Empathy in eye of beholder
People’s liking and respect wane for those who empathize with morally questionable individuals, suggests research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Researchers recruited 3,342 participants in the United States for seven online studies. Across the studies, they presented the participants with various scenarios where one individual responded to another individual’s shared personal experience with either empathy or neutrality. Participants liked and respected the empathizer as long as they also respected the empathizer’s target. When participants didn’t approve of the empathizer’s target (e.g., due to ethical or political beliefs), participants did not like and respect the empathizer as much. In some studies, participants even preferred it when the responder condemned rather than empathized with the disliked character. DOI: 10.1037/pspi0000341opens in new window
Bond with teacher affects health
Positive student-teacher relationships may benefit teenagers’ long-term health more so than positive student-peer friendships, according to research in School Psychology. A researcher analyzed data on 20,745 participants from a nationally representative longitudinal study in the United States that followed participants for 13 years, from seventh grade into early adulthood. The participant pool included 3,436 pairs of siblings. The researcher found that participants who reported better relationships with peers and teachers in middle school and high school also reported better physical and mental health in their mid-20s. However, after controlling for family background shared by pairs of siblings, only the association between good student-teacher relationships and adult health remained significant. DOI: 10.1037/spq0000373opens in new window
Grin (or grimace) and bear it
A full smile or a grimace can reduce the pain of a needle injection by as much as 40%, suggests a study in Emotion. Researchers asked 231 participants in the United States to self-report levels of pain, emotion, and distress in response to an injection of saline solution. The researchers also assessed participant heart rate and electrodermal activity. Just before injection, participants were instructed to express either a full smile (including wrinkling around the eyes), an incomplete or phony smile, a grimace, or a neutral expression. Those who donned either a full smile or a grimace reported that the injection hurt almost half as much as those in the incomplete smile or neutral expression groups. Full smiles were also associated with significantly lower heart rates. These effects may be due to feedback from facial musculature to pain or emotion processes. DOI: 10.1037/emo0000913opens in new window
Comparison is key to money/happiness link
People’s happiness is linked more strongly to how they perceive their own income, education, and occupation compared with others than it is to objective measures of socioeconomic status, according to research in Psychological Bulletin. Researchers performed a meta-analysis of 357 studies involving 2,352,095 participants in 103 countries. The analysis assessed the association between objective and subjective measures of socioeconomic status and participants’ subjective well-being (based on ratings of happiness and life satisfaction). The researchers found that people with higher subjective socioeconomic status reported higher levels of subjective well-being. This relationship was stronger than the connection between people’s objective socioeconomic status and well-being. The researchers also found that the effect of social comparison was stronger in areas with higher population density, possibly owing to a greater competition for resources in more densely populated areas. DOI: 10.1037/bul0000258opens in new window
Jargon as status symbol
People use jargon to compensate for low social status in a group, suggests research in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Across four initial studies with 1,547 participants in the United States, researchers either assessed the status of participants or assigned them to low- or high-status groups, and then gave them opportunities to use more or less jargon, such as pitching a start-up idea or presenting scientific research. They found low-status participants used more jargon, acronyms, and legalese than their high-status counterparts. Another pair of studies looking at titles of 64,956 dissertations found that students from lower-tier universities used more jargon and acronyms than those from higher-ranked schools. A final three studies with 1,193 participants asked low-status group members—who tended to use more jargon—why they chose the language they did. The responses indicated that concerns about being judged by an audience, rather than about communicating more clearly, were a primary motivator. DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.07.001opens in new window
Multiple meds for kids
The number of kids prescribed multiple psychiatric medications has been increasing since 1999, according to a study in JAMA Pediatrics. Researchers evaluated data from a nationally representative study of participants in the United States. The researchers divided the data into three time periods to more easily identify changes over time. They found that the number of children up to age 18 who were prescribed three or more psychiatric drugs increased from 101,836 (1999–2004) to 222,955 (2005–10) to 293,492 (2011–15). Among children prescribed multiple medications, antipsychotic prescriptions increased from 38% in 1999–2004 to 75% in 2011–15. In contrast, mood stabilizer prescriptions decreased from 61% to 38% over the same time period, as did antidepressant prescriptions, going from 71% to 64%. Stimulants were the most common type of drug prescription, peaking at 82% in 2005–10 before falling to 78% in 2011–15. No children ages 4 and under were prescribed multiple psychiatric medications in the first two time periods, but by the latest time period, 1.3% of those prescribed multiple medications were 4 or under. During every time period, the most common diagnosis among children prescribed multiple prescriptions was attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.4678opens in new window
More info? No thanks
People who are firm in their beliefs seek less information, and as a result they perform worse on decision-making tasks than those who update their views with new information, suggests a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers asked 734 adults in the United States to perform a simple decision-making task online. Participants viewed two boxes with flickering dots and were asked which box contained more dots. Following their initial choice, participants had the opportunity to view another version of the boxes where the differences were easier to see before making a final decision. Participants then answered questionnaires assessing their political orientation and levels of dogmatism. The initial decisions of dogmatic individuals and moderates were equally accurate and confident. However, more-dogmatic participants were more likely to forgo the helpful additional information and were ultimately less accurate in their final judgments. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2009641117opens in new window
