news 2012

The saying "fools rush in" may be true when it comes to sex and relationships, especially for women, according to a new Cornell study. Women who have sex early in a relationship are more likely to be dissatisfied later with the quality of the relationship, because sex may have greater symbolic value for women as an indicator of the relationship commitment than it does for men, the study suggests.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. Researchers report that changes in social well-being are closely tied to one's personality, with positive changes in one corresponding to similar changes in the other. Their study reveals potential new mechanisms that can help individuals thrive as they age. Their findings appear in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Stanford Report, December 11, 2012 Using brain-monitoring technology, Stanford psychology researchers have discovered that infant brains respond to faces in much the same way as adult brains do, even while the rest of their visual system lags behind. By Max McClure Any mother will tell you that infants love staring at faces.

Fear, anger, insecurity, and boredom in schools can cripple a classroom and obstruct learning completely. A new approach to teaching emotional intelligence developed by Yale University researchers improved relationships between teachers and students, and led to greater independence and engagement in learning among students, according to a new study published in the November issue of the journal Prevention Science.

Teens who date and are sexually active are known to be at elevated risk for depression, but why those associations exist is poorly understood. Now a new Cornell study has found that casual sexual "hookups" increased a teenager's odds for clinical-level depression nearly threefold, whereas dating and sexual activity within a committed relationship had no significant impact.

" Scientists have discovered a cognitive biomarker - a biological indicator of a disease - for young adolescents who are at high risk of developing depression and anxiety. Their The test for the unique cognitive biomarker, which can be done on a computer, could be used as an inexpensive tool to screen adolescents for common emotional mental illnesses.

: Ken Walters / 412-268-1151 / walters1 [a] andrew.cmu (p) edu Shilo Rea / 412-268-6094 / shilo [a] cmu (p) edu PITTSBURGH-When perceiving they have more control over their personal information, people increase their willingness to disclose sensitive information that allows them to be personally identified, according to a study done by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

One of the most important health problems in the United States is the failure of patients with chronic diseases to take their medications and do all that is necessary to control their illnesses. In a study published in the current Journal of General Internal Medicine, UCLA researchers and their colleagues suggest that physicians take a serious look at tools and strategies used in behavioral economics and social psychology to help motivate their patients to assert better control over chronic diseases.

You probably know it as Monday-morning quarterbacking or 20/20 hindsight: failures often look obvious and predictable after the fact-whether it's an interception thrown by a quarterback under pressure, a surgeon's mistake, a slow response to a natural disaster, or friendly fire in the fog of war. In legal settings, this tendency to underestimate the challenges faced by someone else-called hindsight bias-can lead to unfair judgments, punishing people who made an honest, unavoidable mistake.

Older people who embrace positive stereotypes about aging are more likely than those who hold negative stereotypes to recover after suffering from disability, a new study by the Yale School of Public Health has found. The study appears in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Lead researcher Becca R. Levy and Yale colleagues showed that, of two groups with differing views of aging, the individuals in the positive age stereotype group were 44 percent more likely to recover from a severe disability.

The first in-depth investigation of whether youthful happiness leads to greater wealth in later life reveals that, even allowing for other influences, happy adolescents are likely to earn more money as adults. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve (UCL Political Science) and Andrew Oswald (University of Warwick) analysed data from 15,000 adolescents and young adults in the USA, finding that those who report higher 'positive affect', which is a technical measure of happiness, or higher 'life satisfaction' grow up to earn significantly higher levels of income later in life.

A survey of 755 Aboriginal people in four Victorian localities has found they experience extraordinarily high levels of racism, with at least 97 per cent having been targets of verbal or physical abuse, or discriminatory behaviour in the past 12 months. The survey by the University of Melbourne, VicHealth, Lowitja Institute, and beyondblue, announced at Congress Lowitja 2012 in Melbourne this week, found up to 70 per cent of those surveyed had been targets of eight or more racist incidents during the past year.

In the quest to memorize information, from a mundane grocery list to a sure-bet investment tip, people have devised all kinds of ways to help themselves recall information when they need it. Now, a team of University of Alberta psychology researchers is looking at a memory aid that dates back to the days of Socrates and putting the technique to a modern-day test.

Children whose mothers were overly stressed during pregnancy are more likely to become victims of bullying at school. New research from the University of Warwick shows stress and mental health problems in pregnant women may affect the developing baby and directly increases the risk of the child being victimised in later life.

Juvenile offenders have impairments in emotional learning and punitive measures to control their behaviour are unlikely to be effective, new research by a team from the University suggests. Led by Stephanie van Goozen of the School of Psychology and Simon Moore from the School of Dentistry, the team set out to establish whether a lack of fear was linked to juvenile offending, and if rates of criminal offending were linked to the severity of this emotional learning impairment.

Psychologists have found that the use of harsh punishment in childhood increases the risk of disease in later life. They say the link could be caused because harsh punishment causes stress, and theincreased stress levels in childhood then cause biological changes that increase the risk of disease in later life.

Have you ever experienced the feelings of itchiness while watching someone else scratch? Scientists University of Sussex and the University of Hull have found the part of the brain responsible for 'contagious' itching - and discovered why some people are more prone to it than others. Psychology lecturer Henning Holle and fellow researchers from the University of Sussex and Brighton and Sussex Medical School wanted to determine why some people are particularly vulnerable to itchiness when they see others scratching.

How people experience time may be affected by the way that they perceive cause and effect, new research by the University has shown. Marc Buehner of the School of Psychology examined how causal belief - understanding that one thing leads to another (for example flicking a switch and a light coming on) - influences time perception.

British women's obsession for thin bodies could potentially be changed if advertising showed more plus size models, suggests a new preliminary study. The Durham University researchers, who studied over 100 women, provide evidence to back calls for models in adverts to be more representative of the actual population.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. Liberals and conservatives who are polarized on certain politically charged subjects become more moderate when reading political arguments in a difficult-to-read font, researchers report in a new study. Likewise, people with induced bias for or against a defendant in a mock trial are less likely to act on that bias if they have to struggle to read the evidence against him.