A provocative new study suggests a male leader is judged more harshly than a comparable female leader when they make an error.

Researchers say that any mistake made by a leader causes employees and followers to view the leader as less competent, less desirable to work for and less effective than leaders who do not make a mistake.

In the new research, Penn State’s Christian Thoroughgood discovered that if the leader is a man making a mistake in a man’s world, he is judged more harshly than a woman making the same mistake in a man’s world.

Thoroughgood and his colleagues have published their findings online in the Journal of Business and Psychology.

Naturally, it is a fact that leaders do make mistakes, and these mistakes can have far-reaching negative consequences. Nevertheless, for leaders to be effective, followers must trust their ability to make difficult decisions, execute their initiatives and act as positive organizational figureheads. Therefore, it is critical that followers see their leaders as competent.

When the leaders make mistakes, followers question their competence and are less willing to follow them and work for them.

Thoroughgood and his colleagues looked at how male and female leaders are rated, not when they succeed, but when they make mistakes.

Investigators studied whether subordinates would perceive their leaders differently according to the type of mistake they made and their gender, i.e., a man or a woman working in either a man’s world (construction) or a woman’s world (nursing).

In the study, a total of 284 undergraduates from a large northeastern university in the US, who had worked on average for nearly three years, read a series of fictional emails describing a leader’s behavior.

They were then asked to envision themselves as subordinates of the leader – either a man or a woman. In the emails, the leaders made two types of errors: task errors and relationship errors.

Survey participants then answered an online survey measuring their perception of the leader’s competence in both task and relationship matters, their desire to work for the leader as well as their opinion of whether the leader was effective or not.

Investigators discovered that errors did damage perceptions of leaders who commit them. Leaders who made mistakes were viewed as less competent in both task and relationship areas and ‘subordinates’ were less likely to want to work for them. They were also seen as less effective.

In addition, the authors observed an effect of gender. Male leaders were evaluated more negatively than female leaders for errors made in masculinized work domains.

The authors suggest that male leaders may be seen as violating expectations of male performance in this context, whereas women are expected to fail in masculine work settings.

The authors conclude that leadership errors do matter as they damage the perception of a leader’s competence and may harm follower’s desire to work for them.

“While it is impractical to suggest leaders should attempt to avoid errors altogether, they should recognize the different types of errors they make and consider how these errors impact their followers in different ways.”

Source: Springer

Researchers from University of California – Davis found that mothers who had fevers during their pregnancies were more than twice as likely to have a child with autism or developmental delay than were mothers who did not have a fever or who took medication to counter its effect.

“Our study provides strong evidence that controlling fevers while pregnant may be effective in modifying the risk of having a child with autism or developmental delay,” said Ousseny Zerbo, Ph.D., lead author of the study. “We recommend that pregnant women who develop fever take anti-pyretic (fever-reducing) medications and seek medical attention if their fever persists.”

The study is published online in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, and is believed to be the first to consider how fever from any cause, including the flu, and its treatment during pregnancy could affect the likelihood of having a child with autism or developmental delay.

Researchers analyzed data from a large, case-control investigation known as the Childhood Autism Risk from Genetics and the Environment (CHARGE) Study. Another recent study based on CHARGE data found that mothers who were obese or diabetic had a higher likelihood of having children with autism.

Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a professor of public health sciences at UC Davis and principal investigator of CHARGE, pointed out that fever is produced by acute inflammation — the short-term, natural immune system reaction to infection or injury — and that chronic inflammation, which no longer serves a beneficial purpose and can damage healthy tissue, may be present in mothers with metabolic abnormalities like diabetes and obesity.

“Since an inflammatory state in the body accompanies obesity and diabetes as well as fever,” said Hertz-Picciotto, “the natural question is: Could inflammatory factors play a role in autism?”

Typically, when people are infected by bacteria or viruses, the body mounts a healing response that involves the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines from white blood cells into the bloodstream. Some cytokines are able to cross the placenta, and therefore could reach the fetal central nervous system, potentially altering neurotransmitters and brain development.

“We definitely think more research is necessary to pinpoint the ways that inflammation could alter brain development,” said Hertz-Picciotto.

CHARGE includes an ethnically diverse population of children aged 2 to 5 years born in California and living in Northern California. The current study included 538 children with autism, 163 children with developmental delay but not autism, and 421 typically developing children whose mothers answered standardized questionnaires about whether they had the flu and/or fever during pregnancy and if they took medications to treat their illnesses.

