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Early childhood neglect has a lasting effect on the functioning of hormones crucially involved in emotions and social bonding. That’s according to a team of psychologists at the Child Emotion Research Group at the University of Wisconsin. Seth Pollak and colleagues (pictured) compared levels of the neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin in 18 four-year-old orphans and 21 age-matched control children. The controls had been raised in a typical family environment in [ Read More ]
Too much noise, such as the sound of passing traffic, can increase the risk of heart attack in men by 50 per cent and in women by up to threefold. That’s according to a team of German researchers who interviewed 4,115 hospital inpatients, about half of whom were recovering from a recent heart attack; the remainder served as controls. Stefan Willich and colleagues interviewed the patients about their experiences of [ Read More ]
New evidence suggests meditating can make parts of the cerebral cortex thicker and protect other parts from age-related thinning. Sara Lazar and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital scanned the brains of 20 people who meditated for an average of 40 minutes per day and 15 controls with no meditation experience. The meditating participants were practitioners of Buddhist Insight meditation, which involves concentrating on stimuli ‘in the moment’, in a non-judgmental [ Read More ]
Contributed by Matt Devereaux at Totton CollegeTo find out what it means to be ‘mentally tough’ in the world of cricket, Stephen Bull, a consultant psychologist, and colleagues at the English and Wales Cricket Board asked 12 elite English players, several of whom had previously been ranked as a top-ten batsman or bowler in the world. Four main themes emerged from interviews with the cricket stars – ‘environmental influences’, ‘tough [ Read More ]
Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve really only got where you are by a mixture of luck and bluffing? Such feelings are often experienced by high achievers who believe they’ve successfully deceived others into believing they’re something they’re not, and so fear that their true lack of ability will be discovered. Psychologists call it the ‘imposter phenomenon’ and a new study reports the feeling is more common among [ Read More ]
Men in rich, Western countries tend to prefer thinner women, whereas men in poorer South Pacific countries tend to prefer bigger women. It’s been argued that this is due to cultural and ethnic differences, but increasingly psychologists now believe it has more to do with socioeconomics, so that men prefer bigger women when resources are scarce because a woman being bigger is an implicit sign that she’s got access to [ Read More ]
Have you come across an exciting new psychology experiment that you’d like to see featured in the Digest? If so, please make your suggestion by clicking ‘comment(s)’ below. The research must be new and published in a respected peer-reviewed journal. Please give the full reference and a brief explanation for why the research would excite our broad readership.
What if free will is an illusion? Perhaps we make up the reasons for our actions retrospectively, tricking ourselves into believing we know why we did what we did, when really our behaviour was involuntary. A new study lends credence to this suggestion by demonstrating a phenomenon the authors dub ‘choice blindness’. One hundred and twenty participants were shown 15 pairs of female faces (taken from here). For each pair [ Read More ]
Just a few supportive phone calls from a clinician can make all the difference to people following a home-based, computerised form of behavioural therapy for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). The therapy, known as ‘behavioural therapy (BT) Steps’, involves clients using a manual to help them understand what triggers their compulsions, and how to gradually resist performing the rituals (e.g. hand washing) they normally carry out when exposed to those triggers. [ Read More ]
Here’s a research finding to console Prime Minister Blair following his latest unplanned cabinet reshuffle. Apparently, substituting a team-member for a newcomer can help increase group creativity. That’s according to Hoon-Seok Choi at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea and Leigh Thompson at Northwestern University, USA. They compared the creativity of 33 three-person groups across two tasks. After the first task, half the groups exchanged one of their team for a [ Read More ]