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Loneliness May Warp Our Genes, And Our Immune Systems
NPR: Loneliness has been linked to everything from heart disease to Alzheimer's disease. Depression is common among the lonely. Cancers tear through their bodies more rapidly, and viruses hit them harder and more frequently. In the short term, it feels like the loneliness will kill you. A study suggests that's because the pain of loneliness activates the immune pattern of a primordial response commonly known as fight or flight For decades, researchers have been seeing signs that the immune systems of lonely people are working differently.
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Men’s Interest in Babies Linked With Hormonal Responses to Sexual Stimuli
Young men’s interest in babies is associated with their physiological reactivity to sexually explicit material, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study showed that young men who reported more interest in babies showed a lower increase in testosterone in response to sexually explicit material than men who weren’t as interested in babies. “Our findings show there is a strong mind-body connection: Liking or not liking babies is related to how a man’s body – specifically, his testosterone – responds to sexual stimuli,” explains Dario Maestripieri of the University of Chicago, lead researcher on the study.
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Sodium Warnings Are a Nice Idea, Which Is Why It’s Too Bad They’re Probably Useless
New York Magazine: Should you find yourself at a New York City location of a chain restaurant this week, you will find something new on the menu: menacing little black triangles, each encasing a white salt shaker, meant to signify that the dish in question contains an excessive amount of sodium. The warning labels are in accordance with a rule passed by the NYC Board of Health earlier this fall, and they're intended to alert consumers that an item on a chain restaurant’s menu contains at least 2,300 milligrams of sodium. ...
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High five, dads! You split housework evenly with moms — or so you think
TODAY: "Over-claiming of this kind is a very common phenomena," says Nicholas Epley, the John T. Keller Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago. "People tend to think well of themselves so when you are asking them about something good they have done, they say they do more because that is consistent with who they are." Epley says a host of things may have factored into the different perceptions. The Pew survey questions, for example, were written vaguely, meaning people might struggle to answer accurately. If the questions asked how often each took out the trash or swept the floor, people might have been able to answer more precisely. Read the whole story: TODAY
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Scientists have figured out what makes Dr. Seuss so silly
The Washington Post: Chris Westbury was trying to get work done, and everyone around him kept laughing. As part of a study on aphasia, a speech and language disorder, the University of Alberta psychology professor was running a study in which test subjects were shown strings of letters and asked to distinguish real words from made-up ones. But every time the (non) word “snunkoople” cropped up, the subjects would collapse with mirth. ... Many psychologists believe that laughter and amusement evolved to signal that a surprise is not a threat.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: The Price of Perspective Taking: Child Depressive Symptoms Interact With Parental Empathy to Predict Immune Functioning in Parents Erika M. Manczak, Devika Basu, and Edith Chen People vary in the amount of empathy -- the tendency to affectively experience and adopt the perspective of others -- they experience. Empathy is generally considered to be a positive and desirable trait, but are there circumstances in which empathy is harmful?