Interestingly, the results showed that flu during pregnancy was not associated with greater risks of having a child with autism or developmental delay. Fever from any cause during pregnancy, however, was far more likely to be reported by mothers of children with autism (2.12 times higher odds) or developmental delay (2.5 times higher odds), as compared with mothers of children who were developing typically.

For children of mothers who took anti-fever medication, the risk of autism was not different from the risk in children whose mothers reported no fever.

According to Hertz-Picciotto, the results are noteworthy because of the study’s large population-based sample and detailed information on participants.

Prior discoveries from the CHARGE evaluations suggest that taking prenatal vitamins prior to and during the first month of pregnancy may help prevent autism and that living near a freeway or in areas with high regional air pollution is associated with higher risk of autism in children.

“CHARGE has obtained a wealth of environmental, demographic and medical information on young children and their parents and provides a solid basis for a variety of epidemiologic studies,” said Hertz-Picciotto. “Those studies are helping us find ways to protect childhood neurodevelopment.”

Source: University of California – Davis Health System

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A new study suggest that for some people, the ability to resist the temptation of extra calories is especially challenging as individuals may have “obesity genes” that increase the likelihood of a high-calorie diet – often consisting of high fat, sugary foods.

Nevertheless, the findings suggest that it may still be possible to minimize genetic risk by changing one’s eating patterns and being vigilant about food choices, in addition to adopting other healthy lifestyle habits, like regular physical activity.

The study, published online by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, reveals certain variations within the FTO and BDNF genes – which have been previously linked to obesity – may play a role in eating habits that can cause obesity.

“Understanding how our genes influence obesity is critical in trying to understand the current obesity epidemic, yet it’s important to remember that genetic traits alone do not mean obesity is inevitable,” said lead author Jeanne M. McCaffery, Ph.D., of The Miriam Hospital’s Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center.

“Our lifestyle choices are critical when it comes to determining how thin or heavy we are, regardless of your genetic traits,” she added. “However, uncovering genetic markers can possibly pinpoint future interventions to control obesity in those who are genetically predisposed.”

Researchers have known that individuals who carry a variant of the fast mass and obesity-associated gene FTO and BDNF (or brain-derived neurotrophic factor gene) are at increased risk for obesity.

Prior studies have determined that these genes are linked with overeating in children with the current study being one of the first investigations to extend the finding to adults.

Both FTO and BDNF genes influence the part of the brain that controls eating and appetite, although the mechanisms by which these gene variations influence obesity is still unknown.

In the current study, more than 2,000 participants completed a questionnaire about their eating habits over the past six months and also underwent geneotyping.

Researchers focused on nearly a dozen genes that have been previously associated with obesity. They then examined whether these genetic markers influenced the pattern or content of the participants’ diet.

Individuals who displayed variations in the FTO gene were found to be significantly associated with a greater number of meals and snacks per day, greater percentage of energy from fat and more servings of fats, oils and sweets.

The findings are largely consistent with previous research in children.

Moreover, researchers discovered individuals with BDNF variations consume more servings from the dairy and the meat, eggs, nuts and beans food groups. Individuals also consumed approximately 100 more calories per day, which McCaffery notes could have a substantial influence on one’s weight.

“We show that at least some of the genetic influence on obesity may occur through patterns of dietary intake,” she said. “The good news is that eating habits can be modified, so we may be able to reduce one’s genetic risk for obesity by changing these eating patterns.”

McCaffery says that while this research greatly expands their knowledge on how genetics may influence obesity, the data must be replicated before the findings can be translated into possible clinical measures.

Source: Miriam Hospital

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Researchers used a comprehensive and contemporary form of group-based cognitive-behavioral therapy to treat child war and sexual violence victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in central Africa. Cognitive-behavioral therapy has been successfully used to treat child victims of sexual violence in the West, although this was the first attempt to adapt the intervention for use in developing countries affected by war and sexual violence.

Amazingly, researchers discovered the intervention reduced the trauma experienced by child victims of war, rape and sexual abuse by more than 50 percent.

Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast pioneered the intervention in conjunction with the international NGO World Vision.

The trial setting, Eastern Congo, has the world’s highest rate of sexual violence. Known as “the rape capital of the world,it is estimated that girls and women in the eastern DRC are 134 times more likely to be raped than their counterparts in the West.

After only 15 sessions of the new group-based Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy (TF-CBT), Queen’s researchers found reductions of:

• 72 percent in trauma symptoms in female victims of rape and sexual abuse;
• 81 percent in feelings of depression and anxiety;
• 72 percent decrease in conduct disorder;
• 64 percent decrease in anti-social behavior.

