Psychology
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Loneliness is not a gnawing, chronic disease without redeeming features, social isolation is just a different scale of organization that can't be grasped outside evolutionary time and evolutionary forces. Well, maybe.
If you are alone this Valentine's Day, you are not...alone, you are part of a giant biological imperative, according to the psychologists behind an evolutionary theory of loneliness, who write in Cogntion & Emotion about its potential adaptive value on an evolutionary timescale.
In modern psychology, because some people are some ways, like being being loners…
Do television shows and magazines make you feel guilty for not wearing sexy lingerie, ladies? You may just need some marketing empowerment from academics in the humanities.
Luckily, at Valentine's Day, the Internet will be filled with insipid advice based on weak observational studies and surveys. So here it is: sexy lingerie may not help, but it sure won't hurt.
Writing in the Journal of Consumer Culture, underwear expert Dr. Christiana Tsaousi (see Finally, Women's Underwear Gets Its Own Study from 2008) of the University of Leicester School of Management first explains the obvious to…
Looking for a good book? Then stay away from the award-winning section of the bookstore, because high standards means a greater chance for a letdown, according to Amanda Sharkey of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, who finds that a book read after winning a prestigious award will likely be judged more negatively than if it's read prior to recognition.
Sharkey and colleague Balázs Kovács of the University of Lugano analyze thousands of reader reviews of 32 pairs of books. One book in each pair had won an award – like the Booker Prize, National Book Award or PEN/Faulkner Award…
Health education videos tell us what really matters to people.
Two videos both began by offering information about UV light and sun-protective behaviors but then one describes the increased skin cancer risk of UV exposure and the other
describes effects on appearance including wrinkles and premature aging.
Cancer is too remote, but wrinkles are real, for teenagers.
A
University of Colorado Cancer Center study shows that while teens who watched both videos
learned and retained the same amount of knowledge about UV light and sun-protective behaviors,
only the teens who watched the…
A business scholar says that there are fewer product placements in scary movies, and therefore companies are missing a prime marketing moment.
Coca-Cola doesn't want a half-naked sorority girl to be drinking their soda just before she gets stabbed in the eye, that is a much different association than cute polar bears or, in the case of Budweiser, giant affectionate horses. Humor product placements, good, adventure, of course, but not horror.
Yet University of British Columbia PhD student Lea Dunn writes in an upcoming article in the
Journal of Consumer Research that consumers…
If there is a sociological fad, trend or fashion and it catches the attention of the public, you can be sure someone will start doing weak observational studies and get published in journals.
Almost anything can be termed an 'addiction' if people do it too much; checking their email, playing Risk or even watching porn. Because addiction is considered physical, the term connotes legitimacy and that means it will have to be covered under insurance. It's a huge windfall if a successful new disease can be manufactured.
Of course, it makes psychology look bad when new conditions for more and more…
Has your spouse heard all of your stories by now? Other people haven't and if they are impressed by your wit and personality and openness about personal details, it will add romance points, say social psychologists.
The new paper fuses together multiple social psychology concepts into the idea that novel, high-self-disclosure interactions with other couples can increase feelings of passionate love. The notion that perception is vital in a relationship is nothing new but it is nonetheless new enough in social psychology to be in a lot of papers at this week's Society for…
There used to be a saying that we should all try to be the person our dogs think we are.
In the 21st century we idealize ourselves in online avatars, according to a new paper in Psychological Science,
which has far-reaching implications if how you represent yourself in the virtual world of video games may affect how you behave toward others in the real world.
Virtual environments afford people the opportunity to take on identities and experience circumstances that they otherwise can't in real life, providing "a vehicle for observation, imitation, and modeling." The authors…
It's the time of year when experts on relationships give advice. Not experts on their own, but rather experts on yours.
All that's needed is a weak observational study based on surveys and it practically writes itself.
Writing in Journal of Marriage and Family, Matt Johnson, an assistant professor in Family Ecology at the University of Alberta, co-authored a paper to help anyone who's had rocky relations with their parents while growing up, which is to say almost everyone on planet earth: their advice is not to let it spill over into your current romantic partnership, which you don't really…
Men, if you want a short term thing and not a lot of talks about "us" and "the relationship", your odds improve if your parents gave you the gift of a wider face.
Women see wider faces as more dominant, and therefore more attractive, at least for short-term relationships. At around age 30, women start to prefer men with jobs and stable personalities.
And since this was a study of speed dating participants, it's probably true, for speed dating participants.
According to psychologist Katherine Valentine of Singapore Management University, there's considerable debate among psychologists about…