Science of the SpiritS


Family

Toddlers regulate behavior to avoid making adults angry

Molly McElroy
University of Washington
Tue, 07 Oct 2014 23:00 UTC
Baby
© Compassionate Sleep Solutions
When kids say "the darnedest things," it's often in response to something they heard or saw. This sponge-like learning starts at birth, as infants begin to decipher the social world surrounding them long before they can speak.

Now researchers at the University of Washington have found that children as young as 15 months can detect anger when watching other people's social interactions and then use that emotional information to guide their own behavior.

The study, published in the October/November issue of the journal Cognitive Development, is the first evidence that younger toddlers are capable of using multiple cues from emotions and vision to understand the motivations of the people around them.

"At 15 months of age, children are trying to understand their social world and how people will react," said lead author Betty Repacholi, a faculty researcher at UW's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences and an associate professor of psychology. "In this study we found that toddlers who aren't yet speaking can use visual and social cues to understand other people - that's sophisticated cognitive skills for 15-month-olds."
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People

Supervisors' abuse, regardless of intent, can make employees behave poorly


EurekAlert!
Wed, 08 Oct 2014 10:00 UTC
So-called motivational abuse is seen as a violation and leads to behavioral backlash

Boss yelling
© Bigstockphoto
Employees who are verbally abused by supervisors are more likely to "act out" at work, doing everything from taking a too-long lunch break to stealing, according to a new study led by a San Francisco State University organizational psychologist.

Even if the abuse is meant to be motivational -- like when a football coach berates his team or a drill sergeant shames her cadets -- the abused employees are still more likely to engage in counter-productive work behaviors, said Kevin Eschleman, assistant professor of psychology at SF State.

The fallout from this abuse is not limited to the supervisor and employee and can in fact affect an entire company if it leads to lost work time or theft, Eschleman warned. "We didn't just focus on how these workers felt or whether they started to dislike their jobs more. We looked at consequences that actually affect the bottom line of an organization," he said.
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Info

First hint of 'life after death' in biggest ever scientific study

Sarah Knapton
The Telegraph, UK
Tue, 07 Oct 2014 22:50 UTC
Southampton University scientists have found evidence that awareness can continue for at least several minutes after clinical death which was previously thought impossible.
Life After Death
© Shaun Wilkinson/Alamy
Some cardiac arrest patients recalled seeing a bright light; a golden flash or the Sun shining.
Death is a depressingly inevitable consequence of life, but now scientists believe they may have found some light at the end of the tunnel.

The largest ever medical study into near-death and out-of-body experiences has discovered that some awareness may continue even after the brain has shut down completely.

It is a controversial subject which has, until recently, been treated with widespread scepticism.

But scientists at the University of Southampton have spent four years examining more than 2,000 people who suffered cardiac arrests at 15 hospitals in the UK, US and Austria.

And they found that nearly 40 per cent of people who survived described some kind of 'awareness' during the time when they were clinically dead before their hearts were restarted.

One man even recalled leaving his body entirely and watching his resuscitation from the corner of the room.

Despite being unconscious and 'dead' for three minutes, the 57-year-old social worker from Southampton, recounted the actions of the nursing staff in detail and described the sound of the machines.
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Magnify

Life After Death? This is what people experience as the brain shuts down

Jeremy Dean
PsyBlog
Tue, 07 Oct 2014 12:12 UTC
What people see, feel and experience, in the minutes after cardiac arrest and before they are brought back to life.

Eyes Shut
© Hasibul Haque Sakib
The largest ever study into near-death and out-of-body experiences has found that 40% of people have some 'awareness', even after they are considered clinically dead.

Fifteen hospitals in the US, UK and Australia took part in the four-year study.

Over 2,000 people were included in the research, all of whom had suffered cardiac arrest (Parnia et al., 2014).

Of those people, 330 survived and were asked afterwards what they had experienced.

Amongst the survivors, 140 said they had some kind of awareness or experience while they were before they were brought back to life.

Comment: See more articles on the topic of near-death experiences (or NDE):

World's Largest-ever Study Of Near-Death Experiences

Near-Death Experiences Explained by Science

Near-Death Researcher Believes the Mind Survives Death

Brain Wave Surge Explains Near-Death Experiences

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Books

Academic Achievement: You inherit more than just intelligence from your parents

Jeremy Dean
PsyBlog
Tue, 07 Oct 2014 10:00 UTC
Why the heritability of educational achievement is about much more than just intelligence.

Classroom
© theirhistory
The heritability of academic ability isn't just down to intelligence, but a whole range of factors, according to new genetic research.

The study of 13,306 twins found that while intelligence was the most heritable trait, a number of cognitive and behavioural factors predicted academic achievement (Kraphol et al., 2014).

Exam grades were also affected by personality, well-being, self-efficacy (confidence in your own abilities) and behaviour problems.

Behaviour problems, self-efficacy and personality aren't just down to the environment: they are also partly inherited.

Overall, the study found that 62% of differences between children on their exam results at around 16-years-old could be explained by heritable traits.
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People

Trying to share our 'epic' moments may leave us feeling left out


EurekAlert!
Mon, 06 Oct 2014 10:00 UTC
Kilimanjaro
© GoTripTv.com/William ParkerMan climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro
We might love to reminisce and tell others about our extraordinary experiences - that time we climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, got to taste a rare wine, or ran into a celebrity on the street - but new research suggests that sharing these extraordinary experiences may come at a social cost. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

"Extraordinary experiences are pleasurable in the moment but can leave us socially worse off in the long run," says psychological scientist and study author Gus Cooney of Harvard University. "The participants in our study mistakenly thought that having an extraordinary experience would make them the star of the conversation. But they were wrong, because to be extraordinary is to be different than other people, and social interaction is grounded in similarities."

