Science of the SpiritS


People

Empathy and age: Middle-aged most likely to feel your pain

Diane Swanbrow
University of Michigan
Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:23 UTC
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© Unknown
According to a new study of more than 75,000 adults, women in that age group are more empathic than men of the same age and than younger or older people.

"Overall, late middle-aged adults were higher in both of the aspects of empathy that we measured," says Sara Konrath, co-author of an article on age and empathy forthcoming in the Journals of Gerontology: Psychological and Social Sciences.

"They reported that they were more likely to react emotionally to the experiences of others, and they were also more likely to try to understand how things looked from the perspective of others."

For the study, researchers Ed O'Brien, Konrath and Linda Hagen at the University of Michigan and Daniel Grühn at North Carolina State University analyzed data on empathy from three separate large samples of American adults, two of which were taken from the nationally representative General Social Survey.

They found consistent evidence of an inverted U-shaped pattern of empathy across the adult life span, with younger and older adults reporting less empathy and middle-aged adults reporting more.

According to O'Brien, this pattern may result because increasing levels of cognitive abilities and experience improve emotional functioning during the first part of the adult life span, while cognitive declines diminish emotional functioning in the second half.
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Black Magic

Faux psychology damage control: Is suicide contagious?

Larry O'Hanlon
Discovery News
Wed, 30 Jan 2013 08:50 UTC
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© Corbis Rows of military graves at the National Cemetery. Rates of suicide have gone up in the military.
Suicide is not a contagion, but it can sometimes spread like one, particularly with the help of the media, relationships and genes.

On Jan. 14, Department of Defense officials acknowledged that during 2012, service members committed suicide at a record pace as more than 349 people took their own lives across all of the military's four branches.

News of suicides, like these reports of suicides in the armed forces, can actually prompt people who are already emotionally vulnerable and mentally ill, to consider suicide themselves, say psychologists.

"It tends to facilitate feelings of helplessness and hopelessness," said David Rudd, Dean and professor of psychology at the University of Utah's College of Social and Behavioral Science. "It also facilitates the false idea that suicide is a solution to life's problems."

Media coverage of prominent suicides, in particular, can spark additional suicides because of all the praise that generally is heaped on the deceased, along with highlights of all their life achievements.

That, said Rudd, suggests to vulnerable people that if such an admirable person saw suicide as a good choice, perhaps it really is a good idea and could even enhance a person's significance. It becomes a distorted kind of celebrity endorsement, if you will.

Comment: The author appears to be attempting to divert our attention from the real cause of the increasing military suicides, sexual assaults, alcohol abuse and domestic violence. These are actually a result of repeated tours of duty in the wars of terror. What the PTB does not want is for people to question the obvious effects of a decade of war on the psychological health of soldiers and their families.

Military suicides in 2012 hit yet another record high
More U.S. Soldiers Take Their Own Lives than are Killed in Action

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Info

The brain retroactively edits conscious experience

Tia Ghose
LiveScience
Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:14 UTC
Woamn in Mirror
© stock.xchng
The brain apparently edits a person's conscious experience retroactively.

Up to a half-second after an object disappears from view, the brain can "edit" the experience to retain that object, a new study from France shows. The finding may partly explain the weird feeling of being able to recall something you heard even when you don't consciously remember hearing it.

The finding also contradicts the notion that the brain sequentially takes in sensory information, processes it and then consciously experiences it, said Tufts University cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, whose books include Consciousness Explained.

"You have to get away from the idea that consciousness is like a movie that's playing in your head and that once the processing is done happening then you've got this finished movie that you see." Dennett told LiveScience. "The editing can go on and on."

The results were published online Dec. 13 in the journal Current Biology.
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Magnify

Scientists zoom in on the exact spots in brain that drive addiction


Raw Story
Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:02 UTC
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A smoker's craving to light up can be tamed by carefully targeted magnetic fields applied to the brain, a senior researcher from a Japanese-Canadian team said Wednesday.

Scientists managed to zoom in on the exact spots that drive the need for nicotine, noting that a mental connection made when a smoker is able to have a cigarette markedly increases the desire to spark up.

They found that by interrupting this connection, the addict was better able to control his or her cravings.

"Cabin attendants who smoke say they feel stronger cravings for cigarettes as they approach landing times, no matter whether their flights are long-distance or not," Takuya Hayashi told AFP from Kobe in western Japan.
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Info

Babies start 'mind reading' earlier than thought

Tia Ghose
LiveScience
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 18:01 UTC
Mind Reading
© H. Clark BarrettIn a modified version of the false-beliefs test, even toddlers seem to understand what other people know.
Even babies as young as a year-and-a-half can guess what other people are thinking, new research suggests.

The results, published today (Jan. 29) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: B, come from a study of children spanning the globe, from rural China to the more remote islands of Fiji. Previously, scientists thought this ability to understand other people's perspectives emerged much later in children.

The findings may shed light on the social abilities that differentiate us from our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, said study author H. Clark Barrett, an anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. The study used a form of the false-belief test, one of the few cognitive tasks that young children, but not primates, can do.

Humans are "very good at inferring other people's mental states: their emotions, their desires and, in this case, their knowledge," Barrett said. "So it could play an important role in cultural transmission and social learning."
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Bomb

Scots doctors to help stroke patients 'rewire' their brains by stimulating the vagus nerve

Maureen Ellis
heraldscotland
Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:44 UTC
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Scots doctors are to embark on a pioneering trial of technology similar to that used to manage depression and epilepsy in an attempt to 'rewire' the brains of stroke victims.

