Social Sciences

Researchers at the University of Illinois have found that adolescence is a time of remodeling in the prefrontal cortex, a brain structure dedicated to higher functions such as planning and social behaviors. The study of rats found that both males and females lose neurons in the ventral prefrontal cortex between adolescence and adulthood, with females losing about 13 percent more neurons in this brain region than males. Psychology professor Janice Juraska, right, and graduate student Julie Markham have found that adolescents begin to lose neurons in the prefrontal cortex. Credit: Photo by L…

Employers would be better at keeping workers if they focused on why their employees want to stay rather than what kinds of things make them quit, according to researchers from the University of Washington and Truman State University. Until recently, most research focused on why people leave jobs rather than why they choose to stay. In a review of the past 15 years of research on employee job satisfaction and voluntary turnover, the researchers examined not only why people quit but what makes workers stay in their current positions. They found that the decision to quit one's job doesn't…

Perceived attractiveness is the result of compatibility of biological sex and gendered cues--masculinity and femininity as specified within the society—according to a study by researchers at New York University and Texas A & M University. The findings appear in the most recent issue of the journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, conducted by Kerri Johnson at NYU’s Department of Psychology and Louis Tassinary at Texas A & M’s Department of Architecture, sought to address the following question: Is perceived attractiveness the result of the…

The "raging hormones" of puberty are known to produce mood swings and stress for most teenagers, making it difficult to cope with this period of life. Until now, the specific causes of pubertal anxiety have not been identified, making it harder to understand and treat adolescent angst. In the current edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers led by Sheryl S. Smith, PhD, professor of physiology and pharmacology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, report findings demonstrating that a hormone normally released in response to stress, THP, actually reverses its effect at puberty,…

A Georgia Tech researcher has discovered that for tasks involving spatial processing, preparing for the task and performing it are not two separate brain processes, but one – at least when there are a small number of actions to choose from. The research appears online in the journal Brain Research. In a brain imaging study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Eric Schumacher, assistant professor of psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology, along with colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, Berkeley, monitored the activity of…

The brain appears to process information more chaotically than has long been assumed. This is demonstrated by a new study conducted by scientists at the University of Bonn. The passing on of information from neuron to neuron does not, they show, occur exclusively at the synapses, i.e. the junctions between the nerve cell extensions. Rather, it seems that the neurons release their chemical messengers along the entire length of these extensions and, in this way, excite the neighbouring cells. The findings of the study are of huge significance since they explode fundamental notions about the…

New research published in the March issue of Psychological Science may help elucidate the relationship between religious indoctrination and violence, a topic that has gained renewed notoriety in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. In the article, University of Michigan psychologist Brad Bushman and his colleagues suggest that scriptural violence sanctioned by God can increase aggression, especially in believers. Mentally insert whichever weapon or religious text you prefer if these examples offend you. Image: Association for Psychological Science The authors set out to…

A Johns Hopkins-led study has found evidence that a genetic tendency toward suicide has been linked to a particular area of the genome on chromosome 2 that has been implicated in two additional recent studies of attempted suicide. “We’re hoping our findings will eventually lead to tests that can identify those at high risk for attempting suicide,” says Virginia Willour, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and lead author of the study. An estimated 4.6 percent of Americans ages 15 to 54 have tried to take their lives…

Give college students less instruction and more freedom to think for themselves in laboratory classes, and the result may be a four-fold increase in their test scores. So says Steve Rissing, a professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State University. Rissing played a major role in revamping the way the university teaches its introductory-level biology courses. “For one, we got away from the cookbook method of teaching concepts of biology in a lab course,” he said. “Instead, many of those classes now include real experiments that leave room for additional inquiry.” The…

In the 1960s, Eric von Hippel, now a professor of management at MIT, was a first-year graduate student in psychology at Berkeley. He had been having a hard time getting in touch with his advisor. One day, in Tolman Hall, he saw his advisor go into his office. This is my chance, he thought. He went into his advisor’s office. No one was there! He realized his advisor must be hiding behind his desk. It would have been too embarrassing to confront him, so he left the office (which might now be my office). He left graduate school, too, became an inventor, and started a company. His company…