Cooney, who conducted the research with co-authors Daniel T. Gilbert of Harvard University and Timothy D. Wilson of the University of Virginia, was interested in exploring the downstream consequences of extraordinary experiences based on his own encounters with others:

"We all appreciate experiences that are fine and rare, and when we get what we want, we're always eager to tell our friends. But I've noticed that conversations always seem to thrive on more ordinary topics," Cooney explains. "This made me wonder if there might be times when extraordinary experiences have more costs than benefits, and whether people know what those times are."
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Attention

The Power of Charisma-- It can actually inhibit higher brain function in "believers"

Rob Kall
OpedNews
Sun, 05 Oct 2014 10:54 UTC
This article is an outgrowth of my continuing interest in the ties between psychopathy, authoritarianism, domination, hierarchy, patriarchy and top-down power
Religious Speaker
© State Library and Archives of FloridaSpeaker at a Pentecostal revival - Tallahassee.
If a fundamentalist religious person even thinks another person is a charismatic leader or healer, he or she inhibits his pre-frontal cortex-- the executive, higher level thinking part of the brain.

That's what I take from a study titled The power of charisma--perceived charisma inhibits the frontal executive network of believers in intercessory prayer.

A religious person, anticipating a person who has a reputation as a charismatic-- a trait usually held by smarter, more successful psychopaths, psychopaths and narcissists-- literally shuts down his or her highest brain functions in the charismatic's presence. (Certainly not all charismatic people are charismatic, but it is a common trait of high functioning psychopaths and narcissists.)

That doesn't happen in the brains of non-believers.

Let's talk about the etymology and meanings of Charisma and Charismatics. The word charisma is derived from the Greek word charismata, which means "a gift of grace.
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Book

How learning Russian can make you better at math

Sonali Kohli
Quartz
Sat, 04 Oct 2014 20:10 UTC
Classroom Math
© AP Photo/LM OteroChekov makes you better at calculus
At first glance, Russian seems to have no more connection to mathematics than any other language. But Barbara Oakley, author of the book A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If
 You Flunked Algebra), says it was learning Russian that helped her finally grasp math at age 26 - and eventually become an electrical engineer and education author.

Oakley wrote a piece for Nautilus explaining how, after a childhood of flunking through math classes, she was finally able to grasp and retain the skill. With Newton's second law of f =ma, for example:
I practiced feeling what each of the letters meant - f for force was a push, m for mass was a kind of weighty resistance to my push, and a was the exhilarating feeling of acceleration. (The equivalent in Russian was learning to physically sound out the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet.) I memorized the equation so I could carry it around with me in my head and play with it. If m and a were big numbers, what did that do to f when I pushed it through the equation? If f was big and a was small, what did that do to m? How did the units match on each side? Playing with the equation was like conjugating a verb.
The trick was to approach math the way she had approached Russian: she memorized an equation the way she had memorized Russian verbs, and then tested them in every possible - and impossible - tense and conjugation. With equations, she tested what happens when you change the values in different scenarios.
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Snakes in Suits

New study reveals: Power can corrupt even the honest


phys.org
Wed, 01 Oct 2014 13:49 UTC
When appointing a new leader, selectors base their choice on several factors and typically look for leaders with desirable characteristics such as honesty and trustworthiness. However once leaders are in power, can we trust them to exercise it in a prosocial manner?

New research published in The Leadership Quarterly looked to discover whether power corrupts leaders. Study author John Antonakis and his colleagues from the University of Lausanne explain, "We looked to examine what Lord Acton said over 100 years ago, that 'Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'"

To investigate this the authors used experimental methods to distinguish between the situational and individual component; and determine if power corrupts or if corrupt individuals are drawn to power.

Comment: No discussion about 'leaders in power' would be complete without an understanding of the vital issue of psychopathy.

To understand the ramifications of psychopaths wielding power in society, check out the book "Political Ponerology".

"Political Ponerology is a study of the founders and supporters of oppressive political regimes. Lobaczewski's approach analyzes the common factors that lead to the propagation of man's inhumanity to man. Morality and humanism cannot long withstand the predations of this evil. Knowledge of its nature and its insidious effect on both individuals and groups - is the only antidote."

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Black Cat 2

Study suggests neurobiological basis of human-pet relationship

Noah Brown
Massachusetts General Hospital
Sat, 04 Oct 2014 22:51 UTC
fMRI identifies differences in response of mothers' brains to images of their child and their dog
Image
It has become common for people who have pets to refer to themselves as "pet parents," but how closely does the relationship between people and their non-human companions mirror the parent-child relationship? A small study from a group of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers makes a contribution to answering this complex question by investigating differences in how important brain structures are activated when women view images of their children and of their own dogs. Their report is being published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

"Pets hold a special place in many people's hearts and lives, and there is compelling evidence from clinical and laboratory studies that interacting with pets can be beneficial to the physical, social and emotional wellbeing of humans," says Lori Palley, DVM, of the MGH Center for Comparative Medicine, co-lead author of the report. "Several previous studies have found that levels of neurohormones like oxytocin - which is involved in pair-bonding and maternal attachment - rise after interaction with pets, and new brain imaging technologies are helping us begin to understand the neurobiological basis of the relationship, which is exciting."
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