solving their problems they can find if they look in more places.

"The thing is that once you start going to the meetings held by some of these organisations, they can get you hooked using brainwashing techniques. They're not hard to do. Organisations can start by making new recruits feel loved, by doing a lot of hugging, flattering and so on. Then when they let them know it isn't acceptable to question anything the leaders say, the recruits will be less likely to want to reject the group, because they feel as if they're loved there.

"Another mind control technique the leaders often use is to just have lots of long meetings that go on late into the night, so people can end up sleep-deprived and maybe food-deprived; and both those things stop people thinking so clearly, so they're more likely to accept what they're told. I'm not saying that if an organisation has long meetings it's a definite danger sign, or anything like that; I'm just saying it's one recruiting technique these abusive organisations sometimes use.

"Also, the more time people spend with the organisation, the less time they'll be spending with friends and family and other people who might question what they're doing, saying things that might lead them to start doubting they're doing the right thing. Organisations can deliberately try to isolate people from people who might criticise what they're doing, by using tactics such as keeping them busy in their spare time doing work for them or listening to their ideas, or forbidding them from spending much time with their families and old friends, saying they'll be a bad influence or something.

"Another thing the leaders of organisations like that who want to brainwash other people can do is to hold sessions where everyone does a lot of chanting, repeating some of the doctrines of their organisation over and over again. If the brain isn't being fed by new information that makes people think, but people are just doing the same old thing all the time, it can slow down for a while, so people are more likely to accept what they're told.

"And some leaders might give lectures where they use a lot of long words and talk about things that seem hard to understand, so followers might go away with the impression they must be clever and know a lot of specialised things, when really, if they somehow got the opportunity to examine a lecture a bit at a time, and see how it stood up to science, they might realise it's a load of rubbish.

"And other things like that can go on. In the worst cases, organisations can train people to do harm after they've sucked them in.

"Anyway, that's just one example of how people can easily trust people because they expect them to be good for them, when the opposite can happen.

"Here's another one: There were some trick questions where one reason people can get the wrong answer is because they take for granted that some of the things the questions mention are straightforward, or that any details they're given are true, like with the question about the smoke blowing from the electric train, and the one about whether it's legal for a man to marry his widow's sister. Anyone who didn't know they were trick questions might not stop to think, 'Hang on, does that question really make sense?'

"People can take what they're told at face value in much more serious ways too, not stopping to think about whether it's all true. One example is that people in different countries can end up with opposite beliefs, because they always just took it for granted that they were being taught the truth. Actually, an example of that which isn't very serious is that in one culture, people might believe that burping's really bad manners, and always tell their children off for doing it, so their children grow up believing it's a bad thing to do, and teach their children the same thing; but in another country, burping after a meal is a sign that the food was appreciated, and it might be thought of as rude not to burp. People there might teach their children that burping's a good thing to do, and the children might well believe it and teach their own children that. And it might be that only a few people from both kinds of countries ever ask why it's a good or bad thing, and whether it really is.

"Since there's no actual evidence that it's a good thing to do or a bad thing, it's not fair if people feel pressured to do it or get told off for not doing it. But people will tell their children off, just because they were taught that that's what you have to do when they disobey the rule. ... Well, I suppose it might also be that they'll think their children will be thought badly of for disobeying it in public, and they don't want that.

"But the same thing happens with much more serious things too, such as religious and political beliefs, and harmful traditions some cultures have: It seems a lot of people believe some things are right and good, just because they were brought up to believe they are, or they're given reasons to believe they are, but they're not actually good ones, and yet they believe them without wondering about them; they just trusted what their parents and people around them said, without trying to find out what the actual evidence is that they're true, or good things to do. But their parents, and their parents before them, and generations of parents before then, way back into history, might have only believed they're right and good because their own parents taught them they are, and none of Them tried to find out whether they really are either; they just believed they are. Or else they didn't think they are, but so many other people around them Did just believe they are, and felt really strongly about it, without really thinking about it, that they were scared to be different, because of what those others might do. A couple of examples are arranged marriages and female genital mutilation.

"So to finish, this presentation is really about how people can sometimes benefit by thinking more deeply about choices they make before making them."

When Becky and Julie finished the presentation, the other students gave them a big round of applause. They had a good think about what Becky had said afterwards.

Chapter two
Becky and Other Students Talk About Interesting Things Over a Long Lunch Break

After a psychology lecture one day, Becky and a few other students went for lunch together. They met a couple of Becky's friends from her media studies course, and they sat down together.

