Psychology

Religion can be a 'lynchpin' for achieving widespread global action on climate change, says psychologist Dr. Paul Bain from Queensland University of Technology. This was well-known, of course, but in a two-party system like the United States, where both sides create big umbrellas, it can be easy to assume that because many religious people vote Republican, and more skeptics are Republicans, that religious people must not care about earth. It's as flawed as assuming people who care about abortion in the Democratic party must also be against vaccines and agriculture.  What is well-known is…

Autism spectrum disorder is a group of social and neurodevelopmental disorders that include difficulty with interpersonal interaction, communication and excessive repetitive behaviors. Currently, though there are medications to treat some symptoms but no drug therapies exist to treat the underlying disorders. Treating mice with a compound called SR1078 showed reduced autistic behavior in the mouse analog of autism, according to Thomas Burris, Ph.D., chair of pharmacology and physiology at Saint Louis University, by increasing the expression of genes known to be low in the brains of autistic…

How does the price impact your evaluation of a restaurant meal? Psychologists have long believed that we judge experiences based on their most intense moment (the peak) and the last part of the experience (end). But that can change dramatically depending on how much customers are paying for the experience., according to a new paper which investigated how the price of pizza changed the relationship between a consumer's overall evaluation of the meal and the evaluation of each individual slice of pizza. 139 diners at an all-you-can-eat restaurant were divided into two separate groups. One…

Researchers at a breast cancer prevention clinic in Manchester have observed an increased uptake of preventative double mastectomies since May 2013, when Angelina Jolie announced that she had undergone the procedure.   Researchers from the Genesis Prevention Centre Family History clinic report that the number of preventative double mastectomies performed after consultation at the clinic more than doubled from January 2014 to June 2015, with 83 procedures performed during this period, compared to 29 between January 2011 and June 2012.   Although the researchers did not collect…

Most people who take up cigarette smoking, and place themselves at greater risk of cancer and lung ailments, start when they are young. A new RAND Corporation analysis finds the answer may be as simple as hiding them. The scholars created a laboratory replica of a convenience store to examine whether limiting displays of cigarettes in retail outlets can reduce the intention of young people to begin smoking. Researchers found an 11 percent reduction in cigarette smoking susceptibility when the tobacco 'power wall' was hidden compared to when the display of tobacco products was visible behind…

Sex will make for a happy couple, according to social psychologists, and you don't even need to do it all that often. Previous claims, and resulting articles and self-help books, have claimed that more sex equals more happiness but that isn't the case, says the new study hoping to result in articles and self-help books. If you never have sex, you probably hate each other and no one is happy, but forcing yourself to get busy three times a week won't make you three times as happy as doing it once.  This is psychology, so it is surveys rather than science, but the data was responses…

A popular Buddhist meditation technique that's intended to create feelings of kindness can also reduce prejudice, according to a new psychology paper. The work in Motivation and Emotion says that just seven minutes of Loving-kindness meditation (LKM), a Buddhist practice that promotes unconditional kindness towards oneself and others, is effective at reducing racial bias. Look for that to be on The Dr. Oz Show real soon. "This indicates that some meditation techniques are about much more than feeling good, and might be an important tool for enhancing inter-group harmony," says Alexander Stell…

If you're a man, how much you eat may have more to do with the gender of your dining companions than your appetite, according to a paper published in Evolutionary Psychological Science which claims that men will eat significantly more food in the company of women than they will with other men.  For the observational study, psychologists 105 adults lunching at an all-you-can-eat Italian buffet over the course of two weeks. They recorded the number of pizza slices and how many bowls of salad each diner ate. Gender of each diner's eating partner or partners was also noted. Before leaving…

A team of scholars recently looked at what emotional effects - if any - eating different yogurts had on people. Their article in Food Research International claims that being pleasantly surprised or disappointed with a food product can actually change a person's mood, at least based on emotional responses. Eating vanilla yogurt made people feel happy, and that yogurt with lower fat content gave people a stronger positive emotional response. Yogurt with different fruits did not show much difference in their emotional effect. How did the scholars know? They used an unvalidated method…

Some people throw salt over their shoulder, some wear a particular shirt when their favorite sports team is playing, while some believe food grown using one process rather than another will mean better nutrition.   Even smart, educated, emotionally stable people engage in superstitions that they recognize are unreasonable.  Writing in Psychological Review, University of Chicago business scholar Jane Risen finds that even when people recognize that their belief does not make sense, they can still allow that irrational belief to influence how they think, feel and behave. Risen…