Psychology

One of the best arguments for using science to allow people to grow food in difficult climates, rather than having wealthier nations donate it to them, is that wealth leads to better lives in lots of ways. Agriculture made Europe and the United States and countries with strong food production healthier and then wealthier. But health and wealth may still be related in developed nations as well. A new paper led by San Diego State University School of Public Health research professor John W. Ayers examined the Google search patterns of Americans during the early stages of the Great Recession and…

African-Americans having a shorter life expectancy and a greater likelihood of suffering from aging-related illnesses at younger ages compared to European-Americans.  A new paper claims that it may be racism impacting aging - at the cellular level. The correlation is that the epidemiologists, doing their part to turn their field into sociology, found signs of accelerated aging in African-American men who who had internalized anti-African-American attitudes or reported high levels of racial discrimination. Participants in the study were 92 African-American men between 30-50 years of age.…

A Johns Hopkins University of research suggests that about 30 minutes of meditation daily may improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, without medication. The scholars evaluated the degree to which self-reported symptoms changed in people who had a variety of conditions, such as insomnia or fibromyalgia. A minority had been diagnosed with a mental illness. They were studying so-called "mindfulness meditation", a form of Buddhist self-awareness designed to focus precise attention on the moment at hand, and say it shows promise in alleviating some pain symptoms as well as stress. The…

Residents of a small village on the Fijian island of Yasawa went boating alone, without life vests, and gave no thought to shimmying up very tall coconut trees.   Does that mean they are taller? The story is just that, a story, but an anthropology claims it provides insight into how humans, especially men, gauge the threat of a potential adversary.  After reading the story, Fijians imagined the characters to be significantly taller and more muscular than more cautious characters they read about in other stories - 17 percent taller than characters who were sticklers for boating…

How are emotions experienced in the body? Researchers at Aalto University say they know. Emotions help adjust our mental and also bodily states to cope with the challenges we face and the sensations arising from those bodily changes are an important feature of our emotional experiences. Anxiety may be experienced as pain in the chest, whereas falling in love may trigger warm, pleasurable sensations all over the body. The new analysis says it maps how emotions are literally experienced through the body. Some skepticism is warranted.  The work was carried out online and over 700…

Sometimes you just have to believe. Acupuncture has proven to be effective, though it isn't actually being done. When it comes to hot flashes due to breast cancer treatment, even skin pricks used to simulate acupuncture needle sticks might be enough to generate natural chemicals that improve symptoms, which would explain the results.   The results were that both real and sham weekly acupuncture treatments eased hot flashes and other side effects of anticancer drug treatment, according to the small, preliminary study of breast cancer patients. Investigators at the University of Maryland…

Americans' perceptions of income inequality are largely over-inflated due to political and cultural grandstanding, at least when compared with actual census data. California, for example, has weekly stories about how onerous business regulations, a high cost of living and high taxes have essentially eliminated the middle class, leaving a rich gentry and a lot of poor people. But how accurate are those results? "With the genuine rise in wealth inequality over the past several decades, and the popular media's intensive coverage of this issue, we wondered how income inequality is perceived by…

A standard joke among the elites of New York City And Los Angeles is that everyone is in therapy - it's possible because they are likely more rich and, it turns out, many psychiatrists are not interested in patients who aren't wealthy enough to not need to use insurance to pay. But Congress, motivated by public outrage at recent mass shootings and their link to psychiatric medications, want mental health care to be covered by insurance and for psychiatrists to have the same standards as government-paid doctors have. The paper found that psychiatrists increasingly refuse to accept Medicare and…

Visit a museum these days and you'll see people using their smartphones and cameras to take pictures of works of art, archeological finds, historical artifacts, and every other object and most of them will never be looked at again. Even worse, while taking a picture might seem like a good way to preserve the moment, new research suggests the opposite actually happens. In a new paper, psychologist Linda Henkel of Fairfield University presents data showing that participants had worse memory for objects, and for specific object details, when they took photos of them. Henkel set up an experiment…

The crocodile is a pretty shrewd hunter - they even use lures to hunt their prey, according to Vladimir Dinets, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and colleagues, who say they have observed two crocodilian species, muggers and American alligators, using twigs and sticks to lure birds, particularly during nest-building time.  Their paper is the first report of tool use by any reptiles and also the first known case of predators timing the use of lures to a seasonal behavior of the prey—nest-building. Dinets said he first observed the…