The Students Have a Laugh

They'd just sat down when one of the group spotted a little bit of fish on the floor by the chair of someone who'd left, and thought they must have accidentally dropped it. He said, "Ugh, look, there's a chunk of fish on the floor there. Anyone want to eat it?" He grinned and then said, "Sorry, I mean, anyone want to pick it up? I don't fancy touching it! But if no one does, I suppose it might be left till some poor cleaner has to pick it up."

Another student bent down and picked it up, saying with a mischievous grin, "Hey imagine it somehow came alive, and crawled up the inside of your trouser leg!"

Another student laughed and said, "What, just a mere Chunk of fish coming alive and crawling up the inside of someone's trouser leg? Now that would be scary!"

One of the psychology students, who seemed eager to pass on some information, said, "You know they say fish is good for the brain?"

"I'm not eating that fish just because it might improve my pitiful brain power!" interrupted the student who'd first seen the bit of fish on the floor, smiling. "It might make me more brainy, but it might give me salmonella too!"

"I don't know if you get salmonella from fish," said another student thoughtfully.

"I mean I might get it from the person who was eating it, or from the floor!" joked the student who'd seen it.

"Wimp! You're worried about a bit of floor-poisoning, but I know someone who ate 134 raw eggs in one go for charity!" said another student with a grin.

"Don't egg him on to do that!" said another student in mock protest. "Then he might be eating something that could really give him salmonella!"

"Yes, and just think of what kind of monster illness he might get if he dared eat 134 raw eggs off the floor! A mixture of salmonella and the dreaded floor-poisoning!" said one of the other students. "Or maybe you could put that many eggs in a bath, and you could get in it and splash around!"

The other students cringed at the idea and giggled.

One said, "You'd have a job eating them after that, wouldn't you! I mean, imagine if they were all over the backs of your legs where you'd sat down in the bath, and in between your toes and things. You'd have to get your mouth into some awkward places!"

The Students Discuss Scientific-Sounding Studies That Had Too Many Problems to Be Trusted, and Joke Around Some More

"Anyway, I've been reading about a scientific study about fish oil," said the student who'd begun to talk about it, getting serious. "I've learned that Some studies that sound very scientific aren't really much good at all. I'm not saying there's a problem with science itself; I mean, it's brought us so many things that have made our lives better - computers, fridges, cookers, CD players, cars and railways, mobile phones, cures for lots of diseases, nuclear weapons ... oh sorry that's not one. But anyway, science has mostly been really great for humanity. But sometimes it's misused, or people make mistakes with it. One way I've been learning about it happening is where some studies claim things that aren't true, but people assume they are because they seem to be scientific studies, till you investigate them properly. In fact there are loads like that. I read that an organisation's being set up to look at studies and criticise the bad ones."

"What if it's a Bad organisation?" asked one student with a grin.

Another one joked, "I suppose a bad organisation would make bad criticisms, like, 'I don't approve of the way that study was done at all! I was there for a whole day, and they worked on it all the time without once even offering me a cup of tea!'"

The student who'd begun to talk about studies said, "Yes, but seriously, I think that organisation sounds like a good thing. I've heard that scientific journals often publish studies that make it look as if some great new bit of progress is happening, but because they think of that kind of study as more newsworthy, when studies come along with evidence that the first findings were wrong, they often don't publish them, because they're not so keen on publishing things that say, 'Hey, this doesn't work after all'. So people are less likely to find out.

"But then, there are some people who delight in pointing out when studies are bad. There's someone like that who writes a science column for the Guardian newspaper. I was reading some of his stuff recently.

"One thing he used as an example to illustrate that we shouldn't believe everything we read was a study done by a council in the north of England - yeah I know councils aren't generally recognised as scientific organisations. ..."

He and the other students smiled at that, and one interrupted him, joking, "I dunno; I've heard they seem to have got the science of paper-wasting down to a fine art ... that's if you can call science an art; I mean, I bet they could be sending a lot more of their letters by email than they do nowadays."

The student who'd been talking shrugged and said, "Probably." Then, not wanting people to get distracted from what he was saying and start talking about something different, he continued,

"Anyway, according to the man who gloats ... I mean writes about these things in the Guardian, the people who did this study for the council enrolled 3000 kids ... well, teenagers, for it, who were supposed to take fish oil capsules for some time before their exams to see if they got better results than they might have done otherwise. You'd have thought spending more time revising or having teachers who could really make the lessons memorable might work better, although maybe that went on too; but anyway, they thought fish oil might help, since after all, there have been rumours around for ages that fish is good for the brain.

"So they gave the teenagers these pills, but for some reason, over two thirds stopped taking them. I don't know if they tasted too fishy, or they just couldn't be bothered with them or kept forgetting, but for whatever reason, they did. So only about 830 kids ... I mean teenagers, finished the study properly, - finishing was classed as having taken the tablets for 80 % or more of the time, for some reason. Maybe no one at all took them all the time!

