Discrimination stress
Adolescents who experience racial and ethnic discrimination suffer significant mental health and other consequences, suggests a meta-analysis in American Psychologist. Researchers analyzed results from 214 studies—with more than 91,000 total teenage participants—that looked at the relationship between perceived discrimination and a variety of psychological outcomes. Most studies were conducted in the United States. The researchers found that perceived discrimination was associated with depression symptoms, psychological distress, lower self-esteem, lower academic achievement, less academic motivation, risky sexual behavior and substance use. DOI: 10.1037/amp0000204opens in new window
Face bias
When shown a photo of a stranger’s face, white people tend to remember it as “whiter” than it is, finds a study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. In a series of online experiments with participants in the United States, researchers briefly showed each participant—all white—a photo of a single face. The participant then tried to reproduce that face, using a slider to morph a test face along a skin color continuum. Then, the experimenters used the reproduced face as the initial face presented to the next participant, and so on down the line in a reproduction chain. In each experiment, the researchers tested 10 chains of 30 participants. Each time, the participant chains created faces that were significantly whiter than the original photos, regardless of the skin tone of the face in the original photo. DOI: 10.1037/xge0000446opens in new window
Asian-american CEOs
Asian-American CEOs are more likely to be hired to helm companies that are struggling than those that are doing well, perhaps because of a stereotype that Asian-Americans are more self-sacrificing, suggests research in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Researchers used public financial documents, CEO biographies and news archives to analyze the tenure of nearly 5,000 CEOs over five decades. They found that companies appointed Asian-American CEOs almost 2 1/2 times more often during periods of financial decline compared with nondecline. Then, in several follow-up experiments, the experimenters asked online participants in the United States to read and respond to hypothetical vignettes about struggling and successful companies. Participants who read about a struggling company were more likely to respond that “Alex Wong” was self-sacrificing and would make a better CEO than the one currently in place than were participants who read about a successful company; no such effects were found for “Anthony Smith.” DOI: 10.1037/apl0000347opens in new window
Nice guys finish last
Agreeable people have less money and more debt than people who aren’t as nice, finds a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In seven experiments, researchers analyzed personality and financial data collected from more than 3 million participants in the United Kingdom, including two online panels, a national survey, bank account data and publicly available geographic data. They found that agreeableness was associated with lower savings, more debt and higher default rates, and that these effects were stronger among people with lower incomes. In addition, they found that agreeable people tended to care less about money and that this trait seemed to drive much of the link between agreeableness and finances. DOI:10.1037/pspp0000220opens in new window
Raising thankful kids
Fostering gratitude can encourage adolescents to become less materialistic and more generous, suggests a study in The Journal of Positive Psychology. Researchers asked 61 adolescents to keep a daily journal for two weeks—half were assigned to write about who and what they were thankful for, while a control group simply recorded daily activities. Both before and after the two weeks, the adolescents completed surveys measuring their levels of gratitude and materialism. Participants who kept gratitude journals showed significant increases in gratitude and decreases in materialism; the control group did not. Also, at the end of the two weeks, the researchers gave the adolescents $10 and told them that they could keep it all or donate some to charity. The gratitude group donated $6.81 of their earnings, on average, while the control group donated $4.23. DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2018.1497688opens in new window
Early language exposure
The more toddlers are exposed to complex and rich conversation, the better cognitive and language skills they develop in later childhood, finds a study in Pediatrics. Researchers used computer software to analyze six months of recordings from the homes of 146 infants and toddlers, ages 2 to 36 months. They found that the number of “conversational turns”—back-and-forth discussions between parent and child—that children experienced at ages 18 to 24 months accounted for 14 to 27 percent of the variance in the children’s IQ, verbal comprehension and vocabulary scores 10 years later even after controlling for socioeconomic status. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2017-4276opens in new window
Slice of life
The hippocampus helps the brain store experiences by slicing them up into events, suggests a study in JNeurosci. Researchers used fMRI to image the brains of 253 participants as they watched an eight-minute clip of an Alfred Hitchcock TV episode, and of 15 other participants as they watched the two-hour movie “Forrest Gump.” The researchers found that activity in the participants’ hippocampi increased around moments that independent observers had rated as “transition points”—shifts from one event to another. These transition points may signal the hippocampus to begin storing the event as a discrete memory, the researchers suggest. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0524-18.2018opens in new window
Gender gap
