After examining studies of gender differences in such areas as cognitive abilities, communication, social behavior, personality, and psychological well-being, she concluded that for such commonly supposed gender-specific attributes as indirect aggression, leadership style, self-disclosure, moral reasoning, and delay of gratification, within-gender variability was much greater than between-gender variability. Men do throw harder, masturbate more, exhibit slightly more direct aggression, and endorse casual sex more strongly, but that’s about it.

Expectations often color objectivity, and the fact that some therapists buy into the common myths about gender differences may help explain why men often feel at a disadvantage in couples therapy, where women are supposedly so much better able to talk about feelings. Expecting less input from their male clients, therapists may miss the input when it happens, or reinforce spouses’ views that their men are biologically indifferent or incapable of being emotional.

{ Psychotherapy Networker | Continue reading }

artwork { Louise Bourgeois, Paddle Woman, 1947 | bronze }

Happiness is ideal, it’s the work of the imagination. It’s a way of being moved which depends solely on our way of seeing and feeling. Except for the satisfaction of needs, there’s nothing that makes all men equally happy.

{ Sade, The Crimes of Love, 1800 }

photo { Jesse Kennedy }

The German World War II general Erich von Manstein is said to have categorized his officers into four types.

The first type, he said, is lazy and stupid. His advice was to leave them alone because they don’t do any harm.

The second type is hard-working and clever. He said that they make great officers because they ensure everything runs smoothly.

The third group is composed of hard-working idiots. Von Manstein claims that you must immediately get rid of these, as they force everyone around them to perform pointless tasks.

The fourth category are officers who are lazy and clever. These, he says, should be your generals.

Discovering this information set me to wondering how General von Manstein’s categories might apply to business organizations today.

{ Stepcase Lifehack | Continue reading | Thanks Tim }

{ YouTube }

It turns out there’s some truth to the idea that people of other races “all look alike.” A new study demonstrates that people have more trouble recognizing faces of people of other races.

While this effect has been observed for almost a hundred years, scientists still don’t fully understand why it happens and who it happens to. (…)

Both the Caucasian and Asian groups had a much more difficult time recognizing identical faces from another race.

{ Discover | Continue reading }

So I wondered what benefits people get out of being married. Sure, there’s legal benefits – but I’m going to ignore those. Second, I do not ask ‘why people get married.’ I intend to focus the benefits and outcomes of being married.

Soons & Kalmijn (2009) obtained data (via survey and interview) from a total of 31, 465 individuals across 30 European countries, and looked at the difference between Married Couples and Unmarried Cohabitating Couples. The literature hint at a gap in well-being between the two groups, with some studies supporting greater well-being for Married Couples and some reporting no effect at all. (…)

Soons & Kalmijn (2009) found that in most countries married folk had higher levels of well-being than cohabitants, but found that, in a few select countries (such as Iceland) there was a reverse gap favoring cohabitants.

{ Psycasm | Continue reading }

Steve Miller is justifiably proud of the manicured grounds around his stately stucco home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. So he was nonplussed last year when he discovered that someone had been tossing plastic bags of dog excrement into the sculptured shrubs around a palm tree in his front yard.

“It was a pile of at least 10 bags,” said Mr. Miller, 55, who owned a dance costume business in Bristol, Pa., before retiring to Florida in 2005. (…)

Mr. Miller went to a local electronics store and bought a $400 do-it-yourself video surveillance kit. In so doing, he joined the ranks of outraged homeowners who are recording their neighbors’ misdeeds. Attracted by the declining prices and technological advances of such devices, these homeowners are posting the videos online to shame their neighbors or using them as evidence to press charges. (…)

A month’s worth of video footage clearly showed one of his neighbors slinging bags of dog feces into his yard. (…) Mr. Miller showed the video evidence to his community’s security patrol. “They were stunned, and wrote the guy a citation for improper waste disposal, littering and leash law violations.”