"One thing the criticising Guardian man said is bad about the way they reported the study is that the council didn't point out that any findings that fish oil did actually work might be in doubt because so many teenagers dropped out of it - since after all, some might have dropped out because they were convinced the tablets weren't doing them any good so there was no point bothering to take any more; the council just measured the results from the people who finished, as compared with a group who didn't take fish oil, and they reckoned the results they got were positive. But even with less than a third of the teenagers finishing - which, remember, means taking Most of the tablets, not all of them, their results weren't all that much better than would have been expected if they hadn't taken them really. That wouldn't necessarily mean fish oil doesn't work; it could be that people just need a higher dose, or that it helps the brain in some way that wasn't studied, or that a better study Would have found some differences, who knows."

One student joked with a grin, "I wonder if eating fish oil could make people swim better. Maybe they should have made those school pupils jump into a swimming pool, and if they stayed under water for longer after taking the fish oil than they had before, the researchers doing the study could have written a paper on how fish oil makes teenagers more like fishes! ... Or makes them sink."

Another student joked, "Maybe it would just make people Think they can swim better. Maybe that's what really happens when fish oil supposedly makes people think more - it really just makes them think they can swim more."

"Yes," joked another one. "Maybe the study organisers should have asked how many lengths they thought they could swim before and after they took it; ... or maybe they should have asked them if they thought they could swim the Channel, and if more said they reckoned they could after they took the fish oil than they had before, they could definitely conclude they'd become more like fish, ... or that they were probably delusional or something."

Another student sniggered and said, "Yeah, and maybe they could give some people really high doses of fish oil, and ask them before and afterwards whether they thought they could swim to America! If any said they could afterwards, they could write a paper all about how their study had found that fish oil increases people's ability to Think they can swim to America ... or their ability to have unrealistic fantasies ... or their ability to kid the researchers with a straight face or something."

A fellow student grinned and said, "Yeah, they wouldn't know which one it was, would they. They might think it was one thing when all the while it was something else."

Another student joked, "Perhaps if they took some fish oil tablets themselves, it would make them start Thinking it was more things. Mind you, I can't imagine anyone writing a paper saying, 'Our study found that people can think more after taking fish oil ... or make things up more, ... or it might have been that people just joke around with the researchers more the more silly questions they ask them - nothing to do with fish oil whatsoever - we just don't know."

Another student laughed and said, "Yeah, imagine asking a newspaper to report on research like that!"

The student talking about the real study chuckled and said, "At least the study I'm talking about wasn't That bad! But anyway, seriously, another way that bloke from the Guardian says the people who did the experiment got things wrong was that they said they were going to measure the kids' ... I mean teenagers' ... oh never mind, anyway, their predicted GCSE results against their actual ones. I presume the pupils must have started taking the tablets After their results were predicted, so if their results improved, it was going to be taken as evidence that the fish oil was what was making the difference. But really, I can understand why the Guardian man didn't think that was a good technique - I mean, predicted GCSE results are only the opinion of some teacher, who might not really have known what they were talking about.

"I mean, suppose if some pupils did badly in their homework or in other tests, but sometimes the reason for that was that something was going wrong in their lives like their parents were splitting up and they were upset so they hadn't been concentrating properly on their work for a few months not long before, the teacher would take that as evidence that they weren't doing very well so they might predict they'd do badly, but when the pupil had got over being upset they might do better, and their better-than-expected result might be seen as proving the fish oil had worked, when in reality they'd always been able to work that well; they'd just been working less well for a while and that had influenced the teacher's opinion when they made the prediction about how well they'd do in their GCSE's."

One student said, "The prediction one of my teachers made about my GCSE result for her subject was completely wrong! She told me I'd fail, ... but that I might just get a good fail if I tried hard. ... I gave the subject up altogether. She didn't see That coming!"

The students laughed.

One grinned and said, "I heard about a study that supposedly proves that eating chewing gum when you've got an irritating song on the brain can make it go away."

"Oh how would that work? Just like magic maybe?" quipped another student, chuckling. "Maybe one day they'll find that eating chocolate magically turns a person into a champion boxer too."

"Well it might make you good at something to do with boxes anyway," said another student with a grin. "Like opening boxes of chocolates in super-quick time because of all the practice you've had."

The students giggled. Then one said, "Don't remind me of chocolate; I've given it up for ... well, a few hours anyway. I think that might be enough time for me! But anyway, I can think of a way that chewing gum thing might work: I suppose if you chew chewing gum in a different rhythm to the one the song's in, it might make it more difficult to keep thinking about it, because your brain's having to think about two different patterns of things at once, in the same way they say it's difficult to rub your stomach and pat your head at the same time. I've never found that difficult, but still."

