Psychology

While rabid Democrats charge Republicans with racism and rabid Republicans do the same to Democrats, the least partisan people and therefore most independent are really the most likely to use race as a criterion, according to a new survey.  While a Republican candidate outraged the opposition by stating 47% were going to vote Democrat no matter what, voting history shows that is largely true on both sides.  That 6% of swing voters might be a problem for President Obama, if the survey results are accurate. An online study of eligible voters around the country revealed that the…

There is a common belief that men are empowered sexually. Men know this is silly, of course. It is women who decide each day if they want to have sex or not, not men.  It's in college that young men learn this lesson. This pressure to be both sexually dominant while recognizing it isn't possible can disempower both men and women, says a new paper. Gender roles and norms play a role in sexual behavior between men and women and it is often assumed that men dominate women sexually, according to psychologists who need to write papers saying such. This assumption may lead to loss of both…

Global digital marketing companies Resolution Media and Kenshoo Social published a new report today called "Social Media Insights: Men are Cheap" which claims gender differences in Facebook advertising campaigns and offers actionable guidance to advertisers. This is the third report in a series for marketers running ad campaigns on Facebook.  "Women represent the majority of Facebook users, but it's cheaper to advertise to men. While this may seem counterintuitive given the laws of supply and demand in an auction marketplace, our advertisers capitalized on this trend and spent 53…

The more conservative a female House of Representatives lawmaker is, the more likely she is to look like a woman, according to a UCLA analysis. Heteronormative gender bias, right? Stupid GOP likes 1950s stereotypes. Maybe. The GOP wears ties too, and it's hard to know if President Obama even owns one. The UCLA psychologists were somewhat sure they could tell a book by its cover, and so they did.  They also found the opposite to be true: Female politicians with less feminine facial features were more likely to be Democrats, and the more liberal their voting record, the more mannish they…

Doctors don't want to be general care physicians, they want to specialize, and it is a problem that will only get worse because it involves money. Primary care physicians are at the heart of health care in the United States, they are the first to diagnose patients and ensure those patients receive the care they need.  But faced with increased regulations, paperwork, the onslaught of defensive medicine, malpractice costs and staggering medical school bills, many are instead opting to become specialists. In Medical Education, a survey of more than 2,500 medical students attending New York…

Did Sen. Barack Obama buy the election of 2008, given that he bypassed public financing and so was able to raise and spend twice as much money as Sen. John McCain?  In 2012, the concern is the high spending by PACs but the playing field is level, both campaigns can raise and spend as much as possible this election and they will; each candidate this year will spend as much as the entire 2004 election, the last time both candidates held themselves to public financing limits. Communications experts say in a new analysis spending makes no difference; by the time elections come around, people…

Here is a diet plan that requires no special meal purchases or even exercise, it just requires a willingness to believe that correlation-causation arrows fly backwards.  People, especially women, who read food labels are thinner. The results of surveys on the relationship between reading food labels and obesity indicated that the body mass index of those consumers who read the label is 1.49 points lower than those who don't read food labels when shopping for food. This translates as a reduction of almost 9 lbs. for an American woman 5 feet 3 inches tall weighing 163 lbs - already…

Dr. Brian Wansink, professor of marketing  and director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, has tackled weighty issues such as what the paintings of "The Last Supper" can tell us about their diets, how kitchen spoons could be poisoning children and why we all think vegetarians are sissies.(1) Now he and two co-authors have tackled the last meals of prisoners about to die. They found it's almost like those prisoners were throwing dietary caution to the wind just before they are executed for being rapists and murderers.  The lesson for marketing types, they concluded? Invoke…

For every "treatment" or remediation in autism-land, there are both fervent believers and detractors. For every person helped, there's another harmed. Perhaps, just perhaps, in some cases, it's not the therapy itself, but the person conducting the therapy that makes it a problem. There are bad apples in every field, people who misapply therapies, others who use their position to abuse, and others who are so incompetent as to be dangerous. Nowhere is this more evident and problematic than in the disciplines that are involved in helping people--be it in academia, in psychology or in service-…

Spend too much time on Facebook?  Can't get enough LOLcat videos? You no longer need to be ashamed.  You may have a disease. Psychologists interviewed a total of 843 people about their Internet habits and an analysis of the questionnaires showed that 132 men and women in the group exhibit problematic behavior in how they handle being online; all their thoughts revolve around the Internet during the day, and they feel their wellbeing is severely impacted if they have to go without it. The researchers from Bonn got together with counterparts at the Central Institute of Mental…