Moreover, the neighbor had to pick up all that he had tossed. Mr. Miller also had some fun at the neighbor’s expense, posting a video on YouTube with a suitably silly soundtrack and narration. (…)

There are countless videos online that are intended to settle scores between neighbors. Whereas such disputes were once confined to the individuals involved, now they can have a much wider audience, whose members often take sides and post comments.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

photo { Bill Owens }

My problem is Judy loves chick flicks.

I can’t forget when she forced me to see Brokeback Mountain and insisted that I look at icky scenes that no red-blooded American boy like me should have to see.

No man (and that includes Alan Alda) is so sensitive that he can sit through these long-winded duller-than-dirt chick movies. And yet no man is ready to admit how much he hates these films. Why? For fear of sexual reprisals delivered in the form of “Not this year, dear. I have a headache.”

And do you want to know how far this sexual intimidation has come? I still have nightmares about the night in 1996 when we went to see The English Patient (the single worst movie I ever sat through in my life).

I remember the night Judy and I went to see this movie. The East Hampton Cinema was filled with couples. The women all fluttery . . . the men all reserved.

I remember looking at Judy and, quite frankly, I was turned on. I figured it was an early movie and the night was young and so was Judy. I planned on drinks and soft music and, you know . . .

Judy gets very emotional at movies and that night she was in fine form. She started to sob the minute they put on that computer-animated horror that tells you to eat popcorn and drink Coca-Cola but don’t talk, etc., etc.

“Judy,” I whispered. “Why are you crying? The movie hasn’t started yet.”

“I know but it’s going to be so . . . so . . . sad.”

Well, in The English Patient, Ralph Fiennes plays a Nazi who is badly burned in a plane crash. So the whole movie consists of this guy who I swear is so burned that he looks exactly like the creature in that monster film of the ’50s, Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I knew from the beginning of the movie he was going to die. Spending three hours watching a guy who is made up to look like a burned-to-a-crisp monster dying is not my idea of a fun Saturday night.

There were a lot of other story lines and characters in the movie – one duller than the other. The burned guy kept remembering this love affair he had with this married woman who was, you guessed it, his best friend’s wife.

Well, this was not one of those wham-bam affairs. No sir. This was slow. So slow that they managed to do the impossible . . . make sex boring. And the more the nurse who was taking care of the guy who was burned to a crisp heard the story of the affair, the more she was interested in climbing into bed with the crisp.

At one point I said to myself, “If she goes near this guy, I’m going to be sick. The only thing that is going to save me from throwing up is that this movie is so boring I’m starting to doze off.”

That’s when Judy poked me.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” she declared with tears streaming down her face. Her tone told me that if I told the truth I could forget about the drinks and soft music later. So I did what any red-blooded young man would do under the circumstances. I lied. “It’s wonderful . . . wonderful. It’s the best thing I’ve seen in years,” I said.

“How come you’re not crying?” she whispered.

“Well, to tell you the truth, I was so caught up in the story that I guess I forgot to cry,” I said.

{ Jerry Della Femina | Continue reading }

What is sadness? What is anger? What is fear? Are they just words or is there something more? In principle, sadness, anger, and fear are emotions, and so is love. In general, it is usually considered that emotions are natural body-experiences that are then expressed through language and that language, in turn, is often described as irrational and subjective. That is, what we first feel in our bodies, later comes out of our mouths in the form of a discourse which is, in some way, opposed to reason.

Emotions are also said to be gestated in the unconscious and not in the will. Thus, they are more spontaneous than artificial. They are more “sincere” than “thinking”. Sometimes they are mixed with rational behaviors, whose existential status belongs to the order of the non-emotional. Recently, emotions have been considered not as the exclusive preservation of the individual’s interiority, but as discursive social constructions. Indeed, the social Psychology of emotions has shown that the processes, causes, and consequences of emotions depend on language use.

