Sexuality: Your Telltale Fingertips: How your hands are a marker for behavior. Relative finger length—or digit ratio—is a marker for brain differences molded by hormones. [Psychology Today]

The Healing Power of Nature: A bit of green may calm a child’s frayed nerves. Rural children who have access to nature seem better equipped to handle stress than kids in a room without a view. What’s more, children who are the most vulnerable to stress benefit the most from adding greenery to their lives. [Psychology Today]

Boys and their toys? It’s biological, not social: Boys prefer playing with cars to dolls because of basic biological differences rather than social pressures, scientists say. Researchers observed young male monkeys spent more time playing with vehicles than with cuddly toys. They believe this suggests that in most cases boys have an innate predisposition for masculine toys, which is then reinforced by what they learn from their parents, friends and wider society. [Telegraph]

April 8th, 2008 at 11:13 am

This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.

April Fool! The Purpose of Pranks: Keep it above the belt, stop short of total humiliation and, if possible, mix in some irony, some drama, maybe even a bogus call from the person’s old flame or new boss. A good prank, of course, involves good stagecraft. But it also requires emotional intuition. [NYT]

Paranoid? Scientists say that one third of us think that the others are out to get us: A virtual reality simulation of a journey on the London Underground has shown that paranoia is much more common among people who have no mental health problems than scientists had thought. [Times]

Meditate on This: You Can Learn to Be More Compassionate: Like athletes or musicians, people who practice meditation can enhance their ability to concentrate—or even lower their blood pressure. They can also cultivate compassion, according to a new study. Specifically, concentrating on the loving kindness one feels toward one’s family (and expanding that to include strangers) physically affects brain regions that play a role in empathy. [Scientific American]

April 1st, 2008 at 11:15 am

This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.

Bipolar Nation: A big shift in our understanding of mood disorders is under way, with many depressed people now being reclassified as bipolar. But is trading antidepressant drugs for mood stabilisers a sign of progress, or just the latest diagnostic fad? [Prospect]

Depression Hurts the Immune System: Depression is a whole-body disorder. There’s accumulating evidence that the illness has deleterious effects on the heart, the brain, the bones and metabolism. Now comes proof that it undermines the immune system as people age. [Psychology Today]

Human behaviour: nature, nurture, the war’s over: Last week’s study showing how genetic and environmental factors combine to affect people’s risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is only the latest to show that most aspects of health and personality are governed by both. [Times]

March 25th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.

The path to happiness: it is better to give than receive: Money may not buy you love but it might buy you happiness if you spend it in the right way, US researchers say. In studies they found that the old adage “it’s better to give than to receive” is correct: spending money on others or giving to charity puts a bigger smile on your face than buying things for yourself. [Guardian]

Parents’ stress may affect child health: Stressed, anxious or depressed parents could be making their children unhealthy, according to a study that followed the health of 120 children over three years. [Guardian]

Love makes us blind to the charms of others: Psychologists who studied volunteers in stable relationships believe romantic love is a biological “commitment device” to lessen our awareness of the charms of others. [Telegraph]

March 21st, 2008 at 10:49 am

This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.

Eliot Spitzer and the Price-Placebo Effect: Spitzer’s poor moral, political and legal judgment is beyond question, but on the delicate question of whether Kristen was “worth it,” a host of unusual studies suggest the governor probably got his money’s worth. The question, as it turns out, has little to do with either Kristen or prostitution, and nearly everything to do with Spitzer himself. Specifically, an area of Spitzer’s brain known as the medial orbitofrontal cortex. This part of the brain makes judgments about pleasure, and intriguing new research has found that the price people pay for something can subtly and unconsciously change how much pleasure they derive from it. [Washington Post]

Clever people ‘are easier to con’: Doctors, architects, engineers and other white-collar professionals are being conned by e-mail fraudsters who lure them into contributing to fake ventures after taking their details from conference websites. [Times]

March 18th, 2008 at 11:52 am

This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.

