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

Over the past few years data has shown that exercise creates neurobiological changes, according to David Bucci, an associate professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences.

His latest research finds that the effects of exercise are different on memory, as well as on the brain, depending on whether the exerciser is an adolescent or an adult. Researchers have also identified a gene that seems to mediate the degree to which exercise has a beneficial effect, which has implications for the use of exercise as an intervention for mental illness, Bucci said.

He said he began his pursuit of the link between exercise and memory with ADHD, one of the most common childhood psychological disorders