Zone of Greatness: More Internet Dating Stats
For internet daters (and stats lovers), a series of new and old posts at the OkCupid.com blog:
Interactive maps showing why men should be looking to date older women, among other things.
Another entry looks at the data and comes up with Exactly What to Say in a First Message.
Another looks at How Races and Religions Match in Online Dating.
Plenty more where these came from on the site…
Music is Brain Food
Don’t want to learn an instrument? Just turn on the radio. From the L.A. Times:
“Music is sort of the perfect activity that people can engage in from young to older years. It affects how the brain develops and affects how the brain changes in structure” at any age, Schlaug says.
For the mature brain, even listening to beloved music may have what scientists call a “neuroprotective” effect…
Depression is Good For You…Maybe
A massive NYT Magazine piece explores “Depression’s Upside,” as hypothesized by evolutionary and social psychologists.
[T]heir speculation is part of a larger scientific re-evaluation of negative moods, which have long been seen as emotional states to avoid. The dismissal of sadness and its synonyms is perhaps best exemplified by the rise of positive psychology, a scientific field devoted to the pursuit of happiness. […] The new research on negative moods, however, suggests that sadness comes with its own set of benefits and that even our most unpleasant feelings serve an important purpose…
Touching Recommended
Another study, again posted by the New York Times, suggests a little bit of physical contact does big things.
[I]n recent years some researchers have begun to focus on a different, often more subtle kind of wordless communication: physical contact. Momentary touches, they say — whether an exuberant high five, a warm hand on the shoulder, or a creepy touch to the arm — can communicate an even wider range of emotion than gestures or expressions, and sometimes do so more quickly and accurately than words.
“It is the first language we learn”…
Pins and Needles: Acupuncture v. Depression During Pregnancy
Study of the day, as posted by the New York Times:
Up to a quarter of all women suffer from depression during pregnancy, and many are reluctant to take antidepressants. Now a new study suggests that acupuncture may provide some relief during pregnancy, even though it has not been found to be an effective treatment against depression in general…
Worldview Trumps
An NPR story about a report that details how little the facts matter to people–beliefs trump science again and again.
“People tend to conform their factual beliefs to ones that are consistent with their cultural outlook, their world view,” Braman says.
The Cultural Cognition Project has conducted several experiments to back that up…
Exercise More, Worry Less
A study shows exercise decreases anxiety in people suffering from chronic illnesses. Ill or not, try testing out the difference between a day with exercise and a day without. Exercise usually equals less worry, more sleep. From the L.A. Times:
[I]f you exercise regularly, you will likely feel much less anxious — regardless of the status of your illness. In a study published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers analyzed data from 40 studies on how exercise affects anxiety. All of the 3,000 study participants were sedentary individuals who had chronic illnesses but were still able to exercise in sessions of at least 30 minutes…
Facebook Truth
The L.A. Times reports on a study about how people present themselves on social networking sites:
A prevailing theory in psychology has been that people use their social-networking pages to protect an idealized version of themselves, not the person they really are. That may not be so.
[A] study, published recently in the journal Psychological Science, showed that peoples’ profiles do reflect their true selves. It was easiest to authenticate such personality traits as extroversion and openness from social-networking pages, somewhat harder to gauge neuroticism. But, overall, people didn’t idealize their Facebook selves, as some researchers had suspected they might.
Read the rest here.
2013
Unless 2012 turns out like the movie (“2012,” that is), the year that follows should see the release of the latest version of the DSM, the big book of psychiatric diagnoses that mental health pros use as a guide to thinking about what’s going on with clients. You’re not your diagnosis, and you’re really not a diagnosis that hasn’t been approved and published. But, if you’re curious, proposed changes to the current DSM-IV-TR are posted at dsm5.org, and await your browsing. (A much quicker NYT article on the subject is here.) Enjoy.
Treating Chronic Pain
Back at Where the Client Is, a new interview with psychoanalyst Frances Sommer Anderson, PhD about treating pain the Dr. John Sarno way: By getting at underlying, unfelt emotion. Not mainstream at the moment, but look out. (The interview is intended for therapists, but is still readable.) Key:
For people who have great difficulty being aware of what they are feeling about what they are saying, I work intensively on this in each session. I recommend that they take a “feeling inventory” several times during the day and evening: Ask yourself, “What am I feeling about the events
that happened during the past hour? How did I feel when my supervisee didn’t meet the deadline and casually brought the work into my office without acknowledging that it was late? How did I feel when our nanny called to say that she had an emergency and had to leave immediately, possibly indefinitely? How did I feel when our 16 year-old son showed up two hours past his curfew, undeniably drunk?” At the beginning of therapy, some people need to take this inventory once every hour.
As we are doing this “emotion detection” work inside and outside the sessions, we are also tracking pain levels as well as presence and absence of pain. This strategy is aimed at making links between emotions and pain symptoms.
The rest of the interview is here.