American girls outperform boys in reading and writing—a difference that is apparent as early as the fourth grade and grows larger as students get older, finds a meta-analysis in American Psychologist. Researchers analyzed 27 years of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a nationally representative U.S. sample of standardized test scores from more than 3.4 million students in the fourth, eighth and 12th grades. On average, girls scored significantly higher than boys in both reading and writing in the fourth grade, and that gap widened in eighth grade and again in 12th grade. At all grades, differences between girls and boys were greater for writing than reading. DOI: 10.1037/amp0000356opens in new window
Overdose patterns
Deaths from drug overdoses have been rising exponentially in the United States for nearly four decades, but that growth overlays a more complex pattern of dips and spikes in certain drugs and varies by population and geographic area, finds an analysis in Science. Researchers analyzed records of nearly 600,000 drug overdose deaths between 1979 and 2016 from the National Vital Statistics System. They found that the rise in overall deaths has tracked along a smooth exponential curve over that time. However, within that trend, deaths from individual drugs have varied. For example, cocaine was a leading cause of death in 2005–06, then, successively, prescription opioids, heroin and synthetic opioids became the more likely causes. Also, until 2010, most deaths were among 40- to 50-year-olds; since then the bulk has shifted to 20- to 40-year-olds. The researchers note the difficulty of predicting future patterns of overdose deaths. DOI: 10.1126/science.aau1184opens in new window
Poverty's effects linger
Growing up poor can affect people’s cognition into older adulthood, suggests a study in Neurology. Researchers analyzed data on 20,244 older adults from 16 European countries. Participants were interviewed about their home lives at age 10 and took a battery of cognitive tests at the beginning of the study (when their average age was 71) and again about five years later. The researchers found that experiencing socioeconomic hardship as a child was associated with a lower baseline level of cognitive performance at the beginning of the study. However, it was not associated with the rate of cognitive decline between the first and second assessments. DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000006390opens in new window
Collective wisdom—in kids
Teenagers and children as young as 11 can collaborate in groups to improve their performance on a task, a kind of “collective wisdom” that researchers have previously demonstrated in adults, finds a study in PLOS ONE. Researchers asked 219 students, ages 11 to 19, to work together in groups of three to estimate the number of candies in a jar. Students gave their individual estimates before and after a group discussion, and then the group gave its estimate following the discussion. Across all ages, the group estimates were generally more accurate than the individual estimates. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204462opens in new window
A familiar voice
Even if our loved ones’ voices are digitally manipulated to make them unrecognizable, it’s still easier to understand what they are saying compared with what a stranger is saying, finds a study in Psychological Science. Researchers recorded 11 pairs of participants—friends or couples—as each person read sentences aloud. Then the researchers altered the recordings, varying the pitch and the resonance of the voices. (Pitch is associated with vocal cord vibration rates, while resonance is linked to the length of the tract from vocal cords to lips.) Next, participants listened to the same sentences spoken by their partners and by a stranger. Overall, participants were better able to recognize their partners’ voices when the pitch was altered compared with when the resonance was altered. However, even when they didn’t recognize their partners’ voices, they still found it easier to understand the sentences compared with when they were spoken in strangers’ voices. DOI: 10.1177/0956797618779083opens in new window
Breast cancer and cognition
Chemotherapy and genetics may interact to determine whether older women with breast cancer are at elevated risk for cognitive decline after treatment, finds a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Researchers followed 344 women in the United States, ages 60 to 98, who were recently diagnosed with breast cancer, as well as 347 control participants without cancer (matched for age, race, education and other traits). All participants took 13 cognitive tests at the beginning of the study (before cancer treatment began) and again one and two years later. Most of the patients did not suffer cognitive decline relative to the controls, the researchers found. However, a subset of the women who received chemotherapy and who had the ApoE4 gene, which increases Alzheimer’s risk, did show a continued decline in cognitive performance after chemotherapy. DOI: 10.1200/JCO.18.00140opens in new window
Marijuana and the teen brain
Marijuana causes more harm to the adolescent brain than alcohol does, suggests a study in The American Journal of Psychiatry. Researchers followed 3,826 students in Montreal for four years, beginning when they were age 12 or 13. Each year, the students took a battery of cognitive tests measuring memory, reasoning and inhibitory control and filled out confidential surveys on their alcohol and marijuana use. On average, adolescents who increased their marijuana use in one year performed worse than expected on tests of memory and inhibitory control, both that year and the following year. The researchers did not find the same association between changes in alcohol use and cognitive performance. DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2018.18020202opens in new window
Depression treatment saves money