Researchers believe the knowledge gained in the multifaceted intervention can also be used to improved group-based cognitive interventions in the West. Sadly, in war-affected countries, such as the DRC, victims of rape and sexual violence often do not receive any psychological or even medical help.

In the Queen’s study, the children received sessions of trauma psychoeducation, relaxation techniques, mental imagery techniques, and tips on how to identify and change particular inaccurate or unhelpful cognitions.

The girls also drew pictures of their most traumatic events and were encouraged to talk about these events in individual sessions with Queen’s psychologists and a team of Congolese counselors.

Speaking about the implications of the results for treating child victims of war and sexual abuse worldwide, Paul O’Callaghan, from Queen’s School of Psychology, said, “It is not surprising that studies show sexual abuse to have a profoundly detrimental effect on the mental health of girls in war-affected countries, but what is surprising was just how successful the intervention was in reducing psychological distress.

“The dramatic reduction in trauma, depression and anxiety, conduct problems and anti-social behavior shows that this kind of therapy is very effective in treating war-affected children who have been exposed to rape and sexual violence. In addition to the statistical results of the therapy, many of the girls attested to how the intervention helped reduced their terrible nightmares, disturbing flashbacks and suicidal thinking,” O’Callaghan said.

“For me, that was the most rewarding part of our work in the DRC.”

The study, which took place over five weeks in 2011, also treated the psychological distress of 50 war-affected boys between the ages of 12 and 17. It was shown to dramatically reduce levels of trauma, depression and anxiety, conduct disorder and anti-social behavior in male child soldiers and street children.

Source: Queen’s University Belfast

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The study from researchers at Oregon State University focused on people who have more than one role, such as an engineer who is also a manager, or an Army medic who is also a soldier.

In the study, to be published in a future issue of The Academy of Management Journal, lead author Keith Leavitt, Ph.D., found that workers who tend to have dual roles in their jobs would change their moral judgments based on what they thought was expected of them at the time.

“When people switch hats, they often switch moral compasses,” Leavitt said. “People like to think they are inherently moral creatures — you either have character or you don’t. But our studies show that the same person may make a completely different decision based on what hat they may be wearing at the time, often without even realizing it.”

Leavitt, an assistant professor of management in the College of Business at OSU, said that “what we consider to be moral sometimes depends on what constituency we are answering to at that moment. For a physician, a human life is priceless. But if that same physician is a managed-care administrator, some degree of moral flexibility becomes necessary to meet their obligations to stockholders.”

He says that businesses should provide subtle cues, such as signage and motivation materials around the office, along with training that helps employees who juggle multiple roles that could conflict with one another.

“Organizations and businesses need to recognize that even very subtle images and icons can give employees non-conscious clues as to what the firm values,” he said. “Whether they know it or not, people are often taking in messages about what their role is and what is expected of them, and this may conflict with what they know to be the moral or correct decision.”

The researchers conducted three studies with employees who had dual roles. In the first, 128 U.S. Army medics were asked to complete a series of problem-solving tests, which included subliminal cues that hinted they might be acting as either a medic or a soldier. All 128 said the cues had no bearing on their behavior, but apparently they did, according to the researchers, who noted that a much larger percentage of those in the medic category than in the soldier category were unwilling to put a price on human life.

In another test, a group of engineer-managers were asked to write about a time they either behaved as a typical manager, engineer, or both. They were then asked whether U.S. firms should engage in “gifting” to gain a foothold in a new market.

Despite the fact that this would violate federal laws, more than 50 percent of those who fell into the “manager” category said such a practice might be acceptable, compared to 13 percent of those in the engineer category.

“We find that people tend to make decisions that may conflict with their morals when they are overwhelmed, or when they are just doing routine tasks without thinking of the consequences,” Leavitt said. “We tend to play out a script as if our role has already been written. The bottom line is, slow down and think about the consequences when making an ethical decision.”

Source: Oregon State University

Often a man will stay on a diet while at home to avoid conflict, then splurge or even binge on unhealthy food when away from home.

“The key to married men adopting a healthier diet is for couples to discuss and negotiate the new, healthier menu changes as a team,” said Derek Griffith, Ph.D., assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Although the finding seems obvious, most times it doesn’t happen, according to a new study called “She Looks Out For The Meals, Period.’ African-American Men’s Perceptions of How Their Wives Influence Their Eating Behavior and Dietary Health.”

In the study, researchers held focus group meeting with 83 African-American men. The majority of men said their wives didn’t consult them when helping them to adopt a healthier diet.

