Psychology

Combining the smoking cessation medication varenicline with nicotine replacement therapy was more effective than varenicline alone at achieving tobacco abstinence at 6 months, according to a study in the July 9 issue of JAMA. The combination of behavioral approaches and pharmacotherapy are of proven benefit in assisting smokers to quit. Combining nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) with varenicline has been a suggested treatment to improve smoking abstinence, but its effectiveness is uncertain, according to background information in the article. Coenraad F. N. Koegelenberg, M.D., Ph.D., of…

If you are having fun rather than doing exercise because you are worried about your health, you'll eat less, according to a new paper which delves into how to market to your brain. Some people really like to run, or they look forward to exercise. They are probably already thinking about food consumption because they recognize that they did the work. Other people have painted themselves into a psychological corner - they think of exercise and workouts and calories and then eat more afterward. It's well known that most people tend to undercount calories ingested and overcount those in a…

Warren Buffett, billionaire invested, says that investors should try to "be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy only when others are fearful."  Yet other billionaires say that companies fail for a reason and that it's better not to catch a falling knife.  Who do you believe? If you are a behavioral economist you believe the guy with all of the money. Economics models always do well explaining the past and behavioral economics has mastered it as well. Now they have fMRI to help. Scholars at Caltech and Virginia Tech looked at the brain activity and behavior of people trading…

In the US, there is constant discussion about minimum wage and little recognition that those jobs are just that - a minimum wage and not a career. They are for young people and people starting out, it isn't expected that minimum wage is the goal. Instead, minimum wage should be the reason to do better. The ocean does not rise to wherever you want to put your boat. Young people who recognize what a minimum wage summer job is tend to do have more fulfillment later.  A UBC Sauder School of Business paper that teenagers who work at summer or evening jobs gain a competitive advantage…

Mindfulness meditation is all the rage in meditation circles but does it work? Most research claiming benefits have focused on lengthy, weeks-long training programs using people who already like meditation. A new paper in Psychoneuroendocrinology is about a small study and the authors found that brief mindfulness meditation practice – 25 minutes for three consecutive days – alleviates psychological stress.  For the study, 66 healthy individuals aged 18-30 years old participate in a three-day experiment. Some participants went through a brief mindfulness meditation training program; for…

    Many high IQ Asperger sufferers think that their rationality is ultimately superior. Their moralizing provides judgments; their “honesty” blurts them out. Such behavior is usually felt to be inappropriate. Rationalizing such as a somehow more upstanding, righteous way is in many cases quite silly especially from a rational perspective. Their often narrowly focused moralizing does precisely not submit tacitly held values to rational analysis.       Relating Asperger’s and rationality is not equivalent to the claim that Asperger’s is all good. Asperger’s…

A new study addresses the relationship between personality and heart attacks. Distressed (type D) personality (TDP), characterized by high negative affectivity and social inhibition, along with depression, anxiety and other negative affects (such as demoralization, hopelessness, pessimism and rumination) have been implicated as potential risk factors for coronary artery disease. While some evidence suggests that the negative affectivity dimension of Distressed (type D) personality overlaps at least partially with depression, other studies underline how ‘TDP refers to a chronic, more covert…

A new study analyzed the long-term effects of psychotherapy on borderline personality disorder. Authors report the effect of  Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) versus treatment-as-usual (TAU) on inpatient service use, and a follow-up 6 months after the end of treatment. Data on psychiatric hospitalization were collected by interviewing patients at two monthly intervals using the Client Service Receipt Inventory, which was then triangulated with data from electronic patient records. In the year prior to treatment, 24 patients had been hospitalized with the number of inpatient days…

For hibernating mammals, the pre-winter months are a race to accumulate enough energy reserves to last until spring. But what about offspring born late in the year? They have less time to store energy. Austrian scientists have discovered that power-napping can help late-born dormice overcome these unfavorable odds. During hibernation, dormice enter into 'torpor' to save energy and water. In this state, the dormice become inactive and show a marked decrease in their metabolic rate, causing their body temperature to reduce. However, late-born dormice use bouts of torpor during the summer to "…

People have been debating whether experts are "born" or "made" since the mid-1800s. In recent years, deliberate practice has received considerable attention in these debates, while innate ability has been pushed to the side, due in part to the famous "10,000-hour rule" popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book Outliers.  Like much of Gladwell, it's a provocative idea, but not evidence-based. Deliberate practice may not have nearly as much influence in building expertise as we thought, according to a paper in Psychological Science. New work by psychologist Brooke Macnamara of…