UCSC; Fall, 2009

Freud was one of the most creative thinkers in psychology, but that doesn't
mean he was right about everything, said Roy Baumeister, PhD, kicking off
the APA Annual Convention symposium, "Was Freud right? Psychoanalytic
theories in modern social-personality research."

Presenters supported and attacked some of Freud's most famous theories about
defensive projection, gender differences in moral development and
homophobia. They discussed each theory, research relevant to the theory and
their opinion for or against the theory.

Resolving Oedipus

· Freud's theory: Freud believed that moral development coincided with
development of the superego. The key moment in superego development for boys
is resolution of the Oedipal conflict, which comes from fear of castration.
Because little girls don't fear castration, Freud concluded that their
resolutions of the Oedipal conflict is not as complete as boys', resulting
in an underdeveloped center of morality.

· The evidence: June Tangney, PhD, of George Mason University, reviewed the
literature on morality in men and women. Research has found that development
of the superego includes development of emotions such as guilt and shame,
which often lead people toward moral behaviors. In 12 independent studies of
people across the lifespan, Tangney finds that women report more feelings of
guilt and shame than men do. And other researchers find that women are more
empathic than men, said Tangney.

In terms of actual behavior, "it's hard to argue that men behave more
morally than women," said Tangney. "Across the lifespan, women control their
anger better and are the primary caretakers of the poor, the sick and the
needy."

· Ruling: No support. There's no evidence to support Freud's assertion that
men have a better developed sense of morality than women. "If anything,
women are more morally developed than men," Tangney said.

Defensive projection

· Freud's theory: Freud posited that people try to repress feelings or
impulses they find unacceptable; if such an attempt fails, they "project"
those thoughts onto another person rather than face up to their own
shortcomings.

· The evidence: In several studies, Leonard Newman, PhD, of the University
of Illinois at Chicago, found he could induce people to project personally
undesirable traits onto others. In general, repressors-people who try to
avoid or suppress threatening thoughts about themselves-are more likely to
project than nonrepressors, Newman found.

In one study he made all the participants act as repressors. To do that, he
pretended to profile their personalities and then gave them a bogus profile
in which they scored favorably on four traits and unfavorably on two. He
then had them sit for five minutes and talk out loud without thinking about
one of the traits on which they scored unfavorably (forced repression).
Participants then watched a five-minute videotape of a person and rated him
or her on the same personality traits Newman had rated them on. People
tended to rate the person on the video most unfavorably on the trait they'd
been trying to repress, Newman found. Much of this work is published in the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP) (Vol. 72, p. 980­1001).

· Ruling: Moderate support. Based on this and several other studies, Newman
concluded that Freud identified a real and important phenomenon but got the
process wrong. Freud contended that people use defensive projection when
repression failed. Instead, Newman's research implies that projection is a
byproduct of trying to repress (occurs after repression).

Self-destructive behavior

· Freud's theory: People have an innate "death instinct" and purposefully
bring suffering on themselves, particularly when they feel distressed.

· The evidence: Baumeister and his colleagues tested whether distress
changes the way people approach risky choices. He used a lottery paradigm
that gave participants two choices: take a 70 percent chance of winning $2
or a 2 percent chance of winning $25. Winners get to keep the money, losers
have to listen to a loud tape of finger nails scraping across a blackboard.

They put some participants into a bad mood, others into a good mood, and
others into a neutral mood. Far more of the people in a foul mood chose the
long-shot lottery choice than those in either the neutral or good mood, the
researchers found. They repeated the experiment and found that if they made
people think about the pros and cons of their choice, far fewer people took
the long-shot, regardless of their mood.

People in a bad mood seem to act compulsively, said Baumeister. They're
looking for a way to alleviate their pain and take the first choice that
comes along without thinking through the odds. This study is published in
JPSP (Vol. 71, p. 1250­1267).

Ruling: Slight support. There's no evidence that people have a desire to
suffer, but they do inadvertently bring suffering onto themselves.

Self as energy

· Freud's theory: People have psychic energy that vigorous mental activity
can deplete. Such depletion weakens our ego and our defenses against threats
to self-esteem.

· The evidence: In several studies (most in press at JPSP) researchers from
Case Western University found that attempting to quell the ego-suppressing
emotions and thoughts or trying to make difficult choices-decreases people's
ability to perform a second cognitive or physical task.

For example, Baumeister and his colleagues found that if people had to
resist the temptation to eat chocolate, they were less persistent on an
unsolvable puzzle task than a control group that was allowed to eat
chocolate.

In another study, Kristin Sommer, PhD, who presented at the symposium,
tested whether people with depleted energy reserves would have a harder time
warding off threats to their self-esteem than other people. She and her
colleagues had half of their participants suppress thoughts about a white
bear; this task is cognitively draining because once someone is told not to
think about a white bear they can think of nothing else. The researchers
then told half the participants that they scored in the normal range on a
creativity test and half that they scored in the deficient range.

Participants whose energy was depleted by the thought-suppression task were
vulnerable to the self-esteem threat, whereas nondepleted (control)
participants successfully defended against the threat, the researchers
found.

Ruling: Strong support. Studies support Freud's notion of psychic energy
that, when depleted, undermines people's ability to perform cognitively
complex tasks and defend themselves from ego threats.

Homophobia

· Freud's theory: Homophobic men will be more sexually aroused by homosexual
cues than nonhomophobic men because they hold latent homosexual feelings.
And homophobic men are more aggressive than nonhomophobic men.

· The evidence: Lester Wright, PhD, of Western Michigan University, and his
colleagues rated 64 self-identified heterosexual men as homophobics or
nonhomophobics. Each man then watched three four-minute erotic videos of a
heterosexual couple, a male homosexual couple and a lesbian couple. The
researchers measured their physiological arousal using a measure of
erection. After each video, the men self-rated their level of erection and
their level of sexual arousal.

Most of the men were physiologically aroused during the heterosexual and
lesbian videos, with no significant differences between homophobic men and
nonhomophobic men, the researchers found.

However, far more men in the homophobic group became aroused during the male
homosexual video than nonhomophobic men: 54 percent of homophobic men were
fully aroused and 26 percent were moderately aroused while 24 percent of
nonhomo-phobic men were fully aroused and 10 percent moderately aroused.

Furthermore, while the self-reports of the nonhomo-phobic men were
consistent with measures of their erections, the reports by the homophobic
men were not: Homophobic men reported less arousal than was measured by
their degree of erection, Wright and his colleagues found.

They found no difference in aggression between the two groups as measured by
a general aggression questionnaire. The study was published in the Journal
of Abnormal Psychology (Vol. 105, p. 440­445).

This is the first study to attempt to test Freud's theory, said Wright.
Future studies should use more fine-grained measures of homophobia and
better control groups, he said.

· Ruling: Good support. Wright's study found that homophobic men are more
sexually aroused by homosexual cues than nonhomophobic men but they are not
more aggressive. However, this finding must be replicated.

Freud's theories have held up rather well to the rigors of the
social-psychology laboratory as evidenced by these and other studies, said
Baumeister. That's an impressive feat considering that the theories were
mostly based on informal observations of the mentally afflicted and are now
being tested by methods that didn't exist when Freud was alive.

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