news 2009

BERKELEY — Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.

The teen years can be a tumultuous time, as many parents know, a time when adolescents begin to flex their mental muscles, testing boundaries and turning to peers rather than parents for advice. Sometimes emotions and arguments can become so intense that things get out of hand and the child runs away.

UCLA researchers and colleagues examined the influence of HIV-positive mothers' parenting skills on their children and found that adolescents in families with higher levels of parental monitoring and frequent, regular routines that brought predictability into their lives had lower rates of aggression, anxiety, depression, binge drinking and other behavioral issues.

November 25, 2009 — Coral Gables — New research suggests that behavioral therapy can provide a safe, effective alternative treatment for anxiety and depression. These programs seem to work as well as-or better than-medication treatments. The University of Miami (UM) is now providing these evidence-based, quality treatments for anxiety and related disorders to the public, at low or no cost.

Cambridge, Mass. October 30, 2009 - A new study from a researcher at Harvard University finds that gay men are most attracted to the most masculine-faced men, while straight men prefer the most feminine-faced women. The research is currently published online in the journal "Archives of Sexual Behavior," and was led by Aaron Glassenberg, while completing his master’s degree in the Department of Psychology at Harvard.

Cambridge, Mass. October 26, 2009 - The rationale behind torture is that pain will make the guilty confess, but a new study by researchers at Harvard University finds that the pain of torture can make even the innocent seem guilty. Participants in the study met a woman suspected of cheating to win money.

The feeling of stigmatization that people living with HIV often experience doesn't only exact a psychological toll — new UCLA research suggests it can also lead to quantifiably negative health outcomes.

A team of UCL researchers say that subliminal messaging is most effective when the message being conveyed is negative. Subliminal images ' in other words, images shown so briefly that the viewer does not consciously 'see' them ' have long been the subject of controversy, particularly in the area of advertising.

Published in PLoS One, the study was led by Fiery Cushman, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, along with Anna Dreber of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard and the Stockholm School of Economics. “Punishing those who’ve caused accidents seems to be something that people do routinely,” says Cushman.

Cambridge, Mass. July 13, 2009 - A new study of the cognitive processes involved with honesty suggests that truthfulness depends more on absence of temptation than active resistance to temptation. Using neuroimaging, psychologists looked at the brain activity of people given the chance to gain money dishonestly by lying and found that honest people showed no additional neural activity when telling the truth, implying that extra cognitive processes were not necessary to choose honesty.

PA 176/09 Rape trial juries need better guidance in the courtroom - and a better understanding of rape victims - to help them reach their verdict. Professor Vanessa Munro of The University of Nottingham and Dr Louise Ellison of the University of Leeds found jurors have a poor understanding of the various ways in which women might react when raped, the levels and types of injuries they might sustain and the different behaviours they might display in the witness box.

Cambridge, Mass. June 16, 2009 - Scientists at Harvard University have shown, for the first time, that intelligence varies among individual monkeys within a species - in this case, the cotton-top tamarin. Testing for broad cognitive ability, the researchers identified high, middle, and low performing monkeys, determined by a general intelligence score.

Cambridge, Mass. May 19, 2009 - Some people say they never forget a face, a claim now bolstered by psychologists at Harvard University who've discovered a group they call "super-recognizers": those who can easily recognize someone they met in passing, even many years later. The new study suggests that skill in facial recognition might vary widely among humans.

PA115/09 University researchers have discovered a new way to tackle the problem of addictions like alcoholism, drug abuse and even over-eating.. after a discovery about the psychology of addictive behaviour. The research has revealed that addictive behaviour is determined by rapid conscious decision processes, rather than by the automatic attention grabbing power of addictive substance, as previously thought.

A study by Professor Richard Eiser, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Sheffield, has shown that computer simulation can indicate why people´s prejudices are resistant to change. The study used computer simulation to look into why negative beliefs and prejudices resist correction.

Linda Gilroy MP will be swapping legislation for a lab coat, when she visits the University of Plymouth on Wednesday 15 April as she joins psychology academic, Jeremy Goslin as part of a unique 'pairing' scheme run by the Royal Society - the UK national academy of science. During her visit, Linda Gilroy MP will get a hands-on insight into the research being conducted at the University.

PA 93/09 Volunteers are needed to help increase our understanding of the social and communication difficulties experienced by people with autism. In the first study of its kind researchers will use video clips of spontaneously produced facial expressions in a real life social context to explore emotion recognition in autism.

Teaching school children about common mental health problems can reduce prejudice and negative attitudes towards mental illness, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Sheffield. The research found that teenagers who received just six lessons on mental health showed significantly more sensitivity and empathy towards people with mental health problems.

Report: 'The response of mental health professionals to clients seeking help to change or redirect same-sex sexual orientation' Researchers from UCL and St George's, University of London have published a report which indicates that a significant minority of psychiatrists and therapists still attempt to help lesbian, gay and bisexual clients become heterosexual, despite a lack of evidence that such treatment is effective or even safe.

A study led by UCL's Tali Sharot published today in the Journal of Neuroscience has found that your brain may know what you prefer before you do. Sharot, a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL, has showed that when people rate options similarly, they will choose the one that causes more activation in the caudate nucleus, a brain region involved in anticipating reward.The study also demonstrated that after a decision is made, caudate nucleus activity increases for the selected option and decreases for the rejected one.