Stress rekindles tumor growth
Stress hormones and immune cells called neutrophils may contribute to the recurrence of tumors years after treatment by awakening dormant cancer cells, suggests a study of mice and data from 80 patients with lung cancer in Science Translational Medicine. Researchers found that exposing cancer-recovered mice to stressful situations elevated levels of stress hormones, which caused neutrophils to release specific types of proteins and fatty acids that in turn prompted tumor cells to reawaken from dormancy. However, tumor cells remained dormant in stressed mice who received a beta blocker that inhibited the effects of stress hormones. The researchers also observed that 80 cancer-recovered patients in the United States with higher serum concentrations of stress-related proteins were more likely to have experienced cancer recurrence 33 months after surgery. The researchers suggest that beta blockers, or other drugs that specifically target these proteins, could potentially help prevent tumors from returning. DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abb5817opens in new window
Hungry for social contact
Lonely people’s brains respond to images of social gatherings in ways similar to how hungry people’s brains respond to images of food, suggests research in Nature Neuroscience. Researchers had 40 young adults in the United States fast for 10 hours. At the end of that period, participants underwent MRI scans. The researchers found that certain regions in the participants’ midbrains became activated in response to pictures of pizza and chocolate cake. On a different day, the same participants underwent 10 hours of social isolation after which MRI scans revealed that the same midbrain regions became activated in response to pictures of people chatting or playing team sports. The effects in the social isolation study were smaller for participants who reported more loneliness in the months prior to the experiment. DOI:
10.1038/s41593-020-00742-zopens in new window
Suicide risk higher in individuals with ADHD
A study in the Archives of Suicide Research indicates that women with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are 8 times as likely to attempt suicide, while men with ADHD are 4.5 times as likely. A nationally representative study of 21,744 Canadian adults, 529 of whom reported an ADHD diagnosis, revealed that the lifetime prevalence of suicide attempts was higher for women who had ADHD (24%) than for women who did not (3%). Among men, those with ADHD were also more likely to have attempted suicide than those without ADHD (9% vs. 2%). In addition, adults with ADHD who had observed chronic parental domestic violence had 3 times as many suicide attempts compared with their peers with ADHD who had not observed parental violence. DOI: 10.1080/13811118.2020.1856258opens in new window
COVID triggers mental illness for some
A study in The Lancet Psychiatry reveals that 1 in 5 COVID-19 survivors developed a mental illness within 90 days of infection. Researchers reviewed electronic health records of 69 million Americans, 62,354 of whom received a diagnosis of COVID-19 between Jan. 20 and Aug. 1, 2020. The researchers compared this group with matched groups of people diagnosed with other health problems during the same time period. The data indicated that a COVID-19 diagnosis increased the likelihood of a psychiatric diagnosis within 90 days of infection to a greater degree than other health problems did. Increases were greatest for diagnoses of anxiety disorders, insomnia, and dementia. The results suggest the possibility that coronavirus infection affects the brain, either directly or through other biological pathways such as immune responses. The researchers also found that people with a preexisting mental health diagnosis were 65% more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those without, even after accounting for known risk factors such as age, race, sex, and underlying health conditions. DOI: 10.1016/ S2215-0366(20)30462-4opens in new window
Driving not impaired by CBD
Cannabidiol (CBD), the medically useful component of cannabis, may not impair driving performance at all, while the impairing effects of the psychoactive component tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) may last less than 4 hours, suggests a study in JAMA. Researchers gave 26 healthy participants in the Netherlands three types of cannabis in vaporized form on separate occasions. Each participant’s driving performance was then assessed for 1 hour at two different times: beginning 40 minutes and then 4 hours after inhalation. The tests were conducted along a 60-mile stretch of public highway in a car with a driving instructor present. Cannabis containing mainly CBD did not impair driving (as measured by lane weaving, swerving, and overcorrecting), while cannabis containing mainly THC or a THC/CBD mixture caused mild impairment measured at 40 minutes after inhalation, but not after 4 hours. Further research examining a wider range of dosage levels is needed to fully assess the impacts of these cannabis components on driving. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2020.21218opens in new window
Worth of animals’ lives
Children value the lives of dogs and pigs more than adults do, suggests a study in Psychological Science. In an online study, researchers presented 207 children between the ages of 5 and 9 and 222 adults in the United States with a series of vignettes involving shipwrecks. The participants were told that two ships were sinking and that passengers could be saved from only one ship. The passengers of one boat were humans, while the passengers of the other boat were either dogs or pigs. Many children prioritized dogs, and to a lesser extent pigs, nearly as much as humans. Almost all the adults, on the other hand, chose to save one human over even 100 dogs or pigs. According to the researchers, the results suggest moral judgments about the relative importance of animals and humans appear late in development and are likely socially acquired. DOI: 10.1177/0956797620960398opens in new window
Shunning solitude-seekers
People with a higher preference for solitude are more likely to encounter social isolation and exclusion by others, according to a series of five studies in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. In the first two studies, using self-reported experiences (473 participants in the Netherlands) and perceptions of others’ experiences (280 online participants), individuals with a stronger preference for solitude were more likely to be excluded from social situations. In a pair of experimental studies, a total of 278 participants in the United States were more willing to socially exclude others who had a high preference for solitude. A final study with 792 participants in the Netherlands that examined why people shun solitude-seeking individuals found that the participants assumed interacting with these individuals would be unpleasant for themselves and for the solitude-seekers. DOI: 10.1177/0146167220968612opens in new window
