NewsTrust - Psychology - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

The Psychology Of Nakedness

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Wired - By Jonah Lehrer - Nov. 30 (Special Report) - The human mind sees minds everywhere. Show us a collection of bouncing balls and we hallucinate agency; a glance at a stuffed animal and we endow it with a mood; I’m convinced Siri doesn’t like me. The point is that we are constantly translating our visual perceptions into a theory of mind, as we attempt to imagine the internal states of teddy bears, microchips and perfect strangers.

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With great graphs comes great responsibility

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - Sep. 13 (News Report) - Want to convince someone of something? Show them a graph. At least, that’s what political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler found in a series of experiments testing the best ways to correct factual misinformation. Key quote: “Graphical corrections are also found to successfully reduce incorrect beliefs among potentially resistant subjects and to perform better than an equivalent textual correction.” Full paper — with graphs — here (pdf). ...

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Mass Psychosis in the US

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - Jul. 13 (Special Report) - Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux.

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The Optimism Bias

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By Ali Sharot - Jul. 02 (Special Report) - We like to think of ourselves as rational creatures. We watch our backs, weigh the odds, pack an umbrella. But both neuroscience and social science suggest that we are more optimistic than realistic. On average, we expect things to turn out better than they wind up being. People hugely underestimate their chances of getting divorced, losing their job or being diagnosed with cancer; expect their children to be extraordinarily gifted; envision themselves achieving more than their peers; and overestimate their likely life span (sometimes by 20 years or more). The belief that the future will be much better than the past and present is known as the optimism bias. It abides in every race, region and socioeconomic bracket. Schoolchildren playing when-I-grow-up are rampant optimists, but so are grownups: a 2005 study found that adults over 60 are just as likely to see the glass half full as young adults.

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The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - Jun. 10 (News Analysis) - Prior to treatment, patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, and other psychiatric disorders do not suffer from any known “chemical imbalance.” However, once a person is put on a psychiatric medication, which, in one manner or another, throws a

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Therapy to change 'feminine' boy created a troubled man, family says

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By Scott Bronstein, Jessi Joseph - Jun. 08 (News Report) - Kirk Andrew Murphy seemed to have everything to live for. Siblings: Gay brother killed himself decades after treatment to make him more masculine

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A key diagnostic deadline draws near

Sun, 22 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Shari Roan - May. 22 (News Report) - Psychiatrists are in the thick of a years-long effort to produce the latest edition of the essential textbook for diagnosing mental illnesses, the DSM. They're dogged by controversies over 'new' conditions."Where are we going to put the narcissists?"

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Overwhelmed Internet users choose to unplug — for a little while

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Gus Sentementes - May. 15 (News) - Consciously avoiding using the Web may seem impossible to many in this era of information overload. Researchers on the issue say addiction to information may be similar in some ways to the effect that certain drugs have on the human brain — and some people may need to take disciplined breaks from their gadgets.

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Ten Unforgettable Web Memes

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Smithsonian Magazine - May. 15 (Special Report) - Cats and failures highlight this list of the memes that have gone mainstream. Which ones did we miss?

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Facebook 'planking' craze claims life in Australia

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Agence France-Presse - May. 15 (News) - A new craze sweeping the Internet known as "planking" claimed a life in Australia Sunday and police fear the tragedy may not be the last. Planking involves someone lying flat on their stomach with their arms against their bodies in unusual and sometimes dangerous situations, with photographs of their exploits shared through social media sites. It has gone viral in recent weeks with Facebook page Planking Australia boasting over 55,000 fans and hundreds of photos of people lying on train tracks, escalators, fire hydrants, motorbikes and other objects. Police last week warned "plankers" of the dangers and their fears have been realised with the death of a man in Brisbane who plummeted from a seventh-storey balcony and died at the scene. "This morning we have seen a young man take this activity a step further and attempt to plank on a balcony. Unfortunately he has tragically fallen to his death," Queensland Police Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett said.

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Appeals court blasts VA mental health care system

Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Paul Elias - May. 10 (Special Report) - Noting that an average of 18 veterans a day commit suicide, a federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered the Department of Veterans Affairs to dramatically overhaul its mental health care system. In the strongly worded ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it takes the department an average of four years to fully provide the mental health benefits owed veterans. The court also said it often takes weeks for a suicidal vet to get a first appointment. The "unchecked incompetence" in handling the flood of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health claims is unconstitutional, the court said.

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The good god guide

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Apr. 22 (News Analysis) - Religion is ubiquitous but it is not universal. That is a conundrum for people trying to explain it. Religious types, noting the ubiquity (though not everyone is religious, all human societies have religions), argue that this proves religion is a real reflection of the underlying nature of things. Sceptics wonder why, if that is the case, it comes in such a variety of flavours, from the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church to the cargo cults of Papua New Guinea—each of which seems to find the explanations offered by the others anathema. To bring a little scientific order to the matter, researchers taking part in a multinational project called Explaining Religion have spent three years gathering data on various aspects of religious practice and on the sorts of moral behaviour that religions often claim to govern. The data-collection phase was wrapped up at the end of 2010, and the results are starting to be published.

