Psychoworld.sk – human psychology news

Forget fearing old age, it seems as women grow older those on lower incomes are more likely to fear the threat of violence, a Queensland University of Technology nationwide study has found.

QUT Associate Professor Jan Lovie-Kitchin, from the Faculty of Health, said the study looked at older women’s perceptions of vulnerability and their expressed need to learn to protect themselves against violence.

Professor Lovie-Kitchin said being able to live free of fear and with the confidence to participate in social life beyond the home was an important part of improving the quality of life for older women.

“Fear of violence needs to be recognised as a barrier to older people’s social connectedness and the health and wellbeing of older women specifically.”

“Older women might experience feelings of exposure to danger because of their smaller size and lesser strength,” she said. “But they could also feel vulnerable because of their limited finances and lack of knowledge which might force them to depend on people they don’t necessarily trust. Read more about the study.

Active Aging. Older People And Fear. Social Connections Of Seniors. Problems Of Old People. Women And Violence.

Craving Desire For Food Eating and Psychology Craving And Psychology Calories Craving Food Temptation And Psychology Desires For Food

The term “craving” hardly does justice to that four-alarm fire raging in your brain. Must….have….warm brownie still gooey in the middle. Must….eat…. entire container of Super Fudge Chunk. Can’t…stop…scarfing down chocolate kisses.

It seems like there’s nothing to do but either fight off the cravings or give in to them. Mostly, we give in, figuring it’s hopeless—a simple biological fact of life.

But research from the University College of London shows that the yen for chocolate and other tasty treats may be an acquired habit. In humans, hunger and eating are strongly influenced by context.

Psychologist Leigh Gibson, a professor at the university’s Health Behavior Unit who studies appetite and food choice, rounded up several dozen student volunteers to find out whether people could be “trained” out of their cravings. Here are the very surprising results of the study.

Will you take a look or a brownie?

Craving Desire For Food Eating and Psychology Craving And Psychology Calories Craving Food Temptation And Psychology Desires For Food

avoiding anger, coping with anger, denying anger, how to avoid anger, how to deny anger, understanding anger, out of control, loose nervs, loosing nervs, getting angry, getting nervous

We experience anger when we feel frustrated about something we can’t have and/or when we feel we have been treated unfairly or unjustly. It is a natural normal human emotion that can arise from others (when we are treated unfairly) or from ourselves (with unmet or unrealistic expectations).

WHAT IS ANGER?

Anger is an energy system that mobilizes us for self-protection. If it is expressed adequately, it helps us survive and stand up for ourselves and our rights.

Yet, some people either have no anger, are afraid of it, see it as evil and/or have repressed it to a point where it is not useful to them.

Those people have a problem I call “anger avoidance.” At all costs, they try to avoid their anger and the anger of others.

People with anger avoidance vary in their intensity of distancing themselves from their anger or the anger of others.

People who disown or are frightened of their anger or the anger of others are also highly susceptible to depression and physical symptoms. In the earlier years of psychology, many psychologists, especially psychoanalytic theorists, believed depression was primarily repressed (or disowned) anger.

If you don´t think you need a professional counseling right now, feel free to look at some ideas, which might be helpful here.

My personal advise for you however is: do not over- neither under- estimate your anger.

avoiding anger, coping with anger, denying anger, how to avoid anger, how to deny anger, understanding anger, out of control, loose nervs, loosing nervs, getting angry, getting nervous

People who experience emotional ambivalence — simultaneously feeling positive and negative emotions — are more creative than those who feel just happy or sad, or lack emotion at all, according to a new study.

That’s because people who feel mixed emotions interpret the experience as a signal that they are in an unusual environment and thus respond to it by drawing upon their creative thinking abilities, said Christina Ting Fong, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Business School.

This increased sensitivity for recognizing unusual associations, which happy or sad workers probably couldn’t detect, is what leads to creativity in the workplace, she added. “Due to the complexity of many organizations, workplace experiences often elicit mixed emotions from employees, and it’s often assumed that mixed emotions are bad for workers and companies,” said Fong, whose study appears in the October issue of the Academy of Management Journal.

“Rather than assuming ambivalence will lead to negative results for the organization, managers should recognize that emotional ambivalence can have positive consequences that can be leveraged for organizational success.” Read more.

Money and happiness. Buying happiness. Don´t worry – be happy – buy it! Money and happiness. Buying happiness. Don´t worry – be happy – buy it!

The old saying “money can’t buy happiness” has been proved wrong by researchers at The University of Nottingham. A study into lottery jackpot winners – those who have won more than £1 million – found that a resounding 97 per cent of interviewees were just as happy, if not happier, following their big win.

And it seems that money can even buy you love. Although 15 per cent of winners classed themselves as single in their previous lives, this dropped to 12 per cent post-win. Marriage is also on the cards for many winners – 68 per cent of respondents were married pre-win, jumping to 74 per cent afterwards.

Winners and non-winners completed a questionnaire designed as the ultimate happiness test, and their answers were compared. A Satisfaction with Life scale was used to determine subjective well-being; with respondents asked to rate how much they agreed or disagreed with statements such as “In most ways my life is close to ideal.” Marital status, health, type of house and typical holiday destination were also noted, measuring how lifestyles changed following a big win.

Just three per cent of the winners polled said they were less happy than before they hit the jackpot, citing new pressures in their lives. None missed working, found that the money caused arguments in their households or that it led to separation from their partners. Read more.

