Psychology

Suitors can tell a young person’s attitude toward sexual relationships by the look on their face, according to new research which researchers say gives deeper insight into mate attractiveness. The study of 700 heterosexual participants also found that young men and women look for complete opposites when it comes to relationships with the other sex. In no great shock to anyone who is now or has ever been young, men generally prefer women who they perceive are open to short-term sexual relationships whilst women are usually interested in men who appear to have potential to be long-term…

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder(ADHD) is a behavioral disorder, usually first diagnosed in childhood, that is characterized by inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity. Children with ADHD appear likely to experience sleep problems, according to a report in the April issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Sleep problems in these children may be associated with poorer child psychosocial quality of life, child daily functioning, caregiver mental health and family functioning. “ADHD is the most common mental health disorder in childhood, affecting up to 11 percent…

New research from Indiana University and Yale suggests that college-age men confuse friendly non-verbal cues with cues for sexual interest because the men have a less discerning eye than women -- but their female peers aren't far behind. In the study, appearing in the April issue of the journal Psychological Science, men who viewed images of friendly women misidentified 12 percent of the images as sexually interested. Women mistook 8.7 percent of the friendly images for sexual interest. Both men and women were even more likely to do the opposite -- when viewing images of sexually interested…

Anxiety gets a lot of bad press. Dwelling on the negative can lead to chronic stress and anxiety disorders and phobias, but evolutionarily speaking, anxiety holds functional value. In humans, learning to avoid harm is necessary not only for surviving in the face of basic threats (predators or rotten food), but also for avoiding more complex social or economic threats, like enemies or questionable plans. A team of psychologists at Stanford University have identified a region of the brain, the anterior insula, which plays a key role in predicting harm and also learning to avoid it. In a new…

An epidemiological study in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics by H.U. Wittchen and collaborators at the University of Dresden examined the 10-year natural course of panic attacks (PA), panic disorder (PD) and agoraphobia (AG) in the first three decades of life, their stability and their reciprocal transitions. DSM-IV syndromes were assessed via Composite International Diagnostic Interview - Munich version in a 10-year prospective-longitudinal community study of 3,021 subjects aged 14-24 years at baseline. At the end of the study, incidence patterns for PA (9.4%), PD (with and without AG: 3.4…

A new study in the April issue of Psychological Science sought to examine whether individuals are motivated to increase their level of anger when they expect to complete a confrontational task, where anger might enhance performance. Psychologists Maya Tamir and Christopher Mitchell of Boston College, and James Gross of Stanford University told the study participants that they will either play a computer game that is confrontational (“Soldier of Fortune” – a first person shooter game where killing enemies is your primary goal) or one that is not confrontational (“Diner Dash”—a game in which…

Does Coke in a glass bottle taste better? Perhaps. A chemical combination can certainly interact different with glass than it does with plastic. If the can for your cream soda changes its design, you make like it less, detracting from the overall experience, but that doesn't mean it tastes different. When it comes to taste, containers make a difference in actual flavor. Not so with sight, though a good design may entail a more positive reception. A study in the April issue of the Journal of Consumer Research says that 'touch' also falls into the important category when it comes to flavor…

Scientists are fond of placing great value on what they call skepticism: Not taking things on faith. Science versus religion, is the point. In practice this means wondering about the evidence behind this or that statement, rather than believing it because an authority figure said it. A better term for this attitude would be: Value data. A vast number of scientists have managed to convince themselves that skepticism means, or at least includes, the opposite of value data. They tell themselves that they are being “skeptical” — properly, of course — when they ignore data. They ignore it in all…

Cocaine addicts often suffer a downward emotional spiral that is a key to their craving and chronic relapse. While researchers have developed animal models of the reward of cocaine, they have not been able to model this emotional impact until now. Regina Carelli and colleagues report experiments with rats in which they have mimicked the negative affect of cocaine addiction and even how it drives greater cocaine use. They said their animal model could enable better understanding of the emotional motivations of cocaine addiction and how to ameliorate them. The researchers started with the well…

In the largest and longest study to date of weight loss maintenance strategies, researchers at Duke University Medical Center found that personal contact – and, to a lesser extent, a computer-based support system – were helpful in keeping weight off. “The results of this study send a strong signal to those who seem to believe that obesity is such an intractable problem that nothing can be done about it,” says Dr. Laura Svetkey, professor of medicine at Duke and the lead author of the study. “Our research shows that is not true. A large majority of the participants in the Weight Loss…