Psychology
Hank |
Organic food is a gigantic profitable Big Ag enterprise ensconced in a health halo that glows so brightly the bulk of consumers believe it not only has no pesticides but actually contains no chemicals of any kind.
My concern about the science literacy of Whole Foods shoppers aside, from a purely practical point of view, if I were a farmer and walked into a store and saw berries for $8 a pack and hamburger for $10 a pound that has no difference but process I'd immediately ask why I am competing with giants over razor thin margins when I could segue into an area where price is basically no…
Adolescent obesity is a national public health concern and, unchecked, places young people on a trajectory for a variety of health issues as they grow older. A new study from the University of Houston Department of Health and Human Performance (HHP) and Texas Obesity Research Center (TORC) suggests there is a relationship between long-term exposure to three specific types of family stressors and children becoming obese by the time they turn 18 years old.
Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, Assistant Professor Daphne Hernandez examined three family stress points ¬-…
Getting a good education may not improve your life chances of happiness, according to new mental health research.
The work used existing data from the Health Survey for England (HSE) for 2010 and 2011 in which the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) was administered to 17,030 survey participants across both years. In the paper, they examined socioeconomic factors related to high mental wellbeing, such as level of education and personal finances. Low educational attainment is strongly associated with mental illness but the research team wanted to find out if higher…
Hank |
"Dragon Age: Inquisition", which came out in late 2014, was not a video game I anticipated much. I had played both previous versions and their add-on content but unlike Mass Effect, by the same company, only the first Dragon Age had much re-playability and, unlike Mass Effect, they wanted you to play a new character each time. There wasn't much point in getting attached to a character. But the milieu, swords and sorcery, was intriguing to an old D&D player, and I knew they would have something most games lack - a story where choice matters.
I like a good story, and I like when my actions…
Children who play a game together have a stronger connection than kids who play the same game but not in a synchronous way, according to a new paper.
The authors assert that a physical activity performed in unison helps children feel more positively toward each other and could perhaps increase their empathy.
"Synchrony is like a glue that brings people together -- it's a magical connector for people," said lead author Tal-Chen Rabinowitch, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Learning&Brain Sciences at the University of Washington.
Synchrony occurs when people…
A new paper links eating disorders in adolescent females with lower levels of educational attainment and personal income in early adulthood. They were also less likely to own a home.
Disordered eating behaviors may set some individuals on a different trajectory whereby they do not have the same life chances or opportunities for success in adulthood. The authors speculate that disordered eating behaviors may set some individuals on a different trajectory whereby they do not have the same life chances or opportunities for success in adulthood. It may also be that the psychological issues that…
How we get along as siblings is a deeply personal issue and profoundly effects our lives as individuals. It’s an issue that crosses cultures and economies, levels of class and fame.
This point was reinforced to me when I did an interview on the Today Show about the importance of sibling conflict. Co-host Karl Stefanovic torpedoed in at the end and dismissed everything I was saying as nonsense. He made it clear that his lifelong domination of his younger brother, Peter, is perfectly normal and acceptable. If anything he seemed to be very proud of it.
Interestingly enough, Peter is also a…
Psychology papers often make make sweeping generalizations based on weak observational studies and that has led to an alarming overuse of the term 'narcissist'.
Some people are self-centered, to be sure, but colloquial over-diagnosis of narcissism has led to poor distinction between actual narcissism and people who like to talk about themselves. All cows are animals but not all animals are cows, etc. but ever since a small paper came out of U.C. Berkeley in 1988, the psychology field has been over-using the diagnosis. An examination of 48 participants found that…
The suicide rate among active duty U.S. military members has increased in the last decade and one party of politicians has contended that their opponents were pushing soldiers to suicide.
Is there any truth to it?
Deployment dates for all services members (October 2001 through December 2007) and suicide data (October 2001 through December 2009) to estimate rates of suicide death to compare deployed service members with those who did not deploy, including suicides that occurred after separation from the military.
Mark A. Reger, Ph.D., of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Tacoma, Wash., and…
A recent paper discusses shows how rapidly formed first impressions that influence our subsequent behavior towards that person can be accurately predicted based on the physical features found in everyday images of faces, such as those found on social media.
The impressions we create through such images are important in a world where we increasingly get to know one another online rather than in the flesh.
To investigate the basis for these judgments the research team took ordinary photographs from the web and analyzed physical features of the faces. Each of 1,000 faces was…