Psychology
During sex with a familiar partner, men have the highest orgasm rates - though lesbian women apparently don't do too badly.
On average, men experience orgasm 85.1 percent of the time, with only slight deviation by sexual orientation but women experience orgasm 62.9 percent of the time, with lesbian women experiencing orgasm more often than heterosexual or bisexual women, according to a new paper about a survey of American singles titled "Variation in Orgasm Occurrence by Sexual Orientation in a Sample of U.S. Singles" and published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
The paper was based…
It's a smartphone world; a decade ago a crowded train of passengers all locked into their phones texting to other people while ignoring the live humans six inches from them was just xenophobic Japanese culture but today it is common all across the developed world.
Psychologists worry that children getting meaning and context spoon-fed to them with emoticons may be leading to poor social skills in the real world, and even an inability to read emotions.
UCLA psychologists found that sixth-graders who went five days without even glancing at a smartphone, television or other digital screen did…
To sexually objectify someone is to focus on their body in terms of how it can provide sexual pleasure rather than viewing that person as a complete human being with thoughts and feelings.
Objectification has long been considered a problem in the media - stories of Mad Men star Jon Hamm invariably mention that he doesn't wear underwear - but how does it affect individual romantic relationships?
New surveys hope to tell us, but since they are by social psychologists and the paper is in Psychology of Women Quarterly, a feminist, scientific, peer-reviewed journal, they only find that…
One form of drug counseling to help young people with drinking problems makes people in a 'we must do something' culture feel better may be of limited benefit, a new systematic review suggests.
Each year, around 320,000 people worldwide between the ages of 15 and 29 die as a result of alcohol misuse. Most of those deaths are due to car accidents, murders, suicides or drowning. Motivational interviewing is a counseling technique developed in the 1980s that is sometimes offered to people with alcohol problems. It aims to help them overcome ambivalence and change behavior. Counselors…
Hank |
Humans are all one species but we are not all the same. We're not even evolving the same, if you look at it on a surface level. Americans are taller on average than a hundred years ago and the Dutch are probably the tallest people on the planet. We're guiding evolution, believe everyone except biologists. Why doesn't that extend to social issues? What if pretty people married only pretty people? What if liberals married only pretty people? Would not conservatives die off in evolution because they got uglier and less able to mate?
'Consensus' is the ugly word political scientists have…
Is beauty in the face of the beheld? Shutterstock
By Richard Cook, City University London
Beauty, it is said, is in the eye of the beholder. And yet, there are many faces that a majority would find beautiful, say, George Clooney’s or Audrey Hepburn’s.
Psychologists interested in mate selection and the visual processing of faces have long sought to understand why some faces are widely regarded as attractive. Researchers have identified several cues associated with facial beauty, including “averageness” – faces close to the population mean are judged attractive – and “sexual dimorphism” –…
Cornell University marketing researchers recently tracked the purchasing records in a supermarket chain that uses the Guiding Stars System to rate the nutritional value of foods for sale.
They wanted to see if nutrition rating systems could be used in supermarkets to encourage healthier spending habits?
The scholars studied the sales records of over 150 Hannaford Supermarkets in the Northeastern United States between January 2005 and December 2007. They collected data from over 60,000 Guiding Star rated food items. The Guiding Stars System brands items with zero, one, two or…
Survey results of over 10,000 mothers have led sociologists to conclude that women who breastfed their babies are at significantly lower risk of postnatal depression than those who do not.
The paper in Maternal and Child Health notes that mothers who planned to breastfeed and who actually went on to breastfeed were around 50% less likely to become depressed than mothers who had not planned to, and who did not, breastfeed. Mothers who planned to breastfeed, but who did not go on to breastfeed, were over twice as likely to become depressed as mothers who had not planned to, and who did not,…
Love and commitment make sex physically more satisfying for many women, according to Penn State Abington sociologist Beth Montemurro.
In interviews of 95 heterosexual women between the ages of 20 and 68 and from a range of backgrounds, most believed love was necessary for maximum satisfaction in both sexual relationships and marriage. The benefits of being in love with a sexual partner were more than just emotional, most of the women in the study said that love made sex physically more pleasurable. From September 2008 to July 2011, Montemurro conducted in-depth interviews with 95 women…
Schizophrenia is among the most severe forms of mental illness yet some people are as happy as those in good mental health and happier than many, according to a paper in Schizophrenia Research.
In a survey of people with the disease, researchers found that 37 percent of patients reported being happy all or most of the time.
Of clinical significance in terms of helping people with mental illness, the patients' happiness was unrelated to the severity or duration of their illness, to cognitive or physical function or to socioeconomic factors such as age and education, which among healthy adults…