In many cases the husbands disliked the food changes even though the healthier diet was ordered by a physician. However, rather than discussing this issue with their wife and coming to a common ground on what they would eat, men stayed silent and focused on maintaining a happy home.

In fact, the only examples found of couples negotiating healthy food choices came about to benefit the children in the home, Griffith said.

Researchers discovered the absence of communication often compromised significant dietary change. After tasteless ground turkey for the fifth night in a row, some men would head to the all-you-can-eat buffet for “a landslide of food.”

“I think at dinner a lot of men are eating healthier, but they compensate for the dissatisfaction of not eating what they want by making unhealthier choices outside the home,” Griffith said.

Health care providers can improve dietary change compliance by recognizing that wives play a central role in what men eat at home, Griffith said.

Providers could instruct wife’s on communication and behavioral change strategies to encourage and support the new dietary behavior.

“Doctors could suggest that men have a tactful conversation with their wives in a way that ensures the husbands aren’t sleeping on the couch that night,” Griffith said.

The study was published this month in the journal Health Psychology.

Source: University of Michigan

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Individuals respond to adverse situations in a variety of ways. Some never recover from a traumatic event, such as the loss of a spouse or child, while a majority slog through the dark hours of intense negative emotions (anxiety, depression) and eventually move on with their life, gradually adapting to a new status quo.

However, a third group is made up of individuals whose adversities have made them grow personally and whose life takes on new meaning, making them feel stronger than before.

Researchers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona surveyed 254 students to determine their level of satisfaction with life.

The investigators also looked to find connections between an individual’s resilience and their capacity of emotional recovery – the ability to control one’s emotions – and a component of emotional intelligence.

Investigators discovered that the 20 percent of students who were more resilient were also more satisfied with their lives. This group also believed they have control over their emotions and their state of mind.

As such, researchers posit that an individual’s capability to bounce back from stress and adversity, their resilience, has a positive prediction effect on the level of satisfaction with one’s life.

The good news is that resiliency is not an innate characteristic, rather a skill that can be developed and improved.

“Some of the characteristics of being resilient can be worked on and improved, such as self-esteem and being able to regulate one’s emotions. Learning these techniques can offer people the resources needed to help them adapt and improve their quality of life,” said Dr. Joaquín T Limonero, coordinator of the research.

Source: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

This bipartisan domestic policy goes back to the George W. Bush administration, and has been endorsed by the Obama team. The policy followed research suggestions that healthy marriages equal a healthy society.

Researchers from Binghamton University, however, said the problem is that the initial research data that promoted the happy marriage/healthy society relationship was based on data gathered from white and middle-class marriages – and, when applied to poor couples or couples of color, the relationship between a happy marriage and societal improvements falls apart.

The study is published in the current issue of American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association.

“Initially, the rationale for these programs came from policy makers and scholars, who homed in on the association between unmarried parents and poverty that is plainly obvious in the data,” said Dr. Matthew D. Johnson, associate professor of psychology at Binghamton University.

This association led Bush to make the promotion of healthy marriages a central plank of his domestic policy agenda, resulting in the implementation of the Healthy Marriage Initiatives (endorsed by Barack Obama).

“Unfortunately, the data on the success of these programs has started to roll in, and the results have been very disappointing,” Johnson said.

Johnson believes the problem lies in the fact that many of these programs lack grounding in solid science and are allowed to run unchecked. He cites research from two recent multi-site studies as evidence that many of the federal programs that promote healthy marriage need to be suspended – or at the very least, overhauled.

One of these studies focused on over 5,000 couples in eight cities. Researchers examined the benefits of interventions designed to improve the relationships of low-income, unmarried couples who were either pregnant or recently had their first child.

The results indicated that the interventions had no effect in six of the cities, small beneficial effects in one city, and small detrimental effects in another city.

The results of the other outcome study focused on 5,395 low-income married couples and found that those who received the intervention experienced very small improvements in relationship satisfaction, communication, and psychological health but no significant changes in relationship dissolution or cooperative parenting.

Moreover, the interventions didn’t come cheap, costing on average around $9,100 per couple.

Johnson believes different populations and resulting different priorities influenced the program outcomes. A main issue is that the best of these programs – the ones based on scientific findings – were initially studied with middle-class couples while the federal initiatives target poor couples.

And even if the research that formed the basis of these interventions does apply, relationship improvement just doesn’t seem to be a priority for poor couples.

“There is evidence that suggests poor women want to be married and understand the benefits of healthy marriages,” said Johnson.