Cancer patients with depression who receive mental health treatment incur fewer health-care costs than those who receive no treatment, suggests a study in Health Psychology. Researchers analyzed the medical records of 182 cancer patients at the University of California, San Diego, diagnosed with depression. They found each mental health visit made by these patients was associated with an average 2.7-percent reduction in total health-care charges. The estimated annual health-care costs were $99,073 for those who had no mental health visits compared with $71,245 for those who had 12 visits. DOI: 10.1037/hea0000670opens in new window
A language barrier
Psychologists need more training in working with language interpreters to serve diverse populations, suggests a study in Training and Education in Professional Psychology. Researchers surveyed 102 instructors of multicultural psychology courses at APA-accredited institutions. Professional guidelines say that English-speaking psychologists working with clients with limited English proficiency should use interpreters when no other mental health professionalfluent in the client’s language is available. However, only 54 percent of instructors reported providing their students with any training on how to work with an interpreter, and just 16 percent reported providing more than two hours of training on the subject. DOI: 10.1037/tep0000212opens in new window
Turn off the screens
Children who have less than two hours per day of recreational screen time perform better on cognitive tests than those who spend more time online or watching TV, suggests a study in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. Researchers analyzed data on 4,520 8- to 11-year-old children from 20 sites across the United States. Overall, 37 percent of the children met screen time guidelines (less than two hours per day), 51 percent met sleep guidelines (nine to 11 hours of sleep per day) and 18 percent met physical activity guidelines (at least one hour per day). Just 5 percent met all three. Overall, meeting all three guidelines was associated with the best scores on tests of thinking, language and memory, but meeting just the screen time guideline was also linked to better scores. DOI: 10.1016/S2352-4642(18)30278-5opens in new window
Conservation and social norms
People who believe that their neighbors think that conserving energy is worthwhile are more likely to take energy-saving measures themselves, finds a study in Nature Human Behaviour. Researchers analyzed data from the company Opower, which sent consumers energy bills that detailed their energy consumption relative to their neighbors’ consumption. This worked to reduce energy use, but its effect varied by region—the Opower bills led to a 2.55-percent energy-use reduction in some states at the high end, but only a 0.81-percent reduction at the low end. To understand the causes of this variation, the researchers surveyed 2,000 Opower customers from around the country about their beliefs about energy conservation. They found that in states in which people believed that their neighbors think that conservation helps the environment, the Opower bills had a stronger effect. However, differences across states in people’s own personal beliefs about conservation did not predict energy savings. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-018-0434-0opens in new window
Dementia and sexuality
Many men and women with dementia who live at home with a partner are sexually active. However, the rate of sexual problems in this population is high and few patients discuss those problems with their doctors. Those are among the conclusions of a study of older adults’ sexuality published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Researchers analyzed data from a nationally representative U.S. sample of nearly 3,200 adults with and without dementia, ages 62 to 91. Overall, 83 percent of men and 57 percent of women had intimate partners. Among those with dementia, 46 percent of men and 18 percent of women were sexually active. However, very few of those with dementia talked to their doctor about sex (17 percent of men and 1 percent of women). DOI: 10.1111/jgs.15511opens in new window
Don't I know you?
Humans are familiar with about 5,000 individual faces, on average, suggests a study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Researchers asked 25 young-adult participants in the United Kingdom to recall as many specific faces as they could in one hour—both people they personally knew as well as celebrities—prompting them with categories such as “friends from school” and “politicians.” Then the participants looked at photos of 3,441 famous faces and reported which ones they recognized. By comparing the ratio of the “recall” to the “recognize” number, the researchers calculated that, on average, participants knew 5,000 faces, though the total number varied widely by individual, from about 1,000 to 10,000. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.1319opens in new window
Political violence
The search for meaning in life and a thirst for adventure may drive people who are attracted to political violence, finds a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In two surveys with more than 750 total participants, researchers found those who reported more searching for meaning in their life also had a greater need for excitement and that, in turn, was associated with greater support for political violence. In a set of follow-up experiments, the researchers found that participants who took part in an activity designed to increase their sense of searching for meaning—like writing an essay about their legacy—later expressed more support for political violence, and support for a hypothetical violent extremist group, than people who wrote about a neutral topic (their favorite shoes). DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000223opens in new window
