Psychology

Once upon a time, young Baby Boomers ridiculed television programs that showed married couples in separate beds. They used terms like 'prudish' and 'Victorian' and 'repressed.' Actually, those shows were representative of culture for most of human history. Humans have rarely shared a bed with a spouse or relative if they had a choice. Only in the 1950s did sharing a bed in larger rooms in larger houses become common. By the 1980s, California took the concept of a King-Sized bed (invented in 1890 to sleep 15) and marketed it for wealthy elites on the coasts; a California King, 7 feet long.…

Evolutionary psychology, the discipline that claimed we're being manipulated by flowers and evolved to like the appearance of black men, also made the bold assertion that the income of your parents during pregnancy made you...gay? It's even crazier than that cock-fixated megalomaniac at Berkeley claiming a weedkiller turned frogs gay, though at least evolutionary psychologists made some pretense of showing their data in 2022.(1) They didn't stop with just correlating parental income to becoming gay, they also said it is linked to being more submissive in bed, while high prenatal testosterone…

If a small survey in California is indicative of young physicians nationwide, emergency room culture will need to change for younger residents to have interest. The news comes at a worrisome time. Increased government control of health care has meant plummeting interest in emergency medicine among graduating medical students. Women are even less likely to enter the field and instead opt for a culture that requires less assertiveness and self-advocacy, according to the survey.   The survey was very small, 25 medical students pursuing emergency medicine who were interviewed about…

A sociological look at data from 2011-2018 led the authors of a new paper to cite an increase over time in psychological distress among Latinos, including citizens, in the U.S. They cite changes in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was deemed illegal by the courts, and President Biden threatening to shut the southern border of the U.S. entirely. The ripple effects are interesting, if they hold up. The authors say that when President Obama declared a temporary halt to deportations of illegal immigrants, it relieved distress among Latino citizens, even though they…

Transgender and gender-diverse Medicare beneficiaries use significantly more emergency department services than cisgender people, particularly for psychological care, and these visits were more likely to be followed by an admission. It brings up an obvious question; with outsized use of emergency services, why are there delays in seeking timely health care that result in visits to the ER? The data were a random 20% sample of the Medicare inpatient, carrier, and enrollment files from 2011 to 2020. The number of transgender and gender-diverse people was small (3,693) but senior citizen…

Like solar panels, Tesla, and other gimmicks for rich white people, organic food has flatlined.That's not to say it isn't huge. Organic is definitely Big Food, a $130 billion industry, but rich people and those who want to seem like them are a rather small subset of humans. The now 24-year-old "USDA Organic" virtue signaling bonanza created by the Clinton administration to reward donors who longed for a government seal - one they controlled - has reached peak acceptance. Given stagnant growth and ordinary consumers jaded about fraudulent imported organic food - about 25 percent of imported…

Republicans joined the anti-vaccine movement in 2021 but you might not know it xisted prior to that. Academics and allied journalists would roll out surveys showing that the anti-vaccine movement was similar on both sides to rationalize the behavior of their tribe - while ignoring actual data. Data like that that coast of California had more vaccine exemptions for school kids than the rest of the US combined. Some coastal schools had vaccine rates of just 26%. Fortunately, we had physicians like Dr. Richard Pan on our side, willing to defy his political party to save kids. We pressured the…

1.     January 6 was a shocking aberration. 2.     Whether due to term limit or a lost election, each US president up through Barak Obama, and each presidential candidate up through Al Gore, gracefully yielded when the time came, because that’s how the American system works. 3.     The 14th Amendment clearly disqualifies insurrectionists from public office. Three self-evident truths? Well… The Civil War “ended” at Appomattox in 1865 – but only in the sense that the Korean War ended at Panmunjom in 1953. Which is…

If you're holding back on revealing negative secrets about yourself, new survey results in a social psychology journal say you can relax; most people don't care. When study participants pushed through fear to reveal a secret, those in whom they confided were significantly more charitable than they expected. This was a marketing experiment, not real life, but the authors say recipients appreciated the trust, honesty, and vulnerability needed to reveal secrets. Here are some findings. Too-Low Expectations. Researchers asked several groups to imagine revealing a negative secret and to…

Everyone wants an easy solution to being more fit but the only thing easy is eating too much pizza. Since 2022 we've been treated to far too many pictures of celebrities with weird "Ozempic Face" because their vanity is stronger than their desire for energy balance. You don't need a gimmick, you do need a little willpower. Commercial gyms love this time of year because everyone joins to honor their New Year's Resolution, they even pay stupid initiation fees, and then most are done a month later. An easy way to save money on a gym membership, in order of difficulty: 1. Chew some gum. I had a…