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How antidepressants boost growth of new brain cells

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New Scientist - By Jessica Hamzelou - Apr. 17 (News Report) - The first clear evidence of how antidepressant drugs help to boost brain cell formation could lead to better treatments for depression. The hippocampus is one of just two brain regions known to grow new neurons throughout life - a process called neurogenesis. This process is disrupted in people with depression, although it is not known whether this is a cause or symptom of the condition. It is clear, however, that one of the ways that antidepressants work is by boosting neurogenesis in the hippocampus. Christoph Anacker and his colleagues at King's College London have now worked out how they do so. Previous research has shown a link between some antidepressants and stress hormones called glucocorticoids. So Anacker's team decided to test whether the antidepressant sertraline acts on the glucocorticoid receptors of brain cells. They grew human hippocampal progenitor cells in a dish and added sertraline. Ten days later, the cultures showed a 25 per cent greater than expected increase in the number of new neurons.

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Study Ties Suicide Rate in Work Force to Economy

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Benedict Carey - Apr. 15 (News Report) - The suicide rate increased 3 percent in the 2001 recession and has generally ridden the tide of the economy since the Great Depression, rising in bad times and falling in good ones, according to a comprehensive government analysis released Thursday.

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The 'Health Halo:' Does Organic Food Really Taste Better?

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By Meredith Melnick - Apr. 12 (News) - If a box of chocolate cookies had an "organic" label, would you feel less guilty about eating them? Would you think they were more nutritious, or tastier? Economists who study social psychology refer to something called the "halo effect," a bias in judgment that causes you to assume that one positive attribute comes packaged with a bunch of others.

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Mental tests ordered for Arizona shooting suspect

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - Mar. 22 (News) - A judge has ordered Jared Lee Loughner to undergo a mental evaluation at a specialized facility in Springfield, Missouri, as soon as possible to help determine if he is competent to stand trial, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tucson, Arizona.

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U.S. has highest bipolar rate in 11-nation study

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

CNN - Mar. 08 (News) - About 2.4% of people around the world have had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder at some point in their lifetime, according to the first comprehensive international figures on the topic.

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Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Rolling Stone - By Michael Hastings - Feb. 24 (Investigative Report) - The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

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In Tucson Shooting, Jigsaw Picture of Loughner

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Dan Barry, Jo Becker, Serge F. Kovaleski, Michael Luo - Jan. 15 (News Report) - Moments after the swirl of panic, blood, death and shock, the suspect was face down on the pavement and squirming under the hold of two civilians, his shaved head obscured by a beanie and the hood of his dark sweatshirt. Deputy Sheriff Thomas Audetat, a chiseled former Marine with three tours in Iraq to his credit, dug his knee into the gangly young man’s back and cuffed him. With the aid of another deputy, he relieved the heroic civilians of their charge and began searching for weapons other than the Glock semiautomatic pistol, secured nearby under a civilian’s foot, that had just fired 31 rounds.

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Journal’s Paper on ESP Is Expected to Prompt Outrage

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Benedict Carey - Jan. 06 (News Report) - One of psychology’s most respected journals has agreed to publish a paper presenting what its author describes as strong evidence for extrasensory perception, the ability to sense future events.

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Nearly 1 in 5 Americans had mental illness in 2009

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Reuters - Nov. 18 (News) - More than 45 million Americans, or 20 percent of U.S. adults, had some form of mental illness last year, and 11 million had a serious illness, U.S. government researchers reported on Thursday.

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Can Social Scientists Help Ease the Nation's Rift Over Climate Change?

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - Nov. 15 (News) - Stop being so skeptical of climate skeptics, says one researcher who believes there's been a failure to understand the mounti...

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Digital Overload: Your Brain On Gadgets

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

NPR - Aug. 24 (Special Report) - The average person today consumes almost three times as much information as what the typical person consumed in 1960, according to research at the University of California, San Diego. And The New York Times reports that the average computer user checks 40 websites a day and can switch programs 36 times an hour. "It's an onslaught of information coming in today," says Times technology journalist Matt Richtel. "At one time a screen meant maybe something in your living room. But now it's something in your pocket so it goes everywhere — it can be behind the wheel, it can be at the dinner table, it can be in the bathroom. We see it everywhere today." Richtel has spent the past several months researching the toll technology and "information juggling" are taking on our lives — and our brains. His series "Your Brain On Computers" describes how multitasking on computers and digital gadgets affects the way people process information — and how quickly they can then become distracted.

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Why Johnny Can't Name His Colors

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Scientific American - By Melody Dye - Jul. 17 (News Report) - No, the kid's probably not color blind. A trick for teaching children colors at a younger age -- and why it is otherwise so hard for them.

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The Only Child: Debunking the Myths

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By Lauren Sandler - Jul. 13 (Special Report) - Since I celebrated my 35th birthday, I have to ask myself not when, but if. "The recession has dramatically reshaped women's childbearing desires," says Larry Finer, the director of domestic policy at the Guttmacher Institute, a leading reproductive-health-research organization. The institute found that 64% of women polled said that with the economy the way it is, they couldn't afford to have a baby now. Forty-four percent said they plan to reduce or delay their childbearing — again, because of the economy. This happens during financial meltdowns: the Great Depression saw single-child families spike at 23%. Since the early '60s, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, single-child families have almost doubled in number, to about 1 in 5 — and that's from before the markets crashed. The Only Child. They're supposed to be spoiled, selfish and lonely. In fact they're just fine — and on the rise.

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