Thus, we will deal with the close relationship between emotions and language. Especially, we will deal with an emotion that has been, in the history of mankind in the Western culture, really important. We refer to “love”, understood in the broadest sense. Love has helped to define the essence of human beings.

“There are some who never would have loved if they never had heard it spoken of”, said La Rochefoucauld. Without a history of love and lovers, we would know nothing on how to cope with such a fundamental emotion as well as on why this particular emotion has been investigated in its various aspects and the strength of the interest when it comes to the relationship between emotions and language.

{ What is love? Discourse about emotions and social sciences | PDF | Continue reading }

artwork { Ingres, La Grande Odalisque, 1814 }

Light swearing at the start or end of a persuasive speech can help influence an audience.

The problem is that we run the risk of losing credibility and appearing unprofessional.

To see whether swearing can help change attitudes, Scherer and Sagarin (2006) divided 88 participants into three groups to watch one of three slightly different speeches. The only difference between the speeches was that one contained a mild swear word at the start: “…lowering of tuition is not only a great idea, but damn it, also the most reasonable one for all parties involved.” The second speech contained the ‘damn it’ at the end and the third had neither.

When participants’ attitudes were measured, they were most influenced by the speeches with the mild obscenity included, either at the beginning or the end.

{ PsyBlog | Continue reading }

Is expressing thanks a powerful motivator or just a social nicety?

According to positive psychologists, saying ‘thank you’ is no longer just good manners, it is also beneficial to the self.

Studies have suggested that being grateful can improve well-being, physical health, can strengthen social relationships, produce positive emotional states and help us cope with stressful times in our lives.

{ PsyBlog | Continue reading }

artwork { Roy Lichtenstein, Grrrrrrrrrrr, 1965 }

Speakers with a foreign accent are perceived as less believable than native speakers. A new study shows this isn’t just because of prejudice towards ‘outsiders’. It also has to do with the fluency effect, one manifestation of which is our tendency to assume that how easily a message is processed is a mark of its truthfulness. The effort required to understand an accented utterance means that the same fact is judged as less credible when uttered by an accented speaker, compared with a native speaker. This remains true even if the accented speaker is merely passing on a message from a native speaker.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

photo { Christophe Kutner }

A new meta-analysis study reveals falling in love can elicit not only the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine, but also affects intellectual areas of the brain. Researchers also found falling in love only takes about a fifth of a second.

Results from Ortigue’s team revealed when a person falls in love, 12 areas of the brain work in tandem to release euphoria-inducing chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and vasopression. The love feeling also affects sophisticated cognitive functions, such as mental representation, metaphors and body image. (…)

The findings have major implications for neuroscience and mental health research because when love doesn’t work out, it can be a significant cause of emotional stress and depression. “It’s another probe into the brain and into the mind of a patient,” says Ortigue. “By understanding why they fall in love and why they are so heartbroken, they can use new therapies.” By identifying the parts of the brain stimulated by love, doctors and therapists can better understand the pains of love-sick patients.

The study also shows different parts of the brain fall for love. For example, unconditional love, such as that between a mother and a child, is sparked by the common and different brain areas, including the middle of the brain. Passionate love is sparked by the reward part of the brain, and also associative cognitive brain areas that have higher-order cognitive functions, such as body image.

{ ScienceDaily | Continue reading }

photo { Chris Verene }

Behavioral studies suggest that thinking about revenge stimulates the brain but that following through doesn’t improve mood.

Most of us have revenge fantasies, human behavior researchers say, and nearly everyone believes that punishing someone who did him wrong would feel tremendously satisfying. But new studies suggest the reality of revenge is far different. Acting on vengeful thoughts often isn’t nearly as gratifying as expected and — surprisingly — can even make people feel worse.

Still, the delicious pleasure anticipated from taking revenge is such a powerful drive that it appears to be hard-wired in the brain.

{ Chicago Tribune | Continue reading }

photo { SW▲MPY }

How much do you confide in friends?