Money and happiness. Buying happiness. Don´t worry – be happy – buy it! Money and happiness. Buying happiness. Don´t worry – be happy – buy it!

Psychology and human relations. Human relationships. Love and illness. Illness and Psychology.

To the long list of things to consider when choosing a mate, there is now evidence suggesting that your spouse’s personality can have a major influence on your own ability to recover from – and perhaps even survive – a major challenge to your health.

The study involved 111 and their spouses. The researchers assessed aspects of personality, symptoms of depression, and the marital satisfaction of 111 coronary artery bypass patients and their spouses prior to, and 18 months following, surgery.

The main finding was that within couples, the personality of one person predicted the depression level of their partner 18 months later. The results were published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The research demonstrated that a patient married to a generally neurotic and anxious spouse was more likely to report symptoms of depression 18 months after surgery.

The study also focused on how the spouses of patients coped over the course of the study. More here.

Psychology and human relations. Human relationships. Love and illness. Illness and Psychology.

By Jeremy Dean, of PsyBlog. Human psychology

“Is psychology a coherent scientific discipline and can its existence be effectively defined?” Henriques (2004:1218).

Neither defining terms, nor unity of knowledge have ever been strong points of psychological science. Many psychologists, faced with bringing order to psychology’s diversity, or even offering a definition of psychology, have excused themselves and gone for a lie down.

Gregg Henriques’ (2004) ‘Psychology Defined’ spearheads a bold move to both unify and define the discipline. Henriques (2004) argues that psychology’s epistemological fissures can be healed by accepting that psychology has two main subject matters: psychological formalism and human psychology.

Psychological formalism is the science of mind and includes the cognitive, behavioural and neuro- sciences. Henriques thinks ‘mind’ can be conceptualized as the set of ‘mental behaviours’ in a manner that unites and bridges the schisms between the behavioural and cognitive sciences.

Human psychology is a sub-discipline of psychological formalism essentially dealing with how humans differ from other animals. To explain the separation, Henriques puts forward the ‘Justification Hypothesis’, which holds that humans are marked out from other animals by a capacity to justify their own behaviour. Read more here.

Human psychology Psychological formalism Humans Animals Human psychology Psychological formalism Humans Animals Human psychology Psychological formalism

For those who particularly admire psychology’s furtive manner, neuroscience’s focus on direct measurement of our mental hardware might seem crude and ordinary, at least in comparison to the artful techniques of experimental psychology.

What can neuroscience add, beyond telling us that cognition happens in the brain? One answer to that question comes from a study by Vogel and Machizawa on a topic of perennial debate: the question of how much information people can hold in their short-term ‘working’ memory.

In just three pages, the authors describe how they were able to use electroencephalography (EEG) to identify waves of electrical activity on the surface of the brain that predicted how much visual information someone could hold in their working memory.

Subjects first donned an elastic electrode cap, and were then asked to remember just one side (either the left or right) of a display of coloured squares. After a one second delay, subjects were asked to judge whether a second display was the same as or different from the first display.

See the results of the study here.

This study exemplifies how an intelligent fusion of methods from both psychology and neuroscience can help to address questions of central importance – even those that have been hotly debated for nearly a century, such as this one.
Breastfeeding Does Not Make Baby More Intelligent

A link between breastfeeding and higher IQ was first spotted in 1929, and has been a controversial subject ever since, says Geoff Der, lead researcher. He said that not only do breastfed children generally perform better on intelligence tests, but they also tend to come from more advantaged backgrounds.

Breastfed babies are more intelligent because a higher percentage of highly educated mothers tend to breastfeed, say researchers from the Medical Research Council (UK) and the University of Edinburgh.

A higher percentage of breastfed babies are brought up in a mentally stimulating environment. You can read about this study in the British Medical Journal.

Benefits of the breastfeeding for the baby:
– Babies who are breastfed have better stabilized blood sugar levels
– Breastfed babies are less likely to have diarrhea
– Breastfed babies are less likely to have respiratory infections
– Studies have also indicated that breastfed babies are less likely to develop hypertension (high blood pressure) and obesity later in life
– Breastfed babies have fewer illnesses. The mother’s milk provides the infant with antibodies. 80% of breast milk cells kill bacteria, fungi and viruses (they are macrophages)

Breastfeeding benefits for mother

– It is less complicated. No bottles to organize, no formula to mix
– It helps the mother get back to her normal weight
– It helps get the uterus back to its normal size more quickly
– Breastfeeding often suppresses ovulation. This makes it less likely that the mother will get pregnant
– Breastfeeding is cheaper than bottle-feeding

Effect of breast feeding on intelligence in children: prospective study, sibling pairs analysis, and meta-analysisGeoff Der, G David Batty, Ian J DearyBMJ, doi:10.1136/bmj.38978.699583.55 (published 4 October 2006) Click here to view abstract online

Written by: Christian Nordqvist
Editor: Medical News Today

Compulsive buying is not just a problem that some women have – it seems that men are just as likely to suffer from it, say researchers from Stanford University, USA. About 5% of adults in the USA say they cannot refrain from shopping for stuff they probably don’t want or need.

The traditional view of women suffering from compulsive buying is probably the result of most studies being done mainly on women. Women are also more likely to admit to compulsive shopping than men.

You can read about this new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Surprisingly, more people from lower incomes suffer from compulsive shopping than people from higher incomes. More here.