Short Writing Piece
University of Melbourne
2021

Based on my research, I will be arguing that there is no ‘true’ self, as scientifically established in the relevant literature. True self refers to, and implies a singular, fixed, tangible, unchanging element of a human being, that remains unchanged, and uninfluenced by external, and internal factors.

Often synonymous with conceptions of ‘self’ is ‘Personality’. Personality has been defined in a multitude of ways. For example. DeYoung & Gray, (2009) described personality in terms of regularity in behaviour and experience, and similarly pPerin (1999) defined it as a persons typical mode of response. Both refer to the mathematical, tangible outward manifestations arising from, and reflecting internal underlying causes. However, inherent in these definitions is an acknowledgment that there is likely variance, and outliers meaning that ones personality is not fixed, and unchanging.

Most strikingly, McAdams & Pals, (2006) described personality in terms of individuals unique evolutionary blueprint for human nature, dispositional traits, charateristic adaptions, and self-defining life narratives, in a cultural and social context.

Based on McAdams & Pals (2006), it suggests that Personality is determined by an internal executive ‘control centre’ that decides how to respond to external/internal stimuli. Biologically speaking, this seems to correspond to the frontal lobe, defined by it’s executive decision making abilities. Thus, under this definition, it is suggested that ones true personality is indeed determined by a singular, tangible, unchanging element of a human being. However, if this is true, then if there’s damage to the frontal lobe, or brain in general then this self should not remain unchanged, but fundamentally/profoundly changed. It’s clear that besides the biological root, the only remaining alternative would be to describe an etheric, ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ that is ones true self, like philosophers like Descartes, and Kant believed . Such notions (while I personally agree with them) are currently not scientifically validated, and can therefore be dismissed from the discussion at the present time.

Lab Report Summary (Oral Presentation) (Summary under 10 mins)
2021

The degree to which visually perceieved pain can effect language memory accuracy, and speed.

The main purpose to study is because there is lack of research literature teasing out this association. Discovery of any association can have significant implications in application to forensic psychology, educational psychology, mental health treatments, and all clinical research conducted on these areas, as well as wider societal issues such as politics, education. The task, by nature of the experiment depending on participant visually perceiving pain on another human being, is measuring empathy.

A meta analysis conducted by Yan et al. (2019) found that increased empathy is positively correlated with increased visual and auditory memory. Thus, there is a gap inn the literature for visually perceived language. Another meta analysis by Yan&Su (2018) found that on average, women tend to have higher empathy than men. Thus, we would expect pain associated-words to elicit higher reaction times, and higher accuracy from participants than non-pain related words. And we would also expect that indviduals with higher empathy to have higher reaction times and accuracy to pain related words, and women to have higher reaction times and accuracy to pain related words.

We had 45 participants, with a gender ratio of 60/40 Female to male. We gave a preliminary questionaire, which included age, sex, and empathy scale (Toronto empathy questionaire, as it was believed to be most effective) Participants then participated in a learning task, where they were shown 4 seperate words (without meaning), 2 of which were shown with a video of an indiidual exhibiting through facial and energetic acting/ or mimicking a pain response, and another video mimicking a non-pain response (blank expression). After participats saw video-word associations, they completed Task A, where they were required to recall a one of the previously shown words out of 3 options (2 of which were not previously shown). This tested whether recall of the word was effected by pain video association and could be identified and differetiated from the other two options that were not present in learning task In Task B, Participants were then asked to decide on which drug an individual took based on their pain mimickry.Results

Surprisingly, we found that non-pain words were remembered more accurately than pain words. Interestingly, however, pain words were remembered significantly faster than non pain words. Again, surprisingly, We had non-significant results for sex, and empathy differences accuracy and RT

Discussion

Thus, our first hypothesis was partially supported, as pain related words had faster RTs, but not higher accuracy. This is likely due to the speed-accuracy trade off. It is also likely due to a lack of literature on this area, w other studies results not forcing them to take into account the effect of trauma on memory. A meta analysis conducted by Sartori et al. (2013) found that in traumatic events, the details and accuracy of memory are often compromised. This includes visual perception of pain related language, such as in the case of cyber bullying, and online sexual harassment. It is hypothesised that the pain aspect encodes deeper, In the non-refined, unfiltered unconscious mind, and physiologically the sympathetic ns (fight or flighted) is actiated, imbuing the participant with more motivation to recall to ‘help’ the other person, but in the process it neglects detail and accuracy perception, in favour of the fundamental, greater goal.

In accuracy of pain related words, our distinct divergence from previous studies results could be due to the comparatively small sample size of 45 participants. This makes it harder to extrapolate findings to the wider population.

Empathy, and sex differences weren’t supported. Perhaps the study design/participant size contributed to this. However, it’s likely that the increased pain empathy (and its likely association with trauma), is negated by the fact that their accuracy/detail acquisition will be clouded by their own pain experience (subjective trauma). Thus, there is likely gender and sex differences in empathy, which is why there were none measured in a pain related language experiment. There could have been a flaw with the Toronto empathy measure, so future research could factor average an empathy score acquired from a variety of empathy measures, and assign that to each participant (much in the same vein of the big 5 model of personality)

Thus, while contradicting some previous findings, this study contributes to the overall literature, and raises many more questions in alignment with greater, more established psychological findings, like trauma, and heightened psychological and physiological states detrimental effect on detailed memory for pain-related events. However, the present study did verify and concur w previous studies that pain related words had faster RT than non-pain related words.

Overall though, this is a profoundly important topic, as heightened psychological and physiological states effect on visually perceived language In combination with visually perceived pain may have significant comprimising effects for societal responses to politics, (i.e a a nation decides to go to War out of vengeance for an attack, neglecting to realise that they’ve gone to war with the country/group not responsible for said attack. Thus, accuracy of detail was compromised by heightened state, which resulted in a poor decision which further resulted in negative outcomes. It can also apply religion (visual perception of language element), education decisions (particularly in low socio-economic areas where environment may elicit these heightened states), in addition to forensic psychology, educational psychology, mental health treatments, and clinical research.

Thank you