Psychology

Surveys sought to find out how common suicidal ideation and mental health disorders were during combat deployment and to examine the associated risk factors. Some of the greatest risks were being white, having past non-combat trauma, and past major depressive disorder. Of the 3,957 U.S. Army soldiers deployed in Afghanistan who completed the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (weighted to represent all 87,032 soldiers serving in Afghanistan) at the midpoint of their deployment in 2012, 11.7 percent reported suicidal thoughts at some point in their lives, 3 percent…

Online misinformation works, or so it would seem. One of the more interesting statistics from the 2019 UK general election was that 88% of advertisements posted on social media by the Conservative Party pushed figures that had already been deemed misleading by the UK’s leading fact-checking organization, Full Fact. And, of course, the Conservatives won the election by a comfortable margin. Internet firms such as Facebook and Google are taking some steps to limit political misinformation. But with Donald Trump aiming for reelection in 2020, it seems likely we’ll see just as many false or…

Every time a disaster occurs, people show their philanthropic side, but the same framing that works for blood drives, such as 'gift of life' appeals, is far less effective when it comes to organ donation. Though much is known about why people donate blood or register as an organ donor, we don't know a lot about why individuals continue to choose not to do so. Most people do not and never will donate so it makes sense that asking people 'why not' rather than 'why' has more value.  The anonymous data for the study was collected via a survey promoted by Australian donation organisations…

If you are an African-American hypertensive at high risk of developing associated cardiovascular disease, a new paper from Maharishi Institute - where yogic flying instructors get trained to levitate(1) - says Transcendental Meditation will prevent abnormal enlargement of your heart and reduce chronic heart failure. That is a very narrow claim, like leading your softball team in 9th inning doubles in the month of August, so it's okay to be suspicious. The study was also very small and the authors claim that the control group had a whopping 10 percent increase in abnormal heart enlargement…

New survey results in the Journal of Media Psychology find that how much you enjoy or hate the new "Star Wars" movie will depend a lot on your expectations. Nothing shocking in that, but there is a twist. And the twist is not that the new movie will make a fortune this week no matter what reviewers or the more rabid fringe of the fan base say. That is entirely predictable. The survey was 441 people recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk before and after they saw the last episode in the popular franchise, Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi in 2017. The journal topic was how their…

A new study found that people given accurate statistics on a controversial issue misremembered those numbers to fit commonly held beliefs. That means the source of fake news is often not malevolent organizations manipulating social media, it is people convinced they are correct.  In one study, humanities academics presented 110 participants with short written descriptions of four societal issues that involved numerical information. On two of those societal issues, the researchers did pre-tests and found that the factually accurate numerical relationship fit with many people's…

"Epstein didn't kill himself" is a conspiracy meme that has been everywhere lately. If you are not familiar with the name Jeffrey Epstein, he was a billionaire and convicted sex offender - but as a billionaire he was connected to almost everyone in politics and culture, so when he was found dead in his jail cell, denied bail on a new charge, there began concerns someone had him killed to keep him silent. Would someone rich not want to spend the rest of his life in jail, where if stories are true a lot of criminals treat child rapists pretty poorly? Would such a person perhaps pay a lot…

We are setting up a live streaming/video channel to do things like reviews of books, interviews, and then eventually we will do staff meetings as well.(1) But while it was once limited to something like Facebook live, with Restream we can go out to YouTube Live, Mixer, and Twitch, all at once.(2)  You never want to have a dud, because we are a nonprofit and we are wasting donor money if we create a dud, so I used those services for a few weeks to try and get the feel for how successful channels are managed. Aside from big personalities like Ninja, Mixer also highlights various "streamers…

In a story that feels like it could have come from Babylon Bee or The Onion, psychologists used surveys of teens to declare with somber seriousness that teens are more bored than ever - and adolescent girls are most bored. And that could lead to drug abuse. They looked at responses from the Monitoring the Future in-school survey to statements like "I am often bored." Youth self-chose how bored they were on a five-point scale starting in 2008. To make journalists think this is science-y they suggest boredom is linked to depression and drug use. I grew up in a town with 200 people and had…

For two-thirds of parents it can be hard to know the line between recognizing youth depression and making something special of teen moods, and perhaps enabling more problems. But there is no question America is the most over-medicated in the world, and one the most anti-depressants, and therefore it is little surprising that 25 percent of parents say their child knows a teen with clinical depression while 1 in 10 believe a peer of their child has committed suicide. Obviously that can’t be true, even if the age is pushed out to 24 there are only 6,000 suicides per year, while there are 60,000,…