The future is now…or later
When does the present end and the future begin? The answer varies across individuals and may affect the choices people make about their future lives, suggests research in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. In the first of a series of studies, researchers asked 199 online participants when they felt “the present” would end. One-fifth said the present ended “right now,” while 29% indicated a time between 1 second and 1 hour from the time the question was asked. Others had a longer time frame in mind, with 15% reporting that the present would end at some future event, most commonly indicated as “at my own death.” A second study, with 120 U.S. undergraduate participants surveyed three times over four months, yielded similar results and showed that individuals’ views remained fairly consistent over time. In a further study with 1,764 online participants, the researchers found that when the present was framed as lasting for a short time (and the future as coming sooner), people were more likely to choose a gift certificate that allowed them to save for the future rather than one that allowed an immediate purchase. DOI: 10.1037/xge0000681
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Borderline personality and heart attack
Middle-aged adults with traits associated with borderline personality disorder may be at higher risk for heart attacks, according to a study in Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment. Researchers analyzed data from 1,295 non-Hispanic white and African American adults ages 30 to 54. They examined self-reported personality traits, as well as traits reported by up to two of the participants’ friends or family members, and self-reported depression symptoms. They also established a cardiovascular risk score for each participant by combining physical health measurements such as blood pressure, body mass index, and insulin and cholesterol levels. The investigators found a strong association between borderline personality traits and increased cardiovascular risk: Each standard-deviation increase in borderline personality traits had the same effect on cardiovascular risk as 9.2 years of aging. While borderline personality traits and depression were both associated with cardiovascular risk, the effect of borderline traits was independent of depression symptoms. DOI: 10.1037/per0000373opens in new window
Quick response
When responding to questions under time pressure, people tend to give socially desirable answers, indicates a study in Psychological Science. In one experiment, researchers asked 1,500 adults in the United States whether 10 statements about themselves in social situations were true or false (e.g., “I have never intensely disliked anyone”). Half of the participants were instructed to respond to each item in less than 11 seconds, and the other half to respond to each one after 11 seconds. The researchers found that the fast-responding participants were more likely to give more socially desirable answers. In a second, similar study with a different group of 1,500 participants, the researchers found that the degree to which participants believed that people’s “true selves” are fundamentally good, rather than a mixture of good and bad, influenced their answers when responding slowly but not when responding quickly. DOI: 10.1177/0956797619867939
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North American opioid use
Patients in the United States and Canada were seven times more likely than patients in Sweden to fill a prescription for opioids after surgery, according to a study in JAMA Network Open. Researchers analyzed data from 223,834 patients who underwent low-risk surgical procedures between 2013 and 2016. They found that within seven days of discharge, 76% of U.S. patients and 79% of patients in Canada filled an opioid prescription, compared with just 11% of patients in Sweden. The average dosage of the initial prescription in the United States was 247 MME (morphine milligram equivalents)—much higher than the average dosage dispensed in Canada (169) and Sweden (197). According to the researchers, the results point to an opportunity to modify opioid prescription practices in the United States and Canada and to the need for further research on policy and sociocultural influences on prescription practices. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.10734opens in new window
Hearing 'voices'
Vulnerability to auditory hallucinations in patients with schizophrenia is linked to abnormalities in the development of the auditory cortex during infancy, suggests a study in npj Schizophrenia. Researchers obtained high-resolution fMRI images of brain activity while study participants—16 adults with schizophrenia with a history of auditory hallucinations and 22 healthy controls—listened passively to tones across a range of sound frequencies. The researchers found that the participants with schizophrenia showed greater auditory cortex activation than the controls in response to most frequencies. In addition, compared with controls, patients with schizophrenia showed abnormal organization of the auditory cortex. Because auditory cortex organization is established in infancy and remains stable throughout life, the findings suggest that the predisposition among some schizophrenia patients to hear “voices” is linked to disruptions in early brain development. DOI: 10.1038/s41537-019-0084-x
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How lying harms kids
Children told lies by their parents lie more as adults and face psychosocial adjustment difficulties, suggests a study in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. Researchers asked 379 young adults in Singapore whether their parents lied to them as children (e.g., “If you don’t come with me now, I will leave you here by yourself”), how much they lie to their parents now and how well they think they’ve adjusted to the challenges of adulthood. Adults who reported being lied to as children were more likely to report lying to their parents as adults. They also said they had greater difficulty meeting psychological and social challenges and experienced more selfishness, conduct problems, guilt and shame. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104680opens in new window
Emotional intelligence and politics
