Psychology

We already know that "suffering builds character", but a new study suggests that it may do a lot more than that. Successfully coping with stress at an early age may significantly increase your chances of being a more resilient adult, as well as strengthen your ability to regulate emotions. A new paper by Katz et al, "Prefrontal Plasticity and Stress Inoculation-Induced Resilience", shows how exposure to mild stress as a young child can actually alter the brain in ways that make us better equipped to handle future stress as adults. Parents may feel that by preventing their child from…

During my one and only severe manic episode, during the summer of 2006, I had the scariest half hour of my life where I thought I was literally in danger of losing my sanity. I found myself wondering, the other day, if something like this was a common experience of mania. I don't think it is, because I've never read of anybody else going through something like this. (Photograph by Keith Adams, 2006) It was on the day that my (as yet undiagnosed) mania really took wing (this was a two or three weeks before I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder), and I was being flooded with a million…

When New Year's Eve rolls around and you're deciding whether to have another glass of champagne, your decision may be predicted by your perspective on the future. A pair of Kansas State University researchers found that people who tend to think in the long term are more likely to make positive decisions about their health, whether it's how much they drink, what they eat, or their decision to wear sunscreen. "If you are more willing to pick later, larger rewards rather than taking the immediate payoff, you are more future-minded than present-minded," said James Daugherty, a doctoral student in…

It's common for powerful public figures to use their status to lecture the rest of us about how we should live. But it's also no secret that the politicians, business leaders and entertainers who make up this elite group of decision makers in our society don't practice what they preach. And coming out of 2009, a year that may well be remembered for its scandal-ridden headlines, from admissions of extramarital affairs by elected leaders and athletes, to corporate executives preaching about free markets while taking bailout money, it may be reasonable to ask: why are powerful people hypocrites…

Kim Peek, the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman's character in "Rain man" died Saturday, Dec 19th 2009 at age 58, after suffering a major heart attack. A truly fascinating individual, Kim was classified as a "mega-savant" who was a strange juxtaposition of disability and genius.  While some may dispute the use of such terms, there is little doubt that Kim possessed some of the most unusual and remarkable abilities ever witnessed. He will be missed and I would extend my sympathies to his father and caregiver;  Fran Peek. http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant_syndrome/…

Young people who want to be better appreciated and respected within their group are willing to be violent, says a new study that looked in depth at the social relationships between male and female teenagers, relational violence, and psycho-social adjustment factors such as loneliness and self-esteem. Published recently in Psicothema,  the study focused on the relationship between relational violence between teenagers, their social adjustment and their reputation, in order to show how young people who long for high "reputation status" are more likely to use relational violence as a…

A new study featured online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that depression patients are unable to sustain activity in brain areas related to positive emotion. The authors say The study challenges previous notions that individuals with depression show less brain activity in areas associated with positive emotion. Instead, the new data suggest similar initial levels of activity, but an inability to sustain them over time. During the study, 27 depressed patients and 19 control participants were presented with visual images intended to evoke either a…

If your kids want a Wii, PlayStation or Xbox 360 this holiday season, you may actually have good reason to give them one; it turns out there is some redeeming value in the hours that kids spend transfixed by these video game systems.  A new study in Current Directions in Psychological Science reports that regular gamers are fast and accurate information processors, not only during game play, but in real-life situations as well. Psychological scientists from the University of Rochester, Matthew Dye, Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier, looked at all of the existing literature on video gaming…

In the Dec. 18 issue of Science, Researchers from Tufts University say popular television programs are spreading racial messages to their viewers through biased facial expressions and body language, and it's happening without the audience even knowing it. The Tufts team studied the prevalence, subtlety and impact of nonverbal race bias in 11 popular weekly scripted television shows. They found that characters on the shows exhibited more negative nonverbal behavior toward black characters than to white characters of the same status. Exposure to "pro-white" (vs. "pro-black") nonverbal bias…

In his book on infidelity, “The Truth about Cheating: Why Men Stray and What you can do to Prevent it,” M. Gary Neuman asked the men he surveyed the following two questions. a)    Was Sex much different (physically) than sex with the wife?b)    Was Sex not much different (physically) than sex with the wife?    The answer:a) Sex was much different than sex with the wife -68% Of course the question is why? In an earlier post I had mentioned that according to Neuman, “the number one way the other woman differed from the cheating man’s wife was that…