The person who'd brought up the chewing gum study said, "Maybe. Mind you, it was funny, because reporters on the radio and one of the people who did the study were coming up with unlikely-sounding complicated ideas, saying things like, 'Maybe the movement of the jaw causes brain waves to be generated that interfere with intrusive memories', and they were wondering if it even might work with really bad ones.

"What the people who did the study actually did was played people a bit of music, and then gave half of them chewing gum and half nothing, and told them that for the next few minutes, they weren't allowed to think of the song at all. The reason they said that was because they knew that when you're told you mustn't think of something, it'll come right into your mind, because every time you remind yourself you mustn't think of it, you're thinking of it! So they thought that was a good way of making sure the song was on people's brains. Anyway, after a few minutes, they asked everyone how often they'd thought of the song, and they found that the people chewing the chewing gum had thought of it less than the rest of them. So they came up with these complicated theories about why; and they also told everyone it just must mean that you can get rid of any old song on the brain any time by chewing chewing gum.

"They didn't really have any evidence for that, and there's actually a much more obvious simple explanation for what happened in their study: The people eating the chewing gum had things about the chewing gum to think about instead of the music, like how nice it tasted, and whether they'd prefer it a different size; so they would have automatically switched their thoughts to something other than the song, especially since they knew they weren't supposed to think of it; but the people who didn't have anything to do might not have thought of thinking about an alternative thing that would have filled their mind so thoughts of the song didn't come into it. If they had, maybe it wouldn't have. You know, if they'd just started thinking of a different song, or if they'd seen someone's false teeth fly out when they sneezed outside the window, that would probably have worked just as well as chewing gum, at least for a little while!"

"I bet it would have done!" said another student, laughing.

Another one said, "So really, it sounds as if it was just that the ones with the chewing gum were being distracted by something. Psychologists have known for years that distracting yourself from something you're bothered by can sometimes help, so I wonder why they did this study. Maybe I could write a paper, say after I had a burger for lunch and then walked off without my coat one day. I could invent a theory that burgers must make people forget their coats, and tell the papers about my shocking new finding!"

"You might have a hard time getting them to believe you!" said one of the other students, laughing.

"I expect so," said the one who'd suggested the idea, laughing too.

They all started giggling. But then the one who'd been talking about the chewing gum study said, "Actually though, one listener did write in saying they'd been feeling really anxious in the middle of the night and thought they were about to have a panic attack, but then they had some chewing gum and the feelings went away. Maybe it Was the way they got distracted from them by something nice."

The student who'd been talking about the fish oil study began to worry he might not get to finish what he was saying. He said, "Anyway, about this fish oil study - remember that?"

He smiled, and carried on, "The man who criticised it in the Guardian for having quite a few things wrong with it said another thing that wasn't good was that the council doing the study just picked 629 of the pupils they'd originally enrolled in the study who'd taken the fish oil pills to the end, and said they'd matched those against pupils from a similar family background, similar school performance and the same gender who weren't taking fish oil tablets, and found out which group did better in their exams. Just how they decided what made for a 'similar family background', I don't know.

"They found out that the group of students taking the capsules did better, so they thought the fish oil must be helping them improve; but really, the evidence could have been interpreted more than one way; it could be that the ones most likely to do what they were told in sticking to taking the pills were the ones most likely to be obedient to adults in other things and so work the hardest, because adults had told them to do that. Or it could be that the ones who took the fish oil tablets most were the ones whose families encouraged them to take them the most, and those families would have been the most encouraging when it came to motivating them to revise for exams too.

"Anyway, most of the exam results were disappointing, so even if the fish oil worked, it didn't work all that well. The council didn't point out that the results must have meant that.

"But what would have been better is if All the pupils in the study had taken pills, some real fish oil ones and some just sugar pills or something, and hardly anyone knew which of them were taking the real pills and which were taking the dummy ones, and then everyone's real exam results were measured against their predicted ones. Maybe some of the students taking just sugar pills would have done better in their exams than they would have done otherwise, because they thought they might be taking something that boosted their brain power and that gave them more confidence. But if everyone taking the fish oil did better than they'd been predicted to do, and no one in the other group did, it might show that the fish oil worked."

"Concealing which pills were which might have been a bit difficult if the real ones tasted of fish and the dummy ones didn't, but tasted of, say, sugar!" said one student, grinning.

"Yeah, I suppose there is that," said the student who'd been telling them about the study, as the other ones smirked and sniggered.