People with lower emotional abilities are more likely to hold authoritarian views, suggests a study in Emotion. Across two experiments, researchers assessed the political ideology and emotional abilities of 983 adult participants in Belgium. The researchers found that individuals who scored lower on assessments of emotional understanding and management also tended to score higher on measures of right-wing authoritarianism—a tendency to submit to political authority and be hostile toward other groups. In addition, those with lower emotional abilities scored higher on social dominance orientation—a preference for inequality among social groups. Lower cognitive abilities were also associated with right-wing authoritarianism, but not social dominance orientation. DOI: 10.1037/emo0000497
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Acetaminophen in pregnancy
A woman’s use of acetaminophen during mid- to late pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of cognitive and behavioral issues in her young children, according to a study in Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology. Researchers examined maternal questionnaire and child school data for 12,025 mothers in the United Kingdom enrolled in a longitudinal study of parent and child health in the 1990s. They found that when mothers were between 18 and 32 weeks pregnant, 43% reported taking acetaminophen “sometimes” or more often. The researchers found associations between this acetaminophen intake and hyperactivity and attention problems as well as other problem behaviors in the mothers’ young children, especially boys. However, these associations were no longer present by age 11. Boys appeared to be more susceptible than girls to the possible behavioral effects of the drug. DOI: 10.1111/ppe.12582
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Walk this way
People with Alzheimer’s disease or Lewy body dementia have unique walking patterns that indicate subtle differences between the two conditions, according to a study in Alzheimer’s & Dementia. Researchers analyzed the gaits of 110 older adults in the United Kingdom, including 36 with Alzheimer’s disease, 45 with Lewy body dementia and 29 healthy controls. Participants with either Alzheimer’s or Lewy body dementia had gait patterns that differed from those of control participants. However, participants with Lewy body dementia had higher variability in their steps—in terms of both step time and length—and moved more asymmetrically than did those with Alzheimer’s disease. Further research with larger samples is needed to determine whether gait patterns can be used as an inexpensive early marker to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, the researchers note. DOI: 10.1016/j.jalz.2019.06.4953opens in new window
Gender identity
Efforts to change people’s gender identities to match the sex they were assigned at birth are associated with an increased likelihood of adverse mental health outcomes, including suicide attempts, according to a study in JAMA Psychiatry. Researchers analyzed survey responses from 27,715 transgender adults across the United States (43% were assigned male sex at birth). About 71% of the respondents reported having spoken to a secular or religious professional about their gender identities, and about 20% reported being exposed to gender identity conversion efforts. Those reporting exposure to such efforts had more psychological distress during the previous month as well as more lifetime suicide attempts than peers who talked about their gender identities with a professional but weren’t exposed to conversion efforts. Reported exposure to conversion efforts before age 10 was associated with even greater lifetime odds of suicide attempts. DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.2285
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Harsh judgment
People are less likely to support a company guilty of an ethical misstep if that company is led by a woman, according to a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In a series of online experiments, researchers examined how the gender of a business’s leader influences perceptions of the company’s competence failures (such as releasing flawed products) and ethical failures (such as knowingly selling flawed products). In one experiment, 512 online participants read a news article about an auto manufacturer. Afterward, participants who had read about an ethical failure reported that they were less likely to purchase a car from the company when the CEO was a woman than when the CEO was a man. The reverse was true for participants who had read about a competence failure. Results were similar in another experiment with 416 participants in which the stated gender of the CEO was replaced with a description consistent with gender stereotypes (i.e., one leader was described as communal and another as independent and self-directed). DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000176opens in new window
Antidepressants and older adults
Antidepressant use has nearly doubled among older adults in the United Kingdom over the past two decades, while the prevalence of depression in this age group has remained stable, according to research in The British Journal of Psychiatry. Researchers examined data from two studies of people age 65 and older in England and Wales: one study with 7,635 participants conducted between 1990 and 1993 and another study with 7,762 participants conducted between 2008 and 2011. They found that the proportion of older people using antidepressant medications more than doubled over the nearly two-decade period—from 4.2% in the first study to 10.7% in the second. Meanwhile, the estimated rates of depression in this population declined from 7.9% to 6.8% over the same time period. The researchers hypothesize that the increased use of medication could be due to improved recognition and treatment of depression, overprescribing or the use of antidepressants for conditions other than depression. In both studies, they also found that depression and antidepressant use were more common among women than men and among those living in more economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. DOI: 10.1192/bjp.2019.193
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Alzheimer's age of onset