In the United States, friends often share intimate details of their lives and problems, but in Japan this degree of self-disclosure between friends is much less common. A new study published in Psychological Science by an American researcher living in Japan suggests that this difference may be due to distinct social systems, in particular the extent to which there are opportunities to make new friends in each culture.

{ APS | Continue reading }

{ The country’s first abortion ban based on the belief in fetal pain took effect this week in Nebraska. | Images: Illustrated Birth Control Manual, 1957 }

{ Passive aggressive notes }

Humans are a social species, we interact with other people – aided by language- and exchange information on daily basis. The effects of social isolation have been demonstrated and predicted to be very severe and “de-humanising” in many cases with a long list of adverse effects on cognitive abilities and emotional stability. The question often posed when considering this feature of mankind is whether it is an adaptation to the presence of others in our environment, a simple product of proximity; or it is a function developmentally wired into our genes and is ,thus, needed for proper growth and development. The latter also would imply the evolutionary advantage of cooperation and living in a group.

In a recent study, researchers tackled the question of whether we are genetically wired to be social, and they did so by finding one of the most controlled environments in human developmental studies, and chose the ideal subjects for most genetic questions. Twins in utero! (…)

The intentional nature of movements directed towards the other twin is an important observation from this study; it suggests that we are , in fact, genetically wired to be social.

{ Glial Dance | Continue reading }

For more than three decades evolutionary psychologists have advanced a simple theory of human sexuality: because men invest less reproductive effort in sperm than women do in eggs, men’s and women’s brains have been shaped differently by evolution. As a result, men are eager for sex whereas women are relatively choosy. But a steady stream of recent evidence suggests this paradigm could be in need of a makeover.



”The science is now getting to a point where there is good data to question some of the assumptions of evolutionary psychology,” says social psychologist Wendy Wood of the University of Southern California (U.S.C.).
 (…)

The proportion of mating effort dedicated to short-term mating was the same for men and women. Similarly, both men and women showed an equivalent tendency to lower their standards for sex partners, and men did not report feeling constrained to have far fewer sexual partners than they truly desired.

“I’d certainly accepted the idea that men pursue purely sexual relationships with greater fervor than women do,” says Paul Eastwick of the Texas A&M University in College Station. “This is the first time I’ve seen data that makes me think, ‘Hmm, I wonder if that sex difference isn’t so robust.’” (…)

Surveys have indeed found that in the U.S. and several other industrialized countries more men than women express greater concern with sexual infidelity than with emotional infidelity (falling in love with someone else). But another recent study suggests jealousy patterns could have something to do with glitches in people’s ability to form secure relationships.

{ Scientific American | Continue reading }

Researcher Soraya Mehdizadeh (2010) proposes that sites like Facebook and MySpace have contributed to the rise of narcissistic tendencies. (…)

She defines narcissists as individuals who seek superficial relationships with high status individuals who can contribute to public glory (2010: 358). Online social networking sites encourage these sorts of relationships:

First, this setting offers a gateway for hundreds of shallow relationships (i.e., virtual friends), and emotionally detached communication (i.e., wall posts, comments). While these sites do indeed serve a communicative purpose among friends, colleagues, and family, other registered users can initiate requests to be friends, and one’s social network often snowballs rapidly across institutions in this fashion.

One way this sort of relationship is achieved is through the presentation of an attractive self—the user must reveal something that encourages the connection.

This connection may be emotionally appealing (e.g., a shared history: attending the same high school or college) or physically appealing (e.g., an enticing photo, a pleasant demeanor).

The latter seems particularly important once the user moves past first tier connections and begins to add connections from the second tier (i.e., friend of a friend) and beyond. According to Mehdizadeh, this opens the door for a showing of the “hoped for possible self,” which “emphasizes realistic socially desirable identities an individual would like to establish given the right circumstances.”

{ Anthropology in Practice | Continue reading }

photo { Milos Gazdic }

{ 1. Monica Cook | 2. Claudia Hirsch }