Amazing Trivia from Psychology

Smile Away the Flu
Happy people heal faster. The link between positive thinking and the immune response.

Keeping your chin up when you feel lousy really does help you heal. Neurologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found a link between the body's immune response and a positive attitude. Their conclusion: Happy people heal faster.

A group of 52 Wisconsinites volunteered to be vaccinated against the flu. Before administering the vaccinations, neuroscientist Richard Davidson and colleagues scanned the subjects' brain activity as they recalled a vividly happy memory and as they thought of another that made them feel sad or angry. The prefrontal cortex regulates our emotional responses—the right side registers negative emotions and the left positive ones.

Researchers tracked the antibody count of the volunteers over the following six months. A half year after being vaccinated, the happier subjects—those with more activity in the left prefrontal lobe—had more antibodies in their system. Less positive subjects had a weaker immune response.

Sleep’s effect on studies

I love these sorta studies that prove my allergy to cramming, and the confusion it inherently causes in my simple brain box. I have always believed that the last minute absorption of large amounts of detail has the only effect of limiting recall of everything,

EXCEPT THE LAST THING YOU READ!.

And What do you know... I was right!
Must go buy a lotto ticket!

Studying sleep’s effect on studies: Better to rest than cram for tests, psychology professor says

Overnight cramming sessions might hurt students’ exam grades rather than help them, and naps before games might help athletes improve their performance.Those were the findings this semester of a Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts sophomore, Danielle Durand, whose study of 10 students, under the supervision of psychology professor Peggy Brooks, Ph.D, indicates people retain factual information better when they’ve had a good night’s sleep.

“Research shows that the benefits of sleep have to do with memory,” said Brooks, who also supervised two previous long-term studies that looked at the sleep habits of 257 MCLA students. “Sleep is very important for motor-skill performance and declarative memory of words, names and facts — the first kind of memory you lose when you lose sleep.”

... In the two earlier studies, [...] examined student sleep patterns and their effects on academics, athletics and mental health.

Participants were evaluated using standardized sleep pattern questionnaires, a depression inventory, and a 14-day sleep diary modified from one provided by the National Sleep Foundation.

... Mirroring the national average

MCLA students in the studies averaged 7.44 hours of sleep each night, almost mirroring the national average of 7.42 hours.

But the times the students went to bed [...] might be increasing the need for naps to make up for late nights and changing sleep patterns, Brooks said.

“Bedtimes have gotten later over the decades,” she said. “The average bedtime reported (in our study) was 1:15 a.m. on weeknights and 2:15 a.m. on weekends. “The effect of being more of a 24-hour society, and the advent of the Internet and other technology that keeps us stimulated longer, all contributes to students staying up later and getting less sleep.”

The sleep diaries also revealed that women taking part in the study, who reported sleeping an average of 30 minutes longer than men, showed fewer symptoms of depression than the men. Depression is twice as likely to be reported in women than in men, according to the American Psychological Association.

“The finding suggests that for women, sleep may make the difference for other symptoms of depression,” Brooks said. “But our sample was not a clinical sample; we were looking at symptoms of depression in a general student sample. With our students, less sleep was associated with depression.”

Girgenti, a senior at MCLA, and Mills, a 2006 graduate, [...] discovered a relationship between grade-point averages provided by students and the times they reported waking up in the morning.

“National samples show that ‘early to bed, early to rise’ makes students wiser,” Brooks explained. “In our sample, we found that students who had better overall sleep quality had higher grade-point averages.”

Parasite makes men dumb, women sexy

Does this mean that we got two excuses? From the Sydney Morning Herald

1. Its genetic, so I cant' be blamed.. or now...
2. It's a parasite, so I cant be blamed.

Unfortunately this will be an excuse for people to deny the real root cause of mant of these problems..

3. I'm dumb... careless and thoughtless, or hungover, or drunk.

A common parasite can increase a women's attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says. [...] About 40 per cent of the world's population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii, [and ...] infection generally occurs when people eat raw or undercooked meat that has cysts containing the parasite, or accidentally ingest some of the parasite's eggs excreted by an infected cat.