Clinical researchers at Glasgow University are aiming to help patients overcome some of the physical disabilities caused by a stroke.

The team from the university's Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences will undertake the world's first in-human trial of vagus nerve stimulation in stroke patients.

Strokes, which affect 280 per 100,000 people in Scotland annually, can result in the loss of brain tissue and negatively affect various bodily functions from speech to movement, depending on the location of the stroke.

The study, which will be carried out at the Western Infirmary in Glasgow, will recruit 20 patients who suffered a stroke around six months ago and who have been left with poor arm function despite receiving the best available treatment.

Each participant will receive three one-hour sessions of intensive physiotherapy each week for six weeks to help improve their arm function.

Half of the group will also receive an implanted Vivistim device, a vagus nerve stimulator, which connects to the vagus nerve in the neck. When they are receiving physiotherapy to help improve their arm, the device will stimulate the nerve.

Comment: Practitioners of the Éiriú Eolas program have been stimulating the vagus nerve in a natural way and reporting its benefits for years. You can also benefit from it at eebreathe.com

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Eye 2

Why your boss could easily be a psychopath

Edward Malnick
The Telegraph
Mon, 28 Jan 2013 16:34 UTC
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© Photo: Warner BrosAmong the examples of these 'triadics' he gives is the fictional Mafia boss Tony Soprano
Troublesome colleagues are likely to harbour a "dark triad" of psychopathic tendencies, Machiavellian cunning and narcissistic selfishness, according to a new study.

If you feel your colleagues are out to get you, it turns out you could be right.

A study of office politics suggests that workplaces are a jungle of awkward personalities vying for domination.

Oliver James, the psychologist and broadcaster, identified three types of dysfunctional personalities among white collar workers: psychopath, Machiavellian, and narcissist.

These are the colleagues who have no compunction about trampling over others, or like nothing more than to plot and scheme, or who drone on endlessly about themselves.

Most terrifyingly, the author concluded that there was fourth dysfunctional type: a "triadic person" who is a combination of all three. Such staff, James warns, have a dangerous, yet effective mix of a lack of empathy, self-centredness, deviousness and self-regard which can propel them to the top of the organisations.
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Gift

Retail therapy doesn't work: People overestimate the happiness new purchases will bring

Amy Norton
Phys.Org
Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:00 UTC
Retail Therapy
People overestimate the happiness new purchases will bring 'Retail therapy' doesn't work for long, even among the most materialistic, study suggests.
They say money can't buy happiness, and a new study suggests that's true for even the most materialistic.

Instead, the study found, these folks seem to be happiest right before they buy a coveted item. Once they have the purchase in hand, their joy fades quickly.

The findings may not be all that surprising, experts say. But the notion that you're a lot happier before a big buy than after - particularly if you're on the more materialistic side - had not been "empirically tested" before, said Brent McFerran, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who was not involved in the new research.

In real life, you might be able to think of times when you've anticipated an important purchase, then felt let down after buying it. But whether you learn from that, and stop putting so much stock in "stuff" is another matter, McFerran said.
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Family

No more "empty nest": Middle-aged adults face pressure on both sides


Oregon State University
Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:39 UTC
The "empty nest" of past generations, in which the kids are grown up and middle-aged adults have more time to themselves, has been replaced in the United States by a nest that's full - kids who can't leave, can't find a job and aging parents who need more help than ever before.

According to a new study by researchers at Oregon State University, what was once a life stage of new freedoms, options and opportunities has largely disappeared.

An economic recession and tough job market has made it hard on young adults to start their careers and families. At the same time, many older people are living longer, which adds new and unanticipated needs that their children often must step up to assist with.

The end result, researchers suggest, are "empty nest" plans that often have to be put on hold, and a mixed bag of emotions, ranging from joy and "happy-to-help" to uncertainty, frustration and exhaustion.

"We mostly found very positive feelings about adults helping their children in the emerging adulthood stage of life, from around ages 18 to 30," said Karen Hooker, director of the OSU Center for Healthy Aging Research.

"Feelings about helping parents weren't so much negative as just filled with more angst and uncertainty," Hooker said. "As a society we still don't socialize people to expect to be taking on a parent-caring role, even though most of us will at some point in our lives. The average middle-aged couple has more parents than children."
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Life Preserver

Meditation for chronic pain relief


Pill Advised
Sat, 26 Jan 2013 11:58 UTC
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People suffering from chronic inflammatory conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and asthma - in which psychological stress plays a major role - may benefit from mindfulness meditation techniques, according to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientists.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction, originally designed for patients with chronic pain, consists of continuously focusing attention on the breath, bodily sensations and mental content while seated, walking or practicing yoga.

A class in stress reduction can be beneficial in many ways, some of which have little to do with mindfulness, according to Melissa Rosenkranz, assistant scientist at the center and lead author on the paper, which was published recently in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity. For example, learning to manage stress by engaging in regular physical activity may be therapeutic.

"We wanted to develop an intervention that was meant to produce positive change and compare the mindfulness approach to an intervention that was structurally equivalent," Rosenkranz says.

The study compared two methods of reducing stress: a mindfulness meditation-based approach, and a program designed to enhance health in ways unrelated to mindfulness.

Comment: Benefit right away from conscious breathing and meditation at eebreathe.com.

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