Psychology

The next time you get really mad, take a look in the mirror. See that lowered brow, the thinned lips and the flared nostrils? That's what social scientists call the "anger face," and they believe it is part of our basic biology as humans. Almost everything in biology has a function, according to evolutionary psychologists, and so they match all kinds of behavior to those; from voting to messy offices, someone claims it is genetic predisposition based on personalities of the past.  The anger expression employs seven distinct muscle groups that contract in a highly stereotyped manner, so…

Politicians often say one thing in public and other things in private. That is no surprise, people in all jobs do the same thing. Saddam Hussein, the genocidal former dictator of Iraq, has left a legacy most despots do not; he recorded so many of his private conversations that political scientists can analyze what he said in private and compare those to his public statements. Their conclusion; he believed what he said. Very bad man, but he believed in his badness. Credit: Mid-East Wire Writing in Research and Politics, the authors note that thousands of audio recordings of Hussein's…

By Bryan Roche, National University of Ireland Maynooth We’re getting more stupid. That’s one point made in a recent article in the New Scientist, reporting on a gradual decline in IQs in developed countries such as the UK, Australia and the Netherlands. Such research feeds into a long-held fascination with testing human intelligence. Yet such debates are too focused on IQ as a life-long trait that can’t be changed. Other research is beginning to show the opposite. The concept of testing intelligence was first successfuly devised by French psychologists in the early 1900s to help describe…

In the United States northeast, there is a joke that there is an easy way to spot someone who went to Harvard or Yale; it will be the person asking which college you attended. You can substitute Mensa or lots of other groups that have status for members but a new psychology paper says what most knew; entrenched members of groups are more relaxed about their status than marginal ones. It has long been known that people prefer to be in groups that have higher status or cultural value as a way of boosting self-image and projecting an impressive image to others. Despite the fact that…

Dsillusioned churchgoers may find it increasingly difficult to remain associated with their church, yet many also find it difficult to leave.  They have not only a moral identity crisis but deep identity crises as their most important relationships and beliefs are put at risk.  The authors of a paper in the Journal of Consumer Research conducted interviews with people who identify as former churchgoers and asked them to reflect on their experiences in leaving the church and the challenges of constructing a new identity as they rejected church authority and its doctrines. They…

Do you feel sadder watching a documentary about war or a drama about a young person dying of cancer? If you poll most people, they will say there are stronger emotional reactions when stories are based on true events rather than fiction, but a new analysis in the Journal of Consumer Research finds that is not so. Instead, in the midst of emotional experiences, consumers are so absorbed by the actual experience that they might be unable to take into account the fictional nature of the story. The authors tested this in one study by informing viewers that a film they were about to see was…

Researchers recently set out to determine the prevalence and incidence of autoimmune diseases in people with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder.  Patients (N=2342) treated at the Eating Disorder Unit of Helsinki University Central Hospital between 1995 and 2010 were compared with general population controls (N=9368) matched for the age, sex and place of residence. Data of 30 autoimmune diseases were from the Hospital Discharge Register from 1969 to 2010. They found that somatic illnesses, such as eating disorders, presented an autoimmune etiology such as type 1…

Electronic cigarettes are battery operated inhalation devices that provide vaporized nicotine to users without the harm of tobacco smoke. They are often marketed as a healthier alternative to cigarettes and have filled shelves of convenience stores since late 2011.    In a recent survey, a sample of 47 males ages 15-17 years participated in focus groups. They were identified as “e-cigarette users” based upon their responses to a question that asked if they had used an e-cigarette in the previous 30 days. Four open-ended questions were asked to identify participants' subjective norms…

Feeling stressed out? Blame your great-grandparents. Psychologists have linked ancestral exposure by a common fungicide, vinclozolin, to the stress levels of rats generations later. Epigenetically. Vinclozolin is a fungicide commonly used by farmers to ward off rots, molds and blights.  Endocrine disrupting chemicals are found in both natural and human-made materials and some studies have linked them to reproductive issues but it has become more common to invoke epigenetic effects and behavior to endocrine disruption - in this case, stress. The US EPA registered vinclozolin and…

Most consumers have an idea of their favorite pizza and it may have nothing at all to do with taste. The imagery on television commercials is gooey cheese stretching from the pie to the slice. Marketers have always known that cheese matters and now science is backing that up. Writing in the Journal of Food Science, scholars went beyond the standard trope of having golden cheese with that dark toasted-cheese color scattered in distinct blistery patches across the surface and a bit of oil glistening in the valleys and honed in on the various aspects that impact the total pizza experience…