Psychoworld.sk – human psychology news

A study of U.S. high school students provides additional evidence that eating disorders may be contagious.

In a study, researchers found that binging, fasting, diet pill use and other eating disorder symptoms clustered within counties, particularly among female students.

“These findings confirm the strong social influences on female adolescents in the U.S. to be thin, sometimes using unhealthy behaviors to achieve this goal,” the researchers write in the current issue of the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Based on their results, the researchers think it may be more effective to target eating disorder prevention efforts to counties or schools where they are more common, rather than individual students.

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People who are dependent on caffeine tend to score higher on tests of impulsiveness and sensation-seeking than nondependent adults. The same is true of people who use more dangerous drugs than caffeine.

However, unlike other drug users, the caffeine-dependent do not score high on tests of risk-taking, according to a study published in the August issue of APA’s Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology (Vol. 13, No. 3).

The study shows that many adults struggle with a drug some consider to be harmless, says study author Heather Jones, a fifth-year clinical psychology student at the University of Maryland. Where the caffeine dependence may lead? Read more here.