Psychology

If you are in science media and I mention names like Bill McKibben or Naomi Oreskes, how you react to hearing those names tells me how you probably vote. Some things are that clear. And because they are so clear, it is instructive to discuss how choosing an umbrella on one issue can actually undermine acceptance among the public by others. Climate change is the only science that Oreskes and McKibben seem to accept; most other fields are dismissed as corporate conspiracies. Chemicals are bad, GMOs are bad, it's all bad. Only the doomsday prophecy that the engine of business needs to stop right…

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-05/wkh-bwi051419.php Can wisdom be measured? Wisdom is a subjective concept - to most it is understanding that goes beyond knowledge - but a review in Harvard Review of Psychiatry hopes to show wisdom can be empirical; however, since it is a review, it is using papers which argue for its conclusion. And that's an ironic confounder in wanting to be called scientific. Wisdom has been debated by philosophers for as long as people have sat around thinking about thinking, but it has been difficult to define and impossible to measure. To get around the…

On Applied Epistemic Helplessness The often (always?) brilliant Scott Alexander has an essay that parallels the thesis of an essay I've been meaning to write for that last six years. It's the perfect topic to kick off this column which I've been meaning to get off the ground for the last six months, so here goes. The epistemological question he lays out was pivotal to me, setting me on a path to the range of topics and conclusions that I plan to tackle in this space. Epistemic Learned Helplessness, Alexander lays out the case that thinking for ourselves is over-rated in most cases. In most…

A prototypical extrovert is someone talkative, outgoing, who prefers taking the initiative in groups, expresses positive emotion and enjoys seeking out new experiences. By contrast, a prototypical introvert is quiet, emotionally reserved, less effusive, and harder to get to know. You can imagine which of those is going to have an easier time in most jobs. What does science say? Unfortunately, there is not a lot of science when it comes to something as subjective (and colloquialized) as being an extrovert. So a group of scholars writing in the Journal of Applied Psychology did a review of 91…

Australia has changed in many ways over the past two decades. Rising house prices, country-wide improvements in education, an aging population, and a decline in religious affiliation, are just some of the ways it has changed. At the same time, political power has moved back and forth between the two major parties. How much can we attribute changes in political power to changes in who we are? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Finding the ‘average’ electorate We analyzed election results from 2001 to 2016 and mapped them against data from the census to see how socio-demographic characteristics…

Eating sensibly is an important part of a healthy lifestyle but for some people this preoccupation with healthy eating can become physically and socially impairing. The condition, called Orthorexia Nervosa, is a patholofical obsession with "clean eating" and a new study finds it's more common among those who have a history of an eating disorder, obsessive-compulsive traits, dieting, poor body image, and an irrational drive for thinness. Using two popular databases, the authors did a review of the psychosocial risk factors associated with orthorexia nervosa, including studies published up…

Physicians have higher rates of suicide than the general public despite having prestigious jobs respected by the public and good pay. A new podcast and accompanying article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) looks at things that are important to know. 1. Increased suicidal ideation begins as early as medical school, with nearly 25 percent of students surveyed reporting suicidal ideation within the last 12 months. Obviously that does not mean medical schools cause suicide, it could mean that medical schools prize themselves on being stressful or it could even mean people with…

Using records pediatric health clinics, specialized programs for children with developmental disabilities, and special education records along with a review of the abstracted evaluations by trained clinicians using a standardized case definition and method (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) diagnostic criteria) a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis has found that diagnoses in the sites they used were up 27 percent from 2010 to 2014. The overall ASD prevalence was 13.4 per 1,000 children aged 4 years in 2010, 15.3…

Since the oldest millennials are now nearing 40 it may be time for sociologists and psychologists to stop writing papers on how much nurturing they will need when they arrive. They are already here. Yet papers will keep coming, perhaps until people stop wanting to read them. A new paper in The Journal of Social Psychology claims that how well parents or guardians support millennials' psychological needs prior to their transition to college is an important predictor of their psychological well-being as they adapt to college life.  The surveys show that millennials who perceive their…

As if mothers don't get blamed for enough, a new paper claims attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)may have been caused by her diet during pregnancy. The results of a study led by a team from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by "la Caixa", suggest that the risk of a child developing symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be modulated by the mother's diet during pregnancy. The study, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, analysed samples of umbilical cord plasma to quantify the levels of omega-6 and omega-3 that reach…