“But earning enough for basic household expenses, keeping their children safe and working with their children’s overburdened schools are much more urgent concerns, making the idea of focusing on marriage seem self-indulgent if not irrelevant to many poor parents. When faced with a myriad of social issues, building intimate relationships is just not high on their priority lists.”

Johnson said that this doesn’t mean the federal government shouldn’t be funding intimate relationship research. Instead, the government needs to adopt a more multifaceted approach: focus on programs that will ease the stress of poor families and at the same time, fund more rigorous basic research.

“We just don’t have solid predictors for relationship satisfaction for poor couple and couple of color, let alone whether the current marriage models apply,” he said.

Johnson pointed to the National Institutes of Health as being the perfect place to coordinate and sponsor the research, noting “It has a long history of using scientific rigor in decision-making and it would certainly help in achieving the type of results that we’re looking for from these initiatives.”

Source: Binghamton University, State University of New York

Couple having an argument photo by shutterstock.

New research looks at risk factors for cognitive decline and dementia and how low to moderate alcohol consumption can serve to protect the brain from deterioration while heavy alcohol can destroy brain function.

A review paper by J.W. Kim in Psychiatry Investigation summarizes the potential ways alcohol may affect cognitive function and the risk of dementia, both adversely and favorably. The variance in outcomes depends on the dose (how much alcohol consumed) and the drinking pattern.

Using longitudinal and brain imaging studies, researchers have determined that excessive alcohol consumption may increase the risk of cognitive dysfunction and dementia in the elderly. But regular low to moderate alcohol intake may protect against cognitive decline and dementia and provide cardiovascular benefits.

Currently there is no proven method to prevent cognitive decline or dementia, although a number of studies have shown a lower risk of such conditions among light to moderate drinkers in comparison with non-drinkers.

Other studies have found that beneficial effects are seen only among certain subgroups of subjects. A recent review of subjects over the age of 65 concluded that light-to-moderate alcohol consumption, in comparison with abstinence, was associated with approximately 35-45 percent lower risk of cognitive decline or dementia.

In the current study, the authors state that their intent is to determine if there is an “optimal pattern of drinking” that may protect the elderly against cognitive dysfuntion.

At present, the way by which the moderate intake of wine and other alcoholic beverages reduces the risk of cardiovascular diseases is much better defined than the protective or detrimental effect of alcohol on the brain.

Experts believe further research is needed to evaluate the potential role that alcohol may play in reducing the risk of dementia. And, since the bio-pharmacological protective pathway is not well-defined, researchers believe it would be premature to recommend light-to-moderate drinking for reducing the risk of dementia.

“On the other hand, current biomedical data supports the concept that regular, moderate intake of ethanol is not simply less dangerous for cognitive function, but is positively protective. This is the same conclusion reached by epidemiologic studies,” the authors said.

Source: Boston University Medical Center

Elderly couple drinking wine photo by shutterstock.

Investigators from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) believe this sort of misconduct has most often been carried out by fighters who viewed the enemy as racially different from themselves and used images of the hunt to describe their actions.

“The roots of this behavior lie not in individual psychological disorders,” said social anthropologist Dr. Simon Harrison, “but in a social history of racism and in military traditions that use hunting metaphors for war.

“Although this misconduct is very rare, it has persisted in predictable patterns since the European Enlightenment. This was the period when the first ideologies of race began to appear, classifying some human populations as closer to animals than others.”

European and North American soldiers who have mutilated enemy corpses appear to have drawn racial distinctions of this sort between close and distant enemies.

Researchers say that historically, European and North American soldiers have “fought” their close enemies yet did not touch their bodies after death. However, when they “hunted” their distant enemies the bodies became the trophies that demonstrate masculine skill.

Almost always, only enemies viewed as belonging to other ‘races’ have been treated in this way, said the researchers.

“This is a specifically racialized form of violence,” said Harrison, “and could be considered a type of racially motivated hate crime specific to military personnel in wartime.”

People tend to associate head-hunting and other trophy-taking with”primitive” warfare. They consider wars fought by professional militaries as rational and humane. However, such contrasts are misleading.

The study shows that the symbolic associations between hunting and war that can give rise to abnormal behavior such as trophy-taking in modern military organizations are remarkably close to those in certain indigenous societies where practices such as head-hunting were a recognized part of the culture.

In both cases, mutilation of the enemy dead occurs when enemies are represented as animals or prey. Parts of the corpse are removed like trophies at “the kill.”

Metaphors of war-as-hunting that lie at the root of such behavior are still strong in some armed forces in Europe and North America – not only in military training but in the media and in soldiers’ own self-perception.

