Social rules are harder under stress
14 July 2005
by Richard
Conan-Davies
|
If you are tired, distracted or stressed out some of us tend to blurt out the truth about how we feel more easily than others. This is according to psychological research by Bill von Hippel of the Univeristy of NSW in Australia. He tested this by by asking 71 participants to eat a chicken's foot under conditions of high or low social pressure. People in the high-pressure group were served the foot by a Chinese woman who described it as the national dish of China and her personal favorit. The low-pressure group were served the foot by a non-Chinese woman who had said only that it was Chinese food. Before serving the chicken he measured the each person's inhibitory ability to suppress irrelevant or inappropriate thoughts. The people with the least inhibitory ability reacted most inappropriately to the chicken foot in the high social stress situation. Dr. Hippel explained that " We found that people with poor inhibitory ability were more likely to behave in a socially inappropriate way than people with good inhibitory ability. But even people with good inhibitory ability were likely to behave inappropriately when distracted. This suggests that our ability to suppress our true feelings is disrupted under demanding conditions. |
 Being stressed out or distracted makes some people more likely to blurt out the truth or say inappropriate things. |
Related Links
Original press release from American Psychological Society
Nature
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