Becky Gives the Others Some Information On What Makes For a More Reliable Study, and Then They Start Joking Again

Then the conversation turned serious again as one student asked, "When so many things could make study findings less reliable, is it even possible to do a perfect study then?"

None of the students knew. The one who'd asked put another question, "How are the best studies done then?"

Becky said, "I've been reading about this, and I think there are quite a lot of things that can make studies better. I know that in the best studies of how effective a new medicine is and things like that, there are things that some of the people in the team that carries out the experiment don't even know, for instance they might be given two boxes of pills to give out to the people taking them for the study, but not be told which is which; they might just have different codes on them depending on what pills they are, which only the people telling them what to do understand. So when they give the people being studied things, the people being given them can't guess things from their body language and get influenced by them.

"For instance, a good study of a drug's effectiveness will test how well it works compared with a placebo - a pill made from just ordinary everyday ingredients that aren't designed to do what the real drug does at all, but some people will be given it to see if they get better from what their problems are while they're on it, since if no more people taking the real drug get better than people taking the placebo, there won't be any evidence the drug really works, since some people taking the real drug could be getting better because of other reasons too. One of the reasons the placebo and the drug could be working is that people believe it's going to work and that makes them more cheerful and less anxious, and that helps the body or mind heal. That could especially happen with mental problems like depression.

"The study participants won't know whether they're being given the drug or the placebo, but neither will the person giving it to them, so those who are given the placebo can't pick up on anything like negativity from someone sorry to be giving them that one, and lose a bit of hope that it'll work so it might not work as well as it would have done otherwise so the real drug will seem better than it really is by comparison, and the people given the real drug can't detect anything like extra enthusiasm when they're given the real thing, which might otherwise improve their chances of feeling better even if the drug isn't effective, for instance if the drugs that are being tested are antidepressants, and someone with depression feels more optimistic because they think they're being cured and that helps the depression go away without the help of the drug, so taking it isn't really making the difference. I don't know whether that really could happen, but in the studies the top people think are the best, they just don't take the chance.

"But not all studies of things are good ones; some have quite a few problems in the way they're designed. So it's important that people don't believe just any claims that are made, even if the studies are reported in the papers without any criticisms."

Becky felt as if talking for that long was thirsty work and took a swig of her drink.

Then she had a thought and said: "Maybe some psychologists who do studies could try to make them more like the best medical studies, and try to make sure the people they're studying aren't being influenced to behave in certain ways by their body language, or hints they give about the kind of behaviour they expect from them, and that kind of thing.

"I'll give you an example of what I mean: if a psychologist does a study where they expect people to behave more aggressively when they're wearing black or something - in one of my textbooks it says psychologists have actually found that people do , - they might compare two groups of people, one wearing black and one not, and make them do the same thing, such as playing a game of football, to see if one group does it more aggressively than the other. But if they expect the one wearing black to be more aggressive, they might behave towards them in a different way than they behave towards the other one, that actually makes them feel more aggressive, and that might be the real reason they behave like it, not really because they're wearing black.

"So it might be better if the psychologist gave instructions about how to carry out the experiment to someone who didn't know what it was trying to find out, who themselves did the experiment with the people being studied, rather than the psychologist doing it. It would be best if they were people who weren't familiar with experiments like it and what psychologists in the past had done that was similar, since if they didn't know what the experiment was trying to find out any more than the people being studied did, they might be less likely to do things that gave the people in it hints as to how they were expected to behave, ... apart from the fact that they themselves might sometimes have their own expectations about their behaviour."

Becky stopped talking and finished her drink.

The students almost forgot the time as they carried on chatting!

One grinned and said, "Hey imagine if psychologists were employed at every football match, and every time something controversial happened, like a dispute over a decision the referee made, the psychologist there would speculate about why it had happened over a loudspeaker; so, for instance they might say, 'The referee clearly made the wrong decision there; I wonder why? Sleep deprivation that's compromised his decision-making abilities, maybe? Or maybe he has a deep-rooted loathing of one of the teams, perhaps dating back to his childhood, where maybe he went to their town for the day and was convinced he'd been overcharged for some chocolate or something in a shop, and he feels bad about it to this day! Whatever caused his problems, perhaps we ought to feel sympathy for him.'

"Imagine if psychologists would say things like that in a really patronising way, and the referees weren't allowed to say anything over the loudspeaker themselves so they couldn't set the record straight. Referees would be so embarrassed!"

The students laughed.

Then, several of them went and bought cups of tea and treats from the nearby vending machines, as the cafe they were in had finished serving lunch. They felt they needed them to help them relax after having had to concentrate on everything Becky had said! Then they carried on chatting.