Psychology
When choosing a new leader, people base their decision on desirable characteristics such as honesty and trustworthiness. However once leaders are in power, can we trust them to exercise it in a prosocial manner?
A new paper in The Leadership Quarterly finds that everyone gradually becomes susceptible to power the longer they have it. Study author John Antonakis and his colleagues from the University of Lausanne explain, "We looked to examine what Lord Acton said over 100 years ago, that 'Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'"
To investigate this the authors used…
Consuming an alcoholic beverage may make men more responsive to the smiles of others in their social group, but now women.
That suggests to psychologists behind a new paper in Clinical Psychological Science that since alcohol increases sensitivity to rewarding social behaviors like smiling, it may contribute to problem drinking among men.
"This experimental alcohol study, which included a social context, finds the clearest evidence yet of greater alcohol reinforcement for men than women," says lead author and graduate student Catharine Fairbairn of the University of Pittsburgh…
Almost everyone agrees the Western world is over-prescribed; except the people doing the prescribing. Symptom-based medicine stopped being used 50 years ago but when it comes to mood disorders, it is still the norm. And "brief depression symptom measures," the self-administered questionnaires are used in primary care settings to determine the frequency and severity of depression symptoms among patients, are being linked to antidepressant medications being prescribed when they may not be needed, according to a paper in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
Those self-…
We know our bodies don't just change in size, which makes it an effective metric in a world in motion.
Psychologists have found that people tend to perceive their dominant hand as staying relatively the same size even when it's magnified, lending support to the idea that we use our hand as a constant perceptual "ruler" to measure the world around us.
To size up the world around us, we need to be able to translate the information that comes in through our eyes into units that are relevant to our everyday lives. The body is a particularly effective metric because it allows us to relate…
There's a common trope in Hollywood celebrities who gain weight and receive attention for it. They talk about how much healthier and better they feel about themselves at higher weight - and then they immediately lose weight and talk about how much healthier and better they feel about themselves.
Severely obese people who aren't famous also experience much better spirits once they shed weight through diet, lifestyle changes or medical intervention but Valentina Ivezaj and Carlos Grilo of the Yale University School of Medicine write in Obesity Surgery that it is not a psychological magic…
Antidepressants are the most commonly used treatment for social anxiety disorder but we know they don't work for many people and their efficacy goes down over time.
New research finds they are not even needed in many instances.
Social anxiety disorder is a condition characterized by fear and avoidance of social situations. It affects as many as 13 percent of the Western world. For most people, it is not severe, and they never receive treatment for the disorder but those who do get treatment are usually assigned medication.
A network meta-analysis that collected and analyzed data from…
Sympathetic or jealous? Credit: Belly by Shutterstock
By Arthur Brennan, St George's, University of London
Harry Ashby, the 29-year-old security guard who was signed off work with morning sickness, cravings, a growing stomach and breasts during his girlfriend’s pregnancy, was told he had Couvade syndrome.
Couvade is an involuntary manifestation of pregnancy in men with a partner who is expecting a baby – sometimes called “sympathetic pregnancy”. It isn’t a medically recognized physical or mental disorder, and it isn’t explained by injury or illness.
A range of “pregnancy-related” physical and…
For some people, their own standard is much more demanding that anything the outside world could expect. Perfectionism is a bigger risk factor in suicide than it is credited for, says York University Psychology Professor Gordon Flett, who is calling for closer attention to its potential destructiveness, adding that clinical guidelines should include perfectionism as a separate factor for suicide risk assessment and intervention.
More than one million people worldwide, including over 40,000 North Americans commit suicide on an annual basis, according to the Center for Disease Control and…
A new evolutionary psychology paper says that men and women have different age preferences regarding sexual partners - but it's primarily women realize their preferences.
Why? They believe it is because when it comes to mating, women control the market and so are biologically more selective than men. Thus, men are more likely to have sex with less than ideal partners. Women can be with the one they love, men have to love than one they are with.
The psychologists at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland gathered observations from a population-based sample of more than 12,000…
If you had an angel walking beyond you, would you be more reckless or more cautious?
It's surprising how many people believe that guardian angels watch over them to keep them safe in a dangerous world, and it's even more surprising that those who believe are actually less inclined to take risks despite this protection.
Scholars David Etkin, Jelena Ivanova, Susan MacGregor and Alalia Spektor surveyed 198 individuals and found that of those who believe in guardian angels, 68% said that this belief affects how they take risks.
Cortona guardian angel. Image: fishermore.edu
While…