Harrison gave the example of the Second World War and shows that trophy-taking was rare on the European battlefields but was relatively common in the war in the Pacific, where some Allied soldiers kept skulls of Japanese combatants as mementos or made gifts of their remains to friends back home.

The study also gives a more recent comparison: there have been incidents in Afghanistan in which NATO personnel have desecrated the dead bodies of Taliban combatants but there is no evidence of such misconduct occurring in the conflicts of the former Yugoslavia where NATO forces were much less likely to have considered their opponents racially “distant.”

Nevertheless, researchers say the behavior is not a tradition. These practices are usually not explicitly taught. Indeed, they seem to be quickly forgotten after the end of wars and veterans often remain unaware of the extent to which they occurred.

Importantly, attitudes towards the trophies themselves change as the enemy ceases to be the enemy.

The study shows how human remains kept by Allied soldiers after the Pacific War became unwanted memory objects over time, which ex-servicemen or their families often donated to museums.

In some cases, veterans have made great efforts to seek out the families of Japanese soldiers in order to return their remains and to disconnect themselves from a disturbing past.

Harrison said human trophy-taking is evidence of the power of metaphor in structuring and motivating human behavior.

“It will probably occur, in some form or other, whenever war, hunting and masculinity are conceptually linked,” he says. “Prohibition is clearly not enough to prevent it. We need to recognize the dangers of portraying war in terms of hunting imagery.”

Source: Economic & Social Research Council

Soldier with knife photo by shutterstock.

At the same forum, cognitive-behavioral therapy receives less attention even though emerging evidence suggests “talk therapy” can be as effective as pharmaceutical for illnesses such as depression.

In the study, psychiatrists from the University of Michigan and Yale University, analyzed the presentations given at two recent meetings of the American Psychiatric Association.

Findings from the analysis are published in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology.

In a study of APA annual meetings held in 2009 and 2010, researchers discovered that of the 278 studies comparing at least two medicines against each other, 195 had been supported by industry, and 83 funded by other means.

The authors then evaluated the studies without knowing which kind of support each one had.

Of the industry-supported studies, 97.4 percent reported results that were positive toward the medicine that the study was designed to test, and 2.6 percent reported mixed results. Remarkably, no industry-sponsored studies with negative results were presented.

In contrast, when industry was not the source of funding, 68.7 percent of the presentations were positive, and 24.1 percent contained mixed results, while 7.2 percent contained negative results.

This “presentation bias,” in which mostly good news about medicines gets reported at meetings, echoes the “publication bias” that has been documented in research published in major journals, said Srijan Sen, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry at the U-M Medical School who led the study.

Sen and his colleague discovered the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, which typically draws 16,000 participants, is characterized by a large industry presence with emphasis on research involving medicines that were still “on patent” and being actively marketed to both psychiatrists attending the conference.

Sen teamed with Yale psychiatrist Maya Prabhu, M.D., M.Sc., to do the formal review.

“This analysis suggests that the APA meeting might be being used as an opportunity to make drugs seem more effective than they are,” he said. At the same time, research discussing the efficacy of “talk therapy” treatments was found to receive much less attention – probably because this intervention does not receive industry backing.

Researchers believe this slanted presentation of new research may influence clinical practice patterns because the APA meeting is a major source of continuing medical education credit for psychiatrists, and a hub for psychiatry residents just starting out in the field.

Sen noted that the research journals and funding agencies have tried to confront research bias in journal articles by requiring pharmaceutical companies to register the clinical trials they are conducting and include the registration number when publishing the study.

This opens up which trials are being reported in the medical literature, and whether the trial results are interpreted according to the original study design. For instance, if a drug trial is designed to test long-term results from a particular treatment, but a paper is published showing positive results over a much shorter term, that could be an indication of bias.

Research meetings could require a similar practice, Sen said. And the APA could be more selective in accepting poster presentation submissions.

If nothing else, Sen said, attendees at the APA’s meeting – and perhaps other large gatherings of psychiatrists – should be aware of the positive bias of the research they will hear about at the meeting. And non-industry funding for research – especially research to compare older “off patent” drugs that aren’t being marketed by industry – is also important, he says.

The federal government has funded large comparison studies in depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, he said – and these mostly showed that the generic medications that have lost their patent protection are just as effective as newer, patent-protected ones.

Even so, psychiatrists prescribe the generic ones far less often than the brand-name patent-protected ones.