[Previously thought to be harmless], but new research has revealed its mind-altering properties.

"Interestingly, the effect of infection is different between men and women," Dr Boulter writes in the latest issue of Australasian Science magazine."Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.

"On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.

"In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens".

[...]

Another study showed people who were infected but not showing symptoms were 2.7 times more likely than uninfected people to be involved in a car accident as a driver or pedestrian, while other research has linked the parasite to higher incidences of schizophrenia.

"The increasing body of evidence connecting Toxoplasma infection with changes in personality and mental state, combined with the extremely high incidence of human infection in both developing and developed countries, warrants increased government funding and research, in particular to find safe and effective treatments or vaccines," Dr Boulter said.

Psychology of food, ... Well DUH

I found this post by Sandra Kiume, and I hsd to share it with you. What a facsinating description of what we all knew. Still we now know it is true...

Though many people are concerned about overeating and obesity, usually it’s in the context of intentional bingeing and grazing. The Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, however, studies the unintentional overeating that contributes to obesity.

Often it’s about perception, and marketers who exploit those psychological mechanisms. For example, people eat more of and report more satisfaction with menu items that have long descriptions instead of simple names (chocolate cake vs. a name like Belgian extra dark chocolate mousse layer cake).

There’s the club store curse, which leads to overeating when food is stockpiled. Also, large package sizes increase consumption by an average 22%, while large movie popcorn buckets led people to eat 45% more even when the popcorn was 10-days-old stale.

A visual illusion (vertical-horizontal illusion) causes people to pour more liquid into a short wide glass than a tall thin one - something to remember at your New Years Eve party.

Of course, while unknowing overeating can have negative effects, the same principles can be applied to increase consumption of healthier foods.

Daily Reader and Surfin links

Well away we go. I am surfing through my Google reader backlog, which is in the hundreds today. I will also later post some interesting illusions. This will be a good idea to get some interest going early on.

The first site I visited today was from a Google alert, and I found Bruce's Blog, which contained this little gem.

So what do you have to do to find happiness?

Are we wired up to be cheerful, or are some of us destined to languish in abject misery? Dorothy Wade reports on the new science of feeling good... But ordinary people believe they are happier than average (an obvious impossibility) and that they'll be even happier in 10 years' time. If true, it would be good news because research shows that happier people are healthier, more successful, harder-working, caring and more socially engaged. Misery makes people self-obsessed and inactive.

The article from the Sunday Times newspaper in the UK asks some interesting questions, Albeit with a lack of supporting evidence. Dorothy has interviewed some eminent experts, and waded through epiphany's, nimbus clouds in the soul and 5-year old inspirations to follow the story of what it means to be happy, and the scientific theories behind modern research in explaining it, all the way from the Pleistocene period! This well written and entertaining article goes on to pull together the "pieces of the jigsaw" to develop a stunning conclusion.

It's difficult to resist the logic of the happiness doctors. Stay in your Eeyore-ish bubble of existentialist angst and have a life that's short, sickly, friendless and self-obsessed. Or find a way to get happy, and long life, good health, job satisfaction and social success will be yours. You'd better start writing that gratitude letter now.

But best of all is this little gem.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

Men often complain about their wives' volatility. Now research confirms that women really are both happier and sadder. Positive and negative emotions are not polar opposites — you can have both in your life. Women experience more of all emotions except anger. First it was found that women experience twice as much depression as men. Next, researchers found that women report more positive emotion than men, more frequently and more intensely. It all points to men and women having a different emotional make-up. Cognitive psychologists say that men and women have different skills related to sending and receiving emotion. Women are expressive; men conceal or control their emotions. Women convey emotion through facial expression and communication; men express emotion through aggressive or distracting behavior. Does the difference lie in biology, social roles or just women's willingness to report emotion? That's up for debate.

Gotta love it. Anyway, I enjoyed having it all "summarized and structured". It makes you think a little...