New research has found evidence that both men and women are prejudiced towards sexualized women. But only women are willing to endure a cost to themselves to punish a woman who appears to be promiscuous. The findings appear in Evolution and Human Behavior.

Across cultures, women and girls have been subjected to various attempts to control their sexuality. This has included slut shaming, female genital cutting, and honor killings.

The researchers from the University of Warwick wanted to better understand what motivates individuals to suppress female - but not male - sexuality. "If society is to understand and overcome the sexual double standard, interventionists should seek to uncover how men and women vary in their attitudes towards sexualized women," they explained.

In the study, participants played one of three kinds of economic decision-making games. The participants were led to believe they were playing against a female opponent in real-time, but were actually only interacting with computerized responses.

Theories of consciousness range from the purely scientific - that personal consciousness, as we know it, is a mechanism of unique neural connections molded by genetics and experience - to the spiritual, which argue the existence of a non-corporeal component to life: the soul. Still other thinkers - like Roger Penrose - theorize that consciousness and human creativity may require a new science altogether; that, as Penrose and Hameroff (2014) put it, "consciousness results from discrete physical events; such events have always existed in the universe as non-cognitive, proto-conscious events, these acting as part of precise physical laws not yet fully understood."

For the layperson, however, theories raise more questions than they answer, offering little comfort in confronting the essential human questions of "what makes me me?" and, more poignantly, "what happens to to me when I die?" The latter question is arguably the real question of consciousness, as it comes as a result of recognizing the presence of one's own subjective cognition/individual consciousness and the realization that said consciousness erodes and eventually ceases with the end of physical life... or seems to. It's an existential black mirror; the dark side of Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." Without a cohesive understanding of or agreement on the mechanics and laws of consciousness, that question can't be answered. It cannot even be presumed to have an answer awaiting after death, for if death is the absolute negation of consciousness - if you cease to be when you cease to think - then there is no "finding out" after we die: there's just the vacuum of not-being, a state of statelessness.

In the midst of these theories, however, are those that believe in a kind of recycling of consciousness: that individual selves may be reincarnated in new bodies, sometimes retaining scraps of memory - and even physical features - from the lives they lived before. One of the most prominent proponents of that theory was Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist who worked for five decades at the University of Virginia's School of Medicine, where he founded the Division of Perceptual Studies, which studies "phenomena related to consciousness clearly functioning beyond the confines of the physical body, as well as phenomena that are directly suggestive of post-mortem survival of consciousness." Beginning in 1960, Stevenson traveled the world investigating thousands cases of reincarnation, documenting his findings and eventually writing several books on the subject, including his groundbreaking work Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation and the massive, two-volume Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. The book documents 200 different cases of children - often from very remote areas of the world - who had memories and birthmarks that corresponded with those of deceased people whose lives they claimed to have lived before. Some, who claimed to have died violently, had birthmarks or physical defects where the deceased had suffered a mortal injury, while others suffered from phobias relating to their past death.

Theologists, scientists and thought leaders have attempted for centuries to understand the impact that religion can have on human beings; both mentally and physically. And it is commonly accepted around that world that religion and spirituality are among the most important of cultural factors - giving structure and meaning to behaviors, value systems and experiences.

Thus, there is ample reason to believe that faith in a higher power is associated with health, and in a positive way. For example, researchers at the Mayo Clinic concluded, "Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide. Several studies have shown that addressing the spiritual needs of the patient may enhance recovery from illness."

Which is why it is surprising in 2019 that there is still little quantitative research published in peer-reviewed journals exploring the relationship between spirituality, religiosity and health. A primary reason for the lack of institutional knowledge in this area of study is that as the centuries have progressed, scholars in fields of medicine, public health, psychology, sociology, spirituality, religion, economics and law, have all gone to distinct silos. Subsequently, there is a growing body of research, but it exists in disparate fields, with little overlap addressing the implications of health and health care. There is also much contention about working definitions of terms like "religious" and "spiritual," making research difficult to standardize and impossible to randomize.

Today's Western cultural landscape seems to give us all the wrong messages of what happiness is, and how one should go about attaining it; we're programmed for unhappiness and seemingly trapped in ways of thinking and being that only make for more unhappiness! On this week's MindMatters we discuss John F. Schumaker's book In Search of Happiness - Understanding An Endangered State of Mind and delve into what happiness actually is, what it isn't - and some of the perennial values which nurture the meaning in our lives that deep happiness is quite often an outgrowth of.

On this week's show we'll also be looking at what some great minds had to say on bringing happiness about. Everyone wants to 'be happy,' but how does this feeling really come about and what, if anything, is the process to be engaged that could make it available to us? Can happiness even be experienced without knowing its opposite - and how willing are we to sacrifice short term gratification for the deeper more fulfilling life that nurtures true happiness. Join us this week as we put away the happy pills, the happy meals, the happy faces, and choose to suffer through a more objective understanding of a mostly elusive state of mind.