Source: University of Michigan

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The finding comes from an experiment in which investigators sent emails from fictional prospective doctoral students to 6,500 professors across 258 institutions, requesting a meeting either that day or next week.

Prospective doctoral students with Caucasian male names were 26 percent more likely to be granted an appointment with a professor when requesting one for next week than those with names signaling that they were minorities (African-American, Hispanic, Indian or Chinese) or females.

However, if the requested appointment was for that day, students of all types were equally likely to get an appointment.

According to researchers, the difference in response is that the time delay between the decision to meet and the moment of the requested appointment affects the way the request is processed.

The study is published in the journal Psychological Science.

Researchers believe the results show that an individual considering scheduling an appointment today thinks concretely and considers “Can/where/when will I do it?”, whereas an individual considering the same appointment in the distant future thinks more abstractly, and considers “Is doing it worthwhile/valuable/desirable?”

Those who focus on the desirability of a meeting are more likely to discriminate against women and minorities than those who focus on logistical concerns.

Researchers say their findings are consistent with previous research that shows decision-makers thinking more abstractly rely more on stereotypes to fill out their picture of future events and their impact.

Experts say the research both highlights discrimination in academia and shows that subtle shifts in context, such as timing, can alter patterns of race- and gender-based discrimination, even eliminating it altogether.

The study was conducted by Drs. Katherine Milkman at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Modupe Akinola at Columbia Business School and Dolly Chugh at New York University Stern School of Business.

Source: Association for Psychological Science

Moreover, positive social contact before a stressful event can reduce and even change the stress response.

The research finding refutes the nearly 100-year-old belief that stress triggers a “fight or flight” response in humans and animals.

In the investigation, Professor Markus Heinrichs and Dr. Bernadette von Dawans expanded a line of research from the late 1990s suggesting that women show an alternate “tend-and-befriend” response to stress – in other words, a protective (“tend”) and friendship-offering (“befriend”) reaction.

Heinrichs and von Dawans wanted to see if the stress response in men could also produce behaviors other than aggression. As such, they targeted their research to investigate male social behavior under stress.

In the research Von Dawans discovered that “men also show social approach behavior as a direct consequence of stress.”

The investigators used a tool they had previously developed to measure stress in public speaking engagements.

The researchers examined the implications of this stressor for social behavior using specially designed social interaction games. These games allowed them to measure positive social behavior – for example, trust or sharing – and negative social behavior – for example, punishment.

Researchers discovered that subjects who were under stress showed significantly more positive social behavior than control subjects who were not in a stressful situation.

Negative social behavior, on the other hand, was not affected by stress.

These findings challenge the belief that a stressful situation always results in an aggressive response.

Heinrichs believes the discovery has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of the social significance of stress.

“From previous studies in our laboratory, we already knew that positive social contact with a trusted individual before a stressful situation reduces the stress response. Apparently, this coping strategy is anchored so strongly that people can also change their stress responses during or immediately after the stress through positive social behavior.”

The results are published in the international journal Psychological Science.

Source: University of Freiburg

Many admit that the way in which they use social media and technology represents their personality and thought processes.

Accordingly, psychological researchers are investigating how new media and devices both reveal and change our mental states.

Two recent articles in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science, explore how trends in technology are changing the questions psychological scientists are asking and the ways they ask them.

The explosive growth of Facebook — with its 800 million-plus users — is viewed by researchers as a ripe target to investigate people’s social relationships.

In a new study, psychological scientists Robert E. Wilson, Samuel T. Gosling and Lindsay T. Graham compiled all social-science studies involving Facebook. They then reviewed the types of questions researchers are asking.

The investigators discovered people are drawn to Facebook because they can maintain connections both with close friends and distant friends in an informal manner.

Researchers have also shown that Facebook users tend to portray themselves accurately in their profiles, making Facebook profiles an excellent source for employers to evaluate job candidates and for businesses to find new consumers for their products.

Companies who decide to use Facebook to collect information should be wary, though, because studies have demonstrated that Facebook users are becoming increasingly concerned about their privacy over time.

The caution for privacy infringement is also a subject scientists must deal with when they design their Facebook studies. However, Wilson and his colleagues believe that the value of the data collected from Facebook outweighs the challenges scientists have to overcome to obtain it.

The now-ubiquitous cell phone represents a new research data source and tool, given the rapid proliferation of smartphones.

Psychological scientists believe the smartphone represents an unprecedented method to achieve real-world or practical information.

Because people are constantly on the go, one of the biggest challenges researchers face is collecting data in real time in people’s everyday environments.

