In brief

Perceptual Bias

Many people perceive young black men to be larger and more physically threatening than similarly sized young white men, finds a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In a series of seven experiments, researchers showed more than 950 online participants photographs of white and black male faces. Non-black participants judged the black men to be larger, stronger, more muscular and more capable of causing physical harm than the white men, even though in reality the men pictured were all equivalent in height and weight. Black participants judged the black men to be larger and more muscular, though to a lesser degree than the white participants, but did not view the black men to be more capable of causing physical harm.

Ignorance is bliss

Most people do not want to know what their future will bring, finds a study in Psychological Review. Researchers asked more than 1,000 participants whether they would want to know about future events, both negative (e.g., "Would you want to know today from what cause you will die?") and positive (e.g., "Would you want to know in advance what you are getting for Christmas?"). Between 85 percent and 90 percent of people did not want to know about upcoming negative events, and 40 percent to 70 percent did not want to know about positive events. The only information that a majority of people preferred to learn in advance was the sex of their hypothetical future child.

Dreamers

One consequence of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program may be reduced depression among people eligible to participate, suggests a study in The Lancet Public Health. The program, which began in 2012, provides renewable work permits to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. Researchers examined data from more than 14,000 non-citizen, Hispanic adult respondents to the U.S. National Health Interview Survey between January 2008 and December 2015. They used respondents' age, timing of immigration and other criteria to identify those potentially eligible for DACA and those definitely not. They found that DACA-eligible individuals experienced a reduction in self-reported depression symptoms compared with DACA-ineligible individuals after the policy was implemented.

Memory skills

People can drastically improve their memories with training, finds a study in Neuron—and in the process, they make their brains function more like those of "memory champions." Seventeen participants with normal memory skills completed about six weeks of daily 30-minute memory training sessions. They recalled an average of 26 words from a list of 72 at the beginning of the study; by the end they remembered 62. As part of the study, the researchers also used fMRI to examine the brains of 23 memory champions, and they found a difference in connectivity patterns in the champions' brains compared with normal-memory controls. The researchers also imaged the normal-memory participants' brains before and after memory training, and found that at the end of the six weeks, the normal-memory participants' brains became more similar to those of the memory champions.

Evaluating risk

People with low numeracy skills—the ability to understand and apply numerical concepts—are less likely to seek medical help quickly during a heart attack, suggests research in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine. Researchers interviewed 102 heart attack survivors within five days of the episode; the survivors also completed a numeracy assessment. The researchers found that patients with high numeracy were about four times more likely to have sought medical attention within the critical first hour of symptoms than patients with low numeracy. The researchers suggest this could be because numeracy is related to general decision-making and risk-assessment skill.

Milgram redux

A team of researchers has replicated Stanley Milgram's famous experiment and found that more than 50 years after the original, very little has changed—most people are still willing to obey orders even when it means causing another person pain. In the replication, conducted in Poland and published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, the researchers tested 80 participants (40 men and 40 women), asking them to administer progressively higher "shocks" to a purported victim. Ninety percent of the participants were willing to administer the highest shock level.

Soothing nature

People who live in neighborhoods with more birds, shrubbery and trees have better mental health, suggests a study in BioScience. Researchers measured vegetation cover and counted the afternoon bird population in three neighborhoods in the United Kingdom. Then, they surveyed 263 residents of those neighborhoods about their mental health. They found that people who lived in areas with more vegetation or who could see more birds in the afternoon had less depression, anxiety and stress, even after controlling for variations in socioeconomic status, age and other demographic factors.

Most shared

Scientists can predict which news articles will "go viral" on social media by looking at brain scans of readers as they peruse the articles, finds a study in PNAS. Researchers used fMRI to image the brains of 80 college students as they read headlines and summaries of 80 health-related stories from The New York Times. Some of the articles had "gone viral" while others had not—the most popular was shared more than 12,000 times via social media, the least popular only 34. The researchers found that articles that produced more activity in brain regions associated with self-related and social cognition were shared more often.

Knowledge in, knowledge out

Some students who feel stressed during a math class may forget what they learned in the class more quickly than students who are less stressed, finds a study in the Journal of Educational Psychology. Researchers asked 129 college students in an advanced calculus class about their level of class-related stress over the course of the semester. Then, two weeks after the final exam, the students retook a portion of that final. Students who both reported more weekly stress during the class and had a high "math self-concept"—considered being good at math important to their identities—showed greater reduction in test performance over the two-week period than did other students. The researchers hypothesize that students who found the stressful class a threat to their identity forgot the material more quickly.