Running Time: 01:10:42

Download: MP3 - 64.7 MB

Most of the time, when children act out by kicking and screaming expletives, it is because they do not understand what they are going through, and cannot find a better way to release their feelings. When a child acts out, know that it is most likely because they are struggling to understand complex emotions that they are feeling for the first time in their lives.

Schools in England have started to tackle this problem in a new way, and that is by teaching mindfulness and meditation in the classroom to improve the youth's overall mental health. In 370 schools across the country, children will be taught how to meditate, techniques for muscle relaxation and breathing exercises for mindfulness. The secondary school students will also get a more hands-on education to learn about awareness and how to increase this in their everyday lives. This program is being done under the mental health study that the British government is running up until 2021.

Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder. - Rumi

One of the most common sources of conflict among people is in the way we communicate. Oftentimes, conflicts do not arise because of the diversity of opinions and beliefs. Diversity is necessary for thought exchange and ultimate growth.

The true source of conflict, rather, is in the way we express our opinions and communicate disagreement. A blaming, sometimes even aggressive tone of voice can seep into our language, which invites confrontation instead of collaboration, and conveys a closed 'my way or no way' kind of approach.

Looking back on my past, I can recall myself during my childhood years, when anything felt possible. In my world, full of playfulness, creativity, and fun, things were straightforward and clear. Whenever I was hungry, I made sure my mother knew about that. When I was afraid, sad, or upset, I said so. Whenever I wanted anything, I asked for it.

In the video below,¹ Tim Ferriss interviews Michael Pollan, author of seven books, primarily related to food. In his latest book, "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence," he delves into the potential benefits of hallucinogenic drugs.

The interview took place at the recent South by Southwest event. As noted by Pollan, the term "psychedelics" was coined in 1957 by Humphry Osmond, a psychiatrist who explored the use of hallucinogenic drugs in the treatment of mental illness. A paper² by Janice Hopkins Tanne describes how Osmond investigated the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on alcoholics.

In the 1950s, psychiatrists working with drugs would often use them on themselves, and hallucinogenics such as LSD were thought to mimic the mind of the mentally ill, allowing the therapist to experience what a psychotic patient might be going through. However, Pollan notes, they realized that the experiences they were having "felt far too good" to be pure psychosis.

Neuroscientist Sara Lazar, of Mass General and Harvard Medical School, started studying meditation by accident. She sustained running injuries training for the Boston Marathon, and her physical therapist told her to stretch. So Lazar took up yoga.

"The yoga teacher made all sorts of claims, that yoga would increase your compassion and open your heart," said Lazar. "And I'd think, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm here to stretch.' But I started noticing that I was calmer. I was better able to handle more difficult situations. I was more compassionate and open hearted, and able to see things from others' points of view."

Eventually, she looked up the scientific literature on mindfulness meditation (a category into which yoga can fall). She found the ever-increasing body of evidence that shows that meditation decreases stress, depression, and anxiety, reduces pain and insomnia, and increases quality of life.

Mathematicians have confirmed that humanity's collective attention span is getting shorter. And it's not just social media that's to blame.

They analysed historical book and movie ticket sales as well as Twitter data to show that people move on faster than ever before because increasing production and consumption of content leads to more rapid exhaustion of limited attention resources.

"It seems that the allocated attention in our collective minds has a certain size, but that the cultural items competing for that attention have become more densely packed," says Sune Lehmann, from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).

"This would support the claim that it has indeed become more difficult to keep up to date on the news cycle, for example."

The study brought together researchers from DTU, University College Cork (UCC), Ireland, and Technische Universität Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, both in Germany.

They studied Twitter data from 2013 to 2016, books sales going back 100 years, movie ticket sales over 40 years, citations of scientific publications from the last 25 years, and data from Google Trends (2010-2018), Reddit (2010-2015) and Wikipedia (2012-2017).

They found that from 2013 to 2016 "cultural items" had steeper attention curves, both ascending and descending. In other words, things became popular more quickly than before, but lost their popularity more quickly as well.

The idea of retreating to nature when life gets too hectic is nothing new. For instance, this study suggests that negative ions in natural environments benefit those suffering from depression and anxiety and contribute to feelings of mental-wellbeing. But, for the first time ever researchers have deduced a specific dose of an urban nature experience to counteract the effects of stress. The researchers concluded that a 20-minute "nature pill" is sufficient to significantly reduce stress hormone levels.

"We know that spending time in nature reduces stress, but until now it was unclear how much is enough, how often to do it, or even what kind of nature experience will benefit us," says Dr. MaryCarol Hunter, an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan and lead author of the research. "Our study shows that for the greatest payoff, in terms of efficiently lowering levels of the stress hormone cortisol, you should spend 20 to 30 minutes sitting or walking in a place that provides you with a sense of nature."