Health & Wellness
Allen Carr, 72, quit his 100-a-day habit 23 years ago, before going on to become a millionaire by advising people on how to stop smoking.
Laughter, a universal human behavior, has been shown in previous studies to act as a "social lubricant" and promote group cohesiveness. In this new study, researchers tested whether this sense of closeness would promote altruistic behavior.
Study participants watched either a funny or a serious video, and then played a game with strangers to see how laugher affected the balance between group interest and self-interest during the game-play.
Each person was given a small sum of money (about $5) and told they could invest it in either a private fund or a group fund - they would get back whatever they put in the private fund, while whatever was contributed to the group fund would be doubled and split evenly among group members, regardless of how much each person put in.
"To our knowledge, this is the first study of the physiology of shared emotions during live psychotherapy sessions," said Carl Marci, the Harvard psychiatrist who led the study. "We were pleased to find evidence for a biological basis of empathic connections. Our results suggest that therapists perceived as being more empathic have more positive emotional experiences in common with patients."
Marci said research has shown that lack of empathy is the biggest predictor of a poor outcome for patients in psychotherapy. Still, empathy isn't everything, he said.
"It's kind of striking that an angry facial expression is consciously valued as a very negative signal by almost everyone, yet at a non-conscious level can be like a tasty morsel that some people will vigorously work for," said Oliver Schultheiss, University of Michigan associate professor of psychology.
His study may explain why some people like to tease each other, he said.
Menu Foods said Saturday it is recalling dog food sold under 46 brands and cat food sold under 37 brands and distributed throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. The pet foods were sold by major retailers, including Wal-Mart, Kroger and Safeway.
The decision came after the Mount Desert Water District said studies conducted during the past few years call into question the safety of fluoridation. The vote in last week's referendum was 229-to-42 to remove fluoride.
The recall totals more than 2.8 million pounds of chicken.