Why a row a day is good for teenagers: Conflict ultimately bonds children and parents by encouraging more open communication. [Guardian]

Is There a Dark Side in All of Us?: Maverick academic Philip Zimbardo says we are all capable of evil. Is he right? [AlterNet]

The Fascination With Isolation: When the late Donald O. Hebb, a psychologist at Montreal’s McGill University, secured a grant from the Canadian Defence Research Board in 1951 to study how sensory isolation affects the human mind, he found that depriving a person of stimulation can break him in days. [Mother Jones]

March 16th, 2008 at 9:53 am

This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.

With God As My Shrink: More Americans are seeking religious counselors rather than signing up for plain old psychotherapy—and a booming industry has emerged to answer their prayers. But can faith-based counseling heal the mind as well as the soul? [Psychology Today]

Darkness Visible: Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Hart Crane, Sylvia Plath, Yukio Mishima, Primo Levi—in 1986, William Styron almost joined the long list of writers who have committed suicide. He spiraled down into a long and frightening bout with what is commonly known as depression. Now he has chosen to write a searing account of his journey through darkness back to the light. [Vanity Fair]

Placebo v. Placebo: Price and our sense of value add another dimension to the placebo question. [Popsci]

Psychotherapy for All: An Experiment: The Goa program, financed by the Wellcome Trust, is not the first using nonmedical workers to treat mental illness, but it is the largest. Almost 2,000 patients have been treated. Dr. Patel is conducting a randomized clinical trial to see whether the strategy works, the first time such a careful study has been run in the developing world. [NYT]

March 12th, 2008 at 9:02 am

This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.

It is often said some people by nature have a sunny disposition. Now scientists could have discovered why. Psychologists, who used data from 900 pairs of twins, identified evidence for common genes which result in certain personality traits that predispose individuals to happiness whatever their circumstances. [Telegraph]

When someone we know or love excels at something, we take pride in her accomplishment because we care about the other person and get to bask in some of her reflected glory. But when we are involved in the same activity as that friend or intimate partner — and feel bested by that person — we can simultaneously feel envious and threatened, in a way we would not if the star performer were a stranger. [Washington Post]

March 5th, 2008 at 1:59 pm

This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.

Scientists have discovered that when jazz musicians improvise, areas of their brains associated with inhibition quiet down, and those involved with self-expression heat up. [Popsci]

While Mom—and studies—agree that you won’t perform your best without a good night’s sleep, skipping slumber may be a good idea for people with severe depression. For decades, spontaneous reports from patients suggested that sleep deprivation can alleviate depression. [Psychology Today]

It turns out playing with a robot pet can be just as soothing as interacting with the real thing. Saint Louis University researchers conducted a study in three U.S. nursing homes to see how elderly people would respond to Sony’s Aibo, the robo-dog, versus a flesh-and-blood mutt. The subjects were divided into three groups. One got regular visits from the mutt, the second played with Aibo and the third was deprived of both. After nearly two months, the researchers found that there wasn’t much difference between the attachments residents formed to the mechanical pet and the real one. [Popsci]

February 29th, 2008 at 11:28 am

This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.

The Medicated Americans: Antidepressant Prescriptions on the Rise. Close to 10 percent of men and women in America are now taking drugs to combat depression. How did a once rare condition become so common? [Scientific American]

You cannot teach people to be happy. Forget force-feeding kids ‘positive psychology’: teachers have more chance of producing happy pupils if they inspire them with knowledge. [Spiked]

Humans are hard-wired to care for babies, scientists say. Researchers have identified a part of the brain that becomes highly active within a seventh of a second when a person is shown a picture of an unfamiliar infant face. They believe they have discovered the biological basis for the parental instinct - a findings that could help doctors identify the 13 per cent of mothers who suffer from postnatal depression. [Telegraph]

In the 20 years since its launch, 40m people worldwide have taken the so-called wonder drug - but research revealed this week shows that Prozac, and similar antidepressants, are no more effective than a sugar pill. So how was the myth created? [Guardian]

February 27th, 2008 at 2:22 pm

This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.