Psychology

Meditation advocates from three schools say a lower ability to cope with the pain of being rejected by others leads to violence, but that people greater levels of mindfulness, a psychological fad where practitioners maintain attention on and awareness of the present moment -- are better able to cope with such pain.  While effective emotion regulation is important, pushing it back on society and suggesting to women if they don't go on a date with someone they don't like, they will be responsible for that person's potential violent behavior is not constructive. Telling them they…

Liberals in the United States and Germany felt more empathy than conservatives toward protesters injured during an overcrowded demonstration in the United States and Germany, according to survey results of 1,046 participants who read a fake newspaper article the non-real incident. The protesters were either described as liberals, conservatives, or non-partisan local residents.  Liberals were more likely to want to help the protesters by donating money for the medical treatment and both conservatives and liberals felt more empathy for their political allies. Like all such studies, this…

Suicides have gone up in the United States since 1999, according to the CDC, but then state it is more than a mental health issue. There is no rhyme or reason to the increases, half of states, from cultures as different as Vermont and North Dakota, saw large changes of over 30 percent.  Suicide is the 10th-leading cause of death in the U.S., and rates have been climbing steadily for years. With 44,965 suicide deaths in 2016, half of them using a firearm, the CDC would like to know why. The answer may be that half of those who died by suicide did not have a known mental health condition…

What is your sexual fetish, your kinkiest perversion? Are you a pedophile for enjoying blondes rather than feet? Analyzing where a system, such as a brain, “fails”, say after removing a subsystem by injury, can reveal how the system normally functions, what the system can no longer do. Separated connections dangle in the air still trying to function, and you can look right at them. Porn or masturbation are for many a failure mode and reveal much about human apes; a valuable source for the bullied autistic who tries to survive in social systems and their pervasive deception. Rape is an evolved…

Jordan Peterson is like Milo Yiannopoulos and many similar Trump-age enabled e-celebrities, and from a scientist’s point of view, less, because Milo does not emphasize a scientific façade like Peterson does. The Alt-Right is a growing market niche where you can try “making it” by being edgy without too much sexual depravity. Being more perverted than the last guy is almost the only politically correct edgy still allowed in the mainstream, whether unfunny “comedians”, or pop music or … well even including hiring practices of universities, but it's called “inclusiveness” then. Otherwise,…

Imagine one person walks into a room and they are smiling and saying hello to everyone. Then imagine another person who walks in quietly, looks grim, and heads to a corner. Rapper Kanye West once told the press he doesn't smile for photos because "it just wouldn't look as cool," and humanities scholars who have to write about something have written that the reason Dean became cool was because he didn't smile. But is it true?  No, unless you are under the age of 20, anyway. Across the board, a recent study showed that the person who smiled seemed more genuine and likable than the…

All of the people who joke they have Asperger's or are "on the spectrum" as an excuse for behavior they know is simply annoying or weird are probably going to want to stop. It's going to be a lot cooler to just admit they are annoying or weird. The reason is because a new analysis in Moleular Autism finds that Hans Asperger, the Austrian pediatrician for whom a mild segment of the autism spectrum is named, collaborated with Nazis and helped kill disabled children. The Third Reich’s child-euthanasia program was a more extreme form of the eugenics movement that was lauded by Supreme Court…

A recent analysis links sudden loss of wealth in middle or old age with a 50 percent higher risk of dying than those who do not have such loss. The effect can last for two decades, and whether participants are very wealthy or have only modest savings made no difference. The paper is in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and they have gotten increasingly epidemiology focused and less scientific as the decade has progressed, so some skepticism is in order.  And it is justified, although corporate journalism claims have repeated the press release without reading the study…

A virtual reality system for men who committed a domestic violence crime allows them to 'get into the victim’s shoes' - not by beating them, that likely caused the cycle of violence, according to sociologists. Instead, the belief is that violent people have a lack of emotional recognition and that virtual experience improves the participant’s perception of emotions. Sociologists contend that violence is related to a lack of empathy or the abuser’s difficulty to put him/herself on the victim’s shoes. Although there are surveys which contend that violent people have difficulties in identifying…

Mindfulness is big business, worth in excess of US$1.0 billion in the US alone and linked – somewhat paradoxically – to an expanding range of must have products. These include downloadable apps (1300 at the last count), books to read or color in, and online courses. Mindfulness practice and training is now part of a global wellness industry worth trillions of dollars. Mindfulness has its origins in Buddhist meditation teachings and encourages the quiet observation of habituated thought patterns and emotions. The aim is to interrupt what can be an unhealthy tendency to over-identify with and…