People with Alzheimer’s disease whose parents also had dementia often develop symptoms earlier than their parents did, indicates a study in JAMA Network Open. Researchers interviewed 164 people in the United States with dementia (and their friends and family members) who had at least one parent diagnosed with dementia. Using the interviews and the participants’ medical records, the researchers determined that people who had a parent with dementia developed symptoms an average of 6.1 years earlier than that parent had. In a smaller subset of patients in which both parents had dementia, the age at onset was 13 years earlier than the average of the parents’ ages at diagnosis. Genetic factors, hypertension, and educational levels appear to account for some of the variability between generations, but more research is needed to explain it fully, according to the researchers. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.13491
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Drops in income can harm the brain
Young adults with volatile annual incomes show later reductions in cognitive test scores and measures of brain integrity in middle age, indicates a study in Neurology. Researchers analyzed the data of 3,287 participants who were 23 to 35 years old in 1990 and enrolled in a longitudinal cohort study in the United States. Participants reported their annual household incomes every three to five years from 1990 to 2010. In 2010, all participants were given cognitive tests. The 399 participants who experienced two or more drops in income of 25% or more performed 2.8% worse overall than those without such drops. Among a subset of 707 participants who underwent MRI brain scans in 1990 and 2010, those with two or more drops in income had lower brain volumes and connectivity among brain regions in 2010 than those with no income drops. Similar findings were obtained for participants at all educational levels and after researchers controlled for blood pressure and health behaviors. DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000008463
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Fake it till you make it
Engaging in extraverted behavior like being talkative and assertive has benefits for well-being, according to a study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Researchers have found benefits for “forced extraversion” before, but most previous experiments examined social encounters that lasted only a few minutes. In this study, the researchers told 91 U.S. undergraduate participants that previous research had indicated that both introverted and extraverted behaviors were beneficial. They then asked half of the participants to be as talkative, assertive and spontaneous as they could stand for a week. They asked the other half to be deliberate, quiet and reserved. For the following week, the groups switched to engage in the other form of behavior. Participants reported increased well-being (positive affect and feelings of connectedness and flow) after the extraversion week, and decreased well-being after the introversion week, regardless of their general personality tendencies toward extraversion or introversion. DOI: 10.1037/xge0000668opens in new window
Modest assumptions
Humble people recognize their own merits but do not believe those merits entitle them to special treatment, according to a study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. In two studies, researchers asked 419 online participants to identify positive personal characteristics or accomplishments they were proud of, and to rate how they believed these characteristics and accomplishments compared with those of other people. The participants also rated how entitled they felt to special treatment because of their characteristics and accomplishments. The researchers found that people who scored higher on measures of humility did not downplay the specialness of their characteristics and accomplishments but were less likely than those scoring lower on humility to believe that those characteristics and accomplishments entitled them to more respect from others. DOI: 10.1177/0146167219875144opens in new window
Life expectancy disparity
Compared with the general population, life expectancy is up to a decade shorter in people with mental disorders, according to a study in The Lancet. Researchers examined health data from almost 7.4 million people living in Denmark between 1995 and 2015. Using a measurement of “life-years lost,” the researchers derived life-expectancy estimates for separate groups of mental disorders, including depression, anxiety disorders and schizophrenia. They found that, on average, mental disorders shorten life expectancy by 10 years for men and seven years for women. The disorders associated with the largest and smallest average life-years change were substance use disorders in males (14.8 years) and organic disorders in females (5.42 years), respectively. Some of the increased mortality was due to suicide, but much was due to diseases such as cardiovascular disease, lung disease, diabetes and cancer. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(19)32316-5
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How people judge job candidates
The prospects of job candidates often hinge on how others perceive their social status, which is evaluated within seconds after they start to speak, suggests a study in PNAS. Across four experiments with 1,243 online participants, researchers assessed the accuracy with which people perceived a person’s social class based on a few seconds of their speech and how that perception influenced their social judgments of the person. The researchers found that people listening to seven common words were able to correctly identify a speaker’s social class a little more than half the time. In a fifth study, 274 individuals in the United States with hiring experience either listened to audio recordings or read transcripts of recordings of 20 job candidates from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds who were answering the question “How would you describe yourself?” The “hiring managers” who listened to the audio recordings were better at assessing the candidates’ social status than were those who read transcripts. They also judged the higher social class candidates as being better suited for the job—and assigned them higher salaries and signing bonuses—than the lower social class applicants. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1900500116opens in new window
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