Psychology
When it comes to ethical dilemmas, men are typically more willing to accept harmful actions for the sake of the greater good than women. Why is that?
The classic example is traveling back in time to kill Adolf Hitler as a child - the child had not yet done anything wrong but he is going to be responsible for nearly as many deaths as Stalin and Mao, over 10 million people, so wouldn't it be better to eliminated him, or all three of them? A more topical example is the terrorist attacks in France and across the mid-east. Would it be better to torture a terrorist to find hidden…
You'll be a lot less frustrated if you have unconscious acceptance when regulating frustrating emotion, and have little cognitive deficit but better mood stability.
That is the psychology version of 'go with the flow' because 'stuff happens'. It's adaptive coping and the development of a healthy personality.
Life is full of problems, be they in relationships, work or goals. It's certainly not wise to be passive and wait for things to happen to you but any time goals are pursued, there will be setback and frustration. Coping with frustration effectively is where some people have…
In ancient times, attributing effects to the moon made some sense. If it could change tides, which everyone except Galileo recognized it did, why not cause effects in people?
Today, we know better, and yet beliefs persist. The reason is confirmation bias, which makes conservatives and liberals believe they are smarter than their opposition and which results in a lot of correlation-causation papers, in everything from psychology to epidemiology. Even in biology. Epigenetics is the modern day life sciences equivalent of 'it must be a full moon'.
So perhaps nurses notice more people…
Anti-vaccination beliefs can cause real, substantive harm, as shown by the recent outbreak of measles in the US. These developments are as shocking and distressing as their consequences are predictable. But if the consequences are so predictable, why do the beliefs persist?
It is not simply that anti-vaxxers don’t understand how vaccines work (some of them may not, but not all of them). Neither are anti-vaxxers simply resistant to all of modern medicine (I’m sure that many of them still take pain killers when they need to). So the matter is not as simple as plain stupidity. Some anti-vaxxers…
It's no surprise to most that Germanwings Flight 9525 co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, who crashed the plane into a mountain, killing all of the passengers and crew, had been treated for suicidal tendencies.
While publications such as Slate rush to declare that depression is not linked to suicide, the actual mental health community notes that those issues are linked and usually start during adolescence, so we need a better way to measure depression severity to ensure proper treatment. At present the key symptom for diagnosing major depressive disorder in adolescents is irritability, but a new…
You're out shopping for basic goods you have bought many times. Is choosing these products a complicated decision or a simple one?
It could be complex: Factors like price, quality, and brand loyalty may run through your mind. Indeed, some scholars have developed complicated models of consumer decision-making, in which people accumulate substantial product knowledge, then weigh that knowledge against the opportunity to explore less-known products.
But in a new paper, management scholars suggest that your brain is making a simpler calculation when you shop: You are most likely…
Experiments dating back to the 1960s show people have less of a reaction to viewing an unpleasant image or experiencing an electric shock when they know it’s coming than when they’re not expecting it. That’s because uncertainty, a long-known cause of anxiety, makes it difficult to prepare for events or to control them.
People vary in their desire to minimize uncertainty. Those who react by worrying focus on potential threats and risks such as “what if I don’t get the promotion?” or “what if I get sick?”. Worry can be useful when it leads to adaptive behaviors that reduce threat, but chronic…
Orthorexia nervosa, the “health food eating disorder”, gets its name from the Greek word ortho, meaning straight, proper or correct.
This exaggerated focus on food can be seen today in some people who follow lifestyle movements such as “raw”, “clean” and “paleo”.
American doctor Steven Bratman coined the term “orthorexia nervosa” in 1997 some time after his experience in a commune in upstate New York.
It was there he developed an unhealthy obsession with eating “proper” food:
All I could think about was food. But even when I became aware that my scrabbling in the dirt after raw vegetables…
Had a break up and finding it difficult to move on? It's an evolutionary mandate, according to a review of evolutionary psychology articles on romantic break-ups.
People are hardwired to fall out of love and move onto new romantic relationships, the authors suggest after examining the process of falling out of love and breaking up, which they call primary mate ejection, and moving on to develop a new romantic relationship, which they call secondary mate ejection.
According to their analysis of evolutionary psychology articles in Review of General Psychology, men and women break up…
Filmmakers know personality disorders make for compelling viewing.
Think of attention-seeking Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone with the Wind" (1939). Or the manipulation and callous disregard for others in "Silence of the Lambs" (1991), "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999) and "Chopper" (2000). Then there are the fears of abandonment and emotional instability in "Fatal Attraction" (1987) and "Girl, Interrupted" (1999).
Cinema is less adept, however, at showing the ordinary joys, heartache and sometimes suicidal despair of the friends, workers or relatives we might know with personality disorders.
What…