Delayed treatment

Children with developmental disorders such as autism and ADHD experience long wait times to get appointments with developmental pediatricians, potentially delaying crucial diagnoses and treatment, suggests research in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. To conduct the study, the researchers posed as parents and called developmental pediatric programs associated with children's hospitals nationwide to request an appointment. Of the 90 programs included in the study, 75 provided a wait time, and the mean estimated wait was nearly five and a half months. Spanish language callers fared even worse: Only 55 percent were offered a wait time estimate and nearly one-third of the programs did not offer any Spanish-language services.

Sleep matters

Children who don't get enough sleep in their preschool and early elementary years are more likely to have behavioral and cognitive problems at age 7, finds a study involving 1,046 children in Academic Pediatrics. The study included in-person interviews with and surveys of the children's mothers, as well as surveys of their teachers. Data from both mothers and teachers suggested that children who slept less than 10 hours a day at ages 3 and 4, and less than nine hours a day between ages 5 and 7, had significantly more problems with executive function, behavior and social relationships at age 7.

Smoking's double danger

Cigarette smokers who are in recovery for illicit drug use are more likely to relapse than nonsmokers are, finds research in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Researchers analyzed data from 34,653 participants in the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Among participants who were smokers at the beginning of the study, 11 percent of those who continued smoking three years later had also relapsed to illicit drug use. However, only 8 percent of those who had quit smoking, and 6.5 percent of those who never smoked, had relapsed.

Transgender teens

Transgender and gender-fluid teens experience up to three times more mental and physical abuse than their gender-conforming gay and lesbian peers, finds research in Child Abuse and Neglect. Researchers collected data from 1,200 sexual- and gender-minority teens, who identified as transgender (male to female or female to male), gender-fluid (no fixed gender) or cisgender (gay and lesbian teens whose gender matched their birth sex). The researchers asked about child abuse, physical and sexual assault, bullying and other forms of victimization. They found that overall, transgender and gender-fluid teens were at greater risk of experiencing multiple types of violence in their homes, schools, neighborhoods and online, and that transgender girls (born male) were at greatest risk.

Online but alone

Young adults who spend more time using social media are more likely to feel socially isolated, finds a study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Researchers surveyed 1,787 adults ages 19 to 32, asking how much time they spent on 11 social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Reddit. Participants who used social media for more than two hours a day were twice as likely to feel socially isolated as those who spent less than half an hour a day on the sites. The researchers caution that the direction of causality is not clear: It could be that people who feel isolated are more likely to turn to social media sites, or that social media increases perceived isolation.

Productive dialogue

Using debate and dialogue to examine issues can help people use and present information more rationally, finds a study in Psychological Science. Researchers gave 60 college students information about two fictional mayoral candidates' positions on a range of issues. Half the students were asked to use the information to write a dialogue between two television commentators discussing the candidates' positions; the other half wrote an essay evaluating the candidates' merits. Then, both groups were asked to write a script for a television ad promoting their favorite candidate. Students who had previously written the dialogue did a better job with the TV script—for example, they were less likely to make claims that lacked supporting evidence. Only 20 percent of students in the dialogue group made unsubstantiated claims, compared with 60 percent of the students in the essay group.

What's in a name?

People look like their names, suggests a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In a series of experiments, researchers showed photographs of faces to hundreds of Israeli and French participants and asked them to match the face to a name from a list of four or five possibilities. In every experiment, the participants were significantly better than chance at matching the face to the correct name (they were 25 to 40 percent accurate). The researchers controlled for variables that affect name choice, such as ethnicity and age. However, the results were culture-specific: Israeli participants were no better than chance at matching French faces and names, and vice versa. The researchers hypothesize that people may subconsciously alter their appearance to match cultural stereotypes associated with their name.

Saying no to treatment

People are more likely to refuse treatment for mental disorders, or end their treatment early, when they are offered only psychotropic drugs instead of psychotherapy, finds a meta-analysis in Psychotherapy. Researchers analyzed 186 studies of patients seeking help for mental disorders, and found that patients who were offered drugs alone were 1.76 times more likely to refuse treatment and 1.2 times more likely to drop out early than patients who were offered only psychotherapy. However, the rates varied by disorder. Patients with social anxiety disorder, depression and panic disorder were more likely to refuse drugs than psychotherapy, but patients with anorexia/bulimia, obsessive/compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder were not.

For direct links to the research cited in this section, visit our digital edition at www.apa.org/monitor/digital.