Psychoworld.sk – human psychology news

Given the wealth of evidence that smoking damages your health, you would have to be stupid not to kick the habit. Now a study suggests this could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because smoking reduces your IQ.

Lawrence Whalley at the University of Aberdeen and colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, both in the UK, looked at how the cognitive ability of 465 individuals, approximately half of whom were smokers, changed over their lifetime and whether this related to their smoking habits.

Smokers performed significantly worse in five different cognitive tests than did both former smokers and those who had never smoked. When social and health factors such as education, occupation and alcohol consumption were taken into account, smoking still appeared to contribute to a drop in cognitive function of just under 1%. More here.

Psychologists have launched a study to find out why some people who hear voices in their head consider it a positive experience while others find it distressing.

Although hearing voices has traditionally been viewed as ‘abnormal’ and a symptom of mental illness, the Dutch findings suggest it is more widespread than previously thought, estimating that about 4% of the population hear voices. That would be equivalent to 100,000 people in Greater Manchester.

Researcher Aylish Campbell said: “We know that many members of the general population hear voices but have never felt the need to access mental health services; some experts even claim that more people hear voices and don’t seek psychiatric help than those who do. Continues…

People are becoming addicted to mobile phones, causing them to become stressed and irritable, psychologists say.

Some 16% of examinated students were found to have problem behaviour linked to using their phone – either lying about how much they used them, becoming irritable after using them or being overly pre-occupied with them.

Cancer
“Mobile phones have impacted on every aspect of our social world,” Dr Sheffield will say.
The warnings come after years of debate about whether mobile phones increase the risk of cancer.

Childhood is being lost to a dangerous combination of junk food, marketing and video games, experts warned today.

A group of 110 teachers, psychologists, children’s authors and other experts have written to the Daily Telegraph urging the Government to act, warning children are being poisoned by the modern world.

“They need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed “junk”), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen based entertainment), first hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.

And they need much more than this…

Risk and uncertainty are part of modern life, but why does the possibility of terrorist bombs on aeroplanes, a new generation of nuclear power stations and a flu pandemic trigger public distrust in the powers-that-be?

What can the government do to re-build trust in politicians and scientists?

Risk researchers say the answer lies in emotions, not reason, especially when the perceived risk is related to health, the environment, new technologies and energy.What can the government do to re-build trust in politicians and scientists?

How people handle uncertainties – in relation to topics including unemployment, pensions, GM foods, health care and nuclear power? Read here.

Obesity is not just a problem for the USA, it is not just limited to other developed countries either – it is a problem that has spread throughout the globe, and is now recognised as an insidious killer and the major contributing cause of preventable diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease – according to Professor Paul Zimmet, chairman of the 10th International Congress on Obesity, Sydney, Australia.

Overweight/obesity affects more people on our planet than undernourishment. In other words, there are more fat people in the world than underfed people. Obesity is now the greatest contributor to chronic disease. Not even talking about childhood obesity.

What are the consequences of obesity/overweight?Here are the main ones:

• Coronary heart disease
• Dyslipidemia (high total cholesterol, high levels of triglycerides)
• Gallbladder disease
• Hypertension (high blood pressure)
• Osteoarthritis Sleep apnea and respiratory problems
• Several cancers
• Stroke
• Type 2 diabetes

Mutations in the sperm of older men could be a major contributory factor that leads to a significantly higher risk of having children with autism, say researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA.

They found that men over 40 have a much higher chance of fathering children with autism, compared to men under 30.

In most of the developed world the prevalence of autism among children has more than doubled over the last twenty years from about 18 per 10,000 to 50 per 10,000. Many reasons have been given for this, such as the MMR vaccine, pollution and better diagnosis today.

Perhaps a defective gene(s) is being activated as men get older, he said. Here are some of the researcher´s findings.

A politician can never fib flawlessly because their body language will always give them away, psychologists say.

No amount of coaching or media training can co-ordinate the hand gestures and facial expressions to fully cover up what a person knows not to be true.

The bite of the lip, a movement of the eyebrow or simply where they walk on the ceremonial carpet can betray what a politician really thinks and feels.

Researchers explained how to read the signs at a science meeting in Norwich.

The human brain is hard-wired to be susceptible to supernatural beliefs as a result of tens of thousands of years of evolution, a British psychologist said today.

Religion and other forms of magical thinking continue to thrive, in spite of a lack of evidence and the advance of science, because people are naturally biased to accept a role for the irrational in their daily lives, according to Bruce Hood, Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol.

This evolved credulity suggests that it will be impossible to root out belief in ideas such as creationism and paranormal phenomena, even though they have been refuted by evidence and are held as a matter of faith alone.

People ultimately believe in them for the same reasons as they attach sentimental value to inanimate objects like wedding rings or teddy bears, and recoil from artefacts linked to evil, as if they are pervaded by a physical “essence”. Read more.

When it comes to brainpower they say you either use it or lose it. Now a study in mice suggests that the survival of newly formed adult brain cells depends on the amount of input they receive.

Fred Gage of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, and his colleagues infected genetically engineered mice with a virus that stops new brain cells from producing NMDA receptors – proteins that sit on the surface of brain cells and help them communicate with each other. The virus used infects only newly generated cells, leaving other cells untouched. More here.