Psychology

What is the difference between "intelligence" and "genius"?  Creativity, of course! There was an article recently in Scientific American that discussed creativity and the signs in children that were precursors to creative achievement in adulthood. The authors cite some work done by Michigan State University researchers Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein, a collaboration of physiologist and theater instructor, who presented their findings at an annual meeting of the APA this past March. Since I research creativity as well as intelligence, I found the points brought up in the article quite…

Turns out that Dr. Scholl's Freeze Away doesn't work on worry-warts.  So for many people, personality traits like chronic worrying can lead to earlier death, at least in part because these people are more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking, according to research from Purdue University. "Research shows that higher levels of neuroticism can lead to earlier mortality, and we wanted to know why," said Daniel K. Mroczek, (pronounced Mro-ZAK) a professor of child development and family studies. "We found that having worrying tendencies or being the kind of person who…

James Hollis, Ph.D., is a graduate of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich. He has taught  mythology and religion, men's issues, and midlife. His books have been translated into Russian, German, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian, Korean, Finnish, and Japanese. "Under Saturn's Shadow - THE WOUNDING AND HEALING OF MEN" is the impetus for my interview. SB: Taking words from your book, I feel empowered to dive into life and struggle for depth and meaning. Dr. Hollis, thanks very much for this interview. Shall we get serious about psyche? Hollis:…

Members of sexual minorities are almost twice as likely as heterosexuals to seek help for mental health issues or substance abuse treatment.  48.5% of lesbian/gay/bisexual individuals reported receiving treatment in the past year as compared to 22.5% of heterosexuals. In addition, gender was shown to play a large role; lesbians and bisexual women were most likely to receive treatment and heterosexual men were the least likely, according to the results in BMC Psychiatry. Susan Cochran worked with a team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles using data they…

The science is in and men are easy. Men are far more interested in casual sex than women, according to Dr. Achim Schützwohl, from the Department of Psychology at Brunel University in the UK, and a team who published their results in Human Nature.  Their research showed that men are more likely than women to report having had casual sex and they express a greater desire for it than do women. But men need to be exceptionally attractive to tempt women to consider casual sex, they say.  Schützwohl and colleagues looked at the influence of an imagined requestor's physical…

What would you do in this situation? In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the…

When it comes to how they raise their children, mothers do things the way their mothers did, according to a new study that looked at parenting practices across two generations. Fathers don't seem to use their moms as parenting role models despite the fact that the fathers studied were raised more by their mothers, even in a changing workplace environment. Obviously, fathers may have been more influenced by their dads rather than their moms, but the surveys used by the study didn't examine their fathers' behavior,  said Jonathan Vespa, co-author of the study and doctoral student in…

Americans go to church less but the rate of departure previously reported may have been incorrect, according to sociologists Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer of the University of California, Berkeley. According to the new data, 93 percent of Americans believe in God, a figure unchanged since 1988. The group that increased was the group Hout and Fischer call "unchurched believers," those people who believe in God but report no religion.  Their research presented at the 104th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association found that the previous estimate of 'unchurched believers…

Cats have a reputation for being smart but dogs deserve more respect, says canine researcher Stanley Coren, PhD, of the University of British Columbia, who spoke on dog psychology (seriously) today on the topic “How Dogs Think” at the American Psychological Association’s 117th Annual Convention. They can also understand more than 150 words and intentionally deceive other dogs and people to get treats,  Coren says. He is the author of more than a half-dozen popular books on dogs and dog behavior, and reviewed numerous studies to conclude that dogs have the ability to solve complex…

Do guys like Bernie Madoff do what they do because of greed ... or ego?    A Florida State professor says it's the latter.    It makes some sense because it takes a certain drive to become CEO of a large company and that takes a certain self-confidence.   But is it more than just determination and grit and confidence?   Narcissism is the claim Wayne Hochwarter, the Jim Moran Professor of Management in the Florida State University College of Business, is trying to make.   I'm betting that either me or Hochwater does not understand what the term narcissism…