Psychology

To make children happier, we may need to encourage them to develop a strong sense of 'personal worth', according to Dr. Mark Holder, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia,  Visiting Assistant Professor Dr. Ben Coleman and graduate student Judi Wallace.   Their research says that children who feel that their lives have meaning and value and who develop deep, quality relationships – what they term measures of spirituality – are happier. But according to their paper in the Journal of Happiness Studies, actual religious practices have little effect on that happiness…

The ultimate cause of human behavior is the mind. The mind, an emergent property from the workings of collections of neurons, hormones, proteins, and other biochemical agents, controls everything every human does. From their intended actions to their subconscious actions, all of it is controlled by the human analogue of a central processing unit. Cognitive models in the social sciences and particularly in psychology and economics take seriously this point of view of the human decision maker and apply it to political, economic, and other social situations. One of the major ideas of the…

It seems obvious, right?   If you are around people who don't think much of you, over time you are more inclined to think less of yourself.  That's self esteem. Looking at yourself in the mirror every morning, you never think to question whether the person you see is actually you but our interaction with others impacts that also, claims a PLoS ONE study by Dr Manos Tsakiris in Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London.   He challenges this common-sense notion about our own self image and  says that the image we hold of our own face can actually…

If your mother smoked, you're more likely to be an aggressive kid, according to a new Canada-Netherlands study published in the journal Development and Psychopathology. And mothers who smoke, give birth under 21 and are poor should have caused North American to be overrun by the societal equivalent of Middle East dictators by now -  so take what you want from that.  While previous studies have shown that smoking during gestation causes low birth weight, this research claims mothers who light up during pregnancy predispose their offspring to an additional risk: violent behavior.…

Sound familiar? If you find yourself saying, "No matter how hard I try and try, I can't make my kid do X ..." or "No matter how hard I try, I can't make my kid understand Y ..." it's usually a clear sign that expectation and enforcing that expectation are a significant part of the problem. Your expectation may in fact accurately address the mean—that is, you may expect a behavior of your 9-year-old that most 9-year-olds can do—but remember the range of human variability and try to structure antecedents (the things you do to encourage a behavior to occur) with room for that variability. This…

A group of researchers did an analysis of the personalities of Wikipedia members and apparently don't think they are all that great.   By not great, I mean they fared less well on scales of agreeableness, openness, and conscientiousness than people who weren't Wikipedia members. Not surprisingly, introverted women were more likely to be Wikipedia members than non-introverted women.   Basically, women who can get boyfriends instead of slamming other contributors on Wikipedia tend to do that.   Not so shocking. They did a survey of 139 people, 86 men and 54 women.  69 of…

Did you make a resolution?   Most people do, consciously or not.   The end of one year and the beginning of a new one is a built-in time for reflection.   You may resolve to go to the gym or learn a musical instrument but often something will come up that interrupts the routine, progress is lost and the resolution loses its ... resolve.    John O’Neill, LCSW, LCDC, CSAT, director of Addiction Services for The Menninger Clinic in Houston, says all is not lost if you plan your resolution, including planning for setbacks.   And his 5-step program is not just for New…

While in some cases a child with ADHD cannot function without medication, there is growing concern about the health risks and side effects associated with the common ADHD medications, including mood swings, insomnia, tics, slowed growth and heart problems. In 2006 the FDA required manufacturers to place warning labels on ADHD medications, listing the potential serious health risks.  These high risks and growing concerns are fueling parents' search for alternatives that may be safer for their kids. The Transcendental Meditation technique may be an effective and safe non-pharmaceutical aid…

The probability of having one’s child receive an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis involves a mother’s own medical conditions and her use of health services prior to having the child, a new study finds.  Using records from a Northern California Kaiser Permanente database, the researchers identified three groups: mothers of children with ADHD, mother of children without ADHD and mothers of children with asthma. Authors then compared the mothers’ diagnoses, health care use and costs among the groups. Mothers of children with ADHD spent about $1,000 more on health…

How electrical traffic is routed through the brain has always been of great interest to psychologists. It was once thought that electrical signals always followed set paths through the brain, much in the way the heart pushes blood through the cardiovascular system. Many signals do, in fact, follow the same paths over and over again, but what is now more generally understood is that these pathways are in no way hardwired. The plasticity of the brain, or its ability to change based on the needs of the organism, has now been verified using a number of independent experiments. Scientists have now…