Psychology

Stick 'em up. Credit: Me2, CC BY-NC-SA By Toby Miller, Cardiff University October 9 2014 was a big day in eco-activism: Lego announced that it would not renew a product-placement deal with Shell, following concerted pressure from Greenpeace as part of a campaign to ban Arctic oil exploration by attacking firms associated with such activities. It is a common tactic of major energy companies to engage in collaborations with companies such as Lego as part of their quest for what they call a “social license” to operate. That means winning local, national and international community support. Did…

Psychologists recently carried out hundreds of mock police lineups to determine the most successful procedure for identification of criminals. Inaccurate identification can obviously lead to the prosecution of innocent people while guilty ones go free. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recently wrote a report titled ‘Identifying the Culprit’ about eyewitness evidence in order  to improve the way in which police officers collect reports from witnesses, strengthen the value of eyewitness reports in court, and improve the scientific foundation underpinning eyewitness identification.…

Some people are so obsessed with their food it smacks of zealotry. They might eat only a certain kind of fish cooked on a certain piece of wood.  They might even believe that they can taste the difference between a strawberry processed at an organic farm and one processed at a conventional one.  When it becomes truly bizarre, it affects family and friends. Writing at Genetic Literacy Project I discuss people who are on an obsessive quest for health perfection, to an extent that they fetishize their food process. Now, some people are special and can sense things we cannot.…

Adolescence is often a turbulent time for both genders, marked by biological changes and substantially increased rates of depressive symptoms. But girls seem to take it a lot harder and a new paper in Clinical Psychological Science believes this gender difference may be the result of girls' greater exposure to stressful interpersonal events, making them more likely to ruminate, and contributing to their risk of depression. Other papers have found that cognitive vulnerabilities associated with depression, such as negative cognitive style and rumination, emerge during adolescence. Teens who…

Pre-school kids have a lot to learn. They often don't even know how to tie their shoelaces or count to 100. But that is an applications issue. When it comes to skepticism, even kids at age 5 show critical thinking skills.  A new study published in PLOS ONE finds that by the age of five, children become wary of information provided by people who make overly confident claims.  Dr. Patricia Brosseau-Liard, a Concordia University postdoctoral fellow, recruited 96 four- and five-year-olds and then with University of British Columbia psychologists Tracy Cassels and Susan Birch had the…

Emphasizing weight in health definitions could be harmful to patients, finds an article in the Journal of Obesity.  Dr. Rachel Calogero of the School of Psychology at the University of Kent and colleagues recommend that this approach, known as 'weight-normative', is replaced by health care professionals, public health officials and policy-makers with a 'weight-inclusive' approach.  Weight-inclusive approaches, such as the Health At Every Size initiative, emphasize a view of health and wellbeing as multifaceted and direct efforts toward improving health access and reducing weight…

Cerebral palsy is the most common motor disability in childhood, afflicting between between 1 and 4 per 1,000 kids born worldwide. It's more common among boys than girls and only about half of adolescents with it can walk independently but regardless of that, kids with cerbral palsy rate their quality of life pretty high. Either adolescents with cerebral palsy are doing pretty well or able-bodied adolescents in general invent problems when they have none.  The study is the first to track the QoL of young people with cerebral palsy from childhood to adolescence. Using population-…

Sexting may be a new "normal" part of adolescent sexual development and not strictly limited to at-risk teens, according to a paper in Pediatrics, which the authors say is the first survey to address the relationship between teenage sexting, or sending sexually explicit images to another electronically, and future sexual activity.  The  results indicate that sexting may precede sexual intercourse in some cases and further cements the idea that sexting behavior is a credible sign of teenage sexual activity. Further, the researchers did not find a link between sexting and risky sexual…

Call it cathartic but one modern way people in a bad mood feel better is to go on social media like Facebook and find friends doing even worse. A new paper says that generally people use social media to connect with people who are posting positive and success-oriented updates. No one wants to hang out with downers - unless they are in a bad mood. Then people want to read about less attractive, less successful and more miserable people. The authors believe the findings give more context to recent papers stating that found people who spend a lot of time on Facebook tend to be more…

A few years ago, Susan Greenfield said something zany, even for Susan Greenfield: that the rise in autism diagnoses were related to the Internet. As Robery Olley once noted, she is the scholar who in 1994 during her famed Royal Institution Christmas Lecture claimed that playing Prokofiev at half speed was linked to suicide. That was not a shock to music listeners but it was to serious scholars. Her bold nonsensical claims did not end there. Despite having 30 honorary degrees, The Royal Institution tried to get rid of her and her zany, expensive ways and finally did in 2010. She claimed it was…