Psychology

Researchers have long known that type-2 diabetes and depression often go hand in hand. However, it's been unclear which condition develops first in patients who end up with both. Now, a new study led by Johns Hopkins doctors suggests that this chicken-and-egg problem has a dual answer: Patients with depression have an increased risk of developing type-2 diabetes, and patients with type-2 diabetes have an increased risk of developing depression. For the study, published in the June 18 Journal of the American Medical Association, diabetes expert Sherita Hill Golden, M.D., M.H.S., and her…

In an effort to reconcile the science stating that power leads to action and lack of power leads to inhibition -- despite constant historical reminders of the powerless rising up and taking action -- new research in the June issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that the legitimacy of the power relationship is an important determinant of whether power leads to action. The research, led in part by Kellogg School of Management Professor Adam Galinsky, sought to determine at what point the powerless rise up and take action. Galinsky…

Investigators of the University of Naples have explored the inability to express emotions (alexithymia) in panic disorder in a paper published in the third 2008 issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. In patients with panic disorder (PD), the difficulty to identify and manage emotional experience might contribute to the enduring vulnerability to panic attacks. Such a difficulty might reflect a dysfunction of fronto-temporo-limbic circuits. The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that drug-free patients with PD, as compared with healthy subjects (HS), show a higher prevalence…

The actor Sir Peter Ustinov once famously said "Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who get there first." Psychologists now believe there is some truth to this argument. Rather than picking our friends based on intentional choice like common values and interests, our friendships may be based on more superficial factors like proximity or group assignments, like a department where you work or even an entirely new job. Mitja Back, Stefan Schmukle, and Boris Egloff of the University of Leipzig sought to…

A whole generation of World War II soldiers endured the same trauma as soldiers in any war but for the most part kept quiet about it with little ill effect. Somewhere after that it became normal and healthy to relive bad experiences, like war or a school shooting or terrorist attack, by discussing it publicly or in therapy. A new study says it is okay not to express one's thoughts and feelings after experiencing a collective trauma. In fact, people who choose not to express their feelings after such an event may be better off than those who do talk about their feelings, according to…

You went to a wedding yesterday. The service was beautiful, the food and drink flowed and there was dancing all night. But people tell you that you are in hospital, that you have been in hospital for weeks, and that you didn’t go to a wedding yesterday at all. The experience of false memories like this following neurological damage is known as confabulation. The reasons why patients experience false memories such as these has largely remained a mystery. Now a new study conducted by Dr Martha Turner and colleagues at University College London, published in the May 2008 issue of Cortex offers…

Sensitivity to reward loss is an indicator of animal emotion and welfare, say scientists at Bristol University Veterinary School. Rats housed in standard conditions show a stronger response to the loss of an expected food reward than those housed in enriched conditions, perhaps indicating a more negative emotional state, according to the new research by published in this week's issue of Royal Society Biology Letters. The researchers have developed a new approach to the measurement of animal emotional states based on findings from human psychology that emotions affect information processing.…

When a child has a medical problem, doctors see the child and parent together. It would be unusual to have a clinician meet alone with a minor with an illness or injury or a regular check-up. But this situation is reversed in child psychology. Parents are often asked to wait outside while a child is evaluated, and young patients are assured that nothing they say has to be discussed with mom and dad. This safeguard is meant to make children feel safe, and allow safe disclosure of abuse, but parents unfamiliar with this convention in psychological treatment often report feeling uncomfortable…

Does playing violent video games make players aggressive? It is a question that has taxed researchers, sociologists, and regulators ever since the first console was plugged into a TV and the first shots fired in a shoot ‘em up game. Writing today in the International Journal of Liability and Scientific Enquiry, Patrick Kierkegaard of the University of Essex, England, suggests that there is scant scientific evidence that video games are anything but harmless and do not lead to real world aggression. Moreover, his research shows that previous work is biased towards the opposite conclusion.…

We all know that children who are popular do well socially. A new study has found that teenagers who feel good about themselves and are comfortable with their peers can also be socially successful without being popular in the traditional sense. These findings come from researchers at the University of Virginia and are published in the May/June 2008 issue of the journal Child Development. Researchers studied 164 adolescents from racially, ethnically, and socio-economically diverse backgrounds. The teens were interviewed at age 13 and then again at 14. The researchers also interviewed the…