Scenarios can be recreated in the laboratory, but psychological scientist Geoffrey Miller asks why scientists should rely on simulations when they could tap the power of smartphones instead.

One advantage of smartphones is that people tend to carry them almost everywhere they go. The sensors on smartphones can also provide a wealth of information beyond a user’s location, including whether a person is moving, how they are moving, and whether an individual is in close proximity to other smartphone users.

By using “psych apps” that users download to their phones, Miller suggests that scientists would be able to obtain a more accurate representation of how environments influence behavior.

One app already in use is “Mappiness,” which combines your location, ambient noise level, and your mood to find out how your environment influences your mood. Miller also predicts that smartphones could eventually be equipped to detect other things, such as temperature, radiation levels, and pollution.

There are downsides to smartphone research, including the limited battery life of smartphones, having to account for different phone models, and the fact that focusing on smartphones would only allow researchers to study individuals who could afford them (i.e., young, well-to-do people).

Yet Miller believes that it is not a question of whether there will be a smartphone revolution in psychological science research, it is a question of when the revolution will happen.

Source: Association for Psychological Science

Smartphone photo by shutterstock.

Policymakers have questioned whether the increased opportunity to participate in genetic testing would appreciably drive up or diminish test recipients’ demand for potentially costly followup health services.

The study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and colleagues at other institutions allay, at least temporarily, cost concerns at a time when health care cost escalation is a significant national issue.

The study is published in the online issue of Genetics in Medicine.

Genetic tests are available from a growing number of commercial producers. Health care providers and policymakers have been uncertain whether people who received information only about risk would follow up by demanding diagnostic testing to monitor for predicted illnesses.

The study is the first to use electronic health records — rather than self-reported behavior — to measure the impact of genetic testing on the subsequent consumption of health services by commercially insured, healthy adults.

Self-reports, which can be affected by memory lapses and other problems, tend to be less accurate.

“We need to understand the impact of genomic discoveries on the health care system if these powerful technologies are going to improve human health,” said Dan Kastner, M.D., Ph.D., scientific director and head of the National Human Genome Research Institute’s (NHGRI) Division of Intramural Research.

“We are still learning how to integrate new genomic discoveries into clinical care effectively and efficiently.”

“There are a lot of unanswered questions about how genetic test results can be used to guide people toward making positive lifestyle and health behavior changes,” said Colleen McBride, Ph.D., chief of NHGRI’s Social and Behavioral Research Branch.

“This study goes a long way toward bringing data to these debates and shows that people are not likely to make inappropriate demands of health delivery systems if they are properly informed about the limitations of genetic tests.”

Genetic tests, such as those used in this study, can detect common variants of genes associated with modest alterations in the chances of developing particular diseases. The term multiplex refers to simultaneously performing multiple genetic tests on a single blood sample.

Researchers followed 217 healthy people between the ages of 25 and 40 who elected to participate in genetic susceptibility testing offered by their health plan.

Health care usage by the participants was monitored for the 12 months before genetic testing and the 12 months following the testing. Investigator also compared the test group’s behavior with a group of about 400 similar plan members who declined the testing offer.

The researchers counted the number of physician visits and laboratory tests or procedures the people received, particularly those services associated with four of the eight conditions tested by the multiplex panel.

Researchers discovered that most of the procedures or screening tests that were counted were not among those currently recommended for people in this age group who don’t have symptoms.

Saliently, researchers found that participants in genetic testing did not change their overall use of health care services compared with those not tested.

All of the individuals who elected to undergo the multiplex test carried at least one at-risk genetic marker, with the majority carrying an average of nine at-risk variants.

The tests performed for the Multiplex Initiative include a set of genetic variants reliably associated with an increase in disease risk and for which some corrective health behavior has been shown to prevent illness.

Having a risk version of one of the 15 genes on the multiplex genetic test does not mean that a person is certain to get the condition — only that he or she might have a slightly greater chance of developing the health condition, explained Dr. McBride.

There are many things other than genetics that contribute to the risk of common diseases, including lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, smoking and sun exposure.

“Much is written about using genetics to personalize health care,” said co-author Lawrence C. Brody, Ph.D., chief of NHGRI’s Genome Technology Branch.

“Some think that this new generation of genetic tests will be a very positive addition to medicine; others believe they have the potential to make things worse.”

Dr. Brody designed the panel of genetic tests used in the Multiplex Initiative, consisting of 15 genetic markers that play roles in eight common diseases, including type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, lung cancer, colorectal cancer and melanoma.

Source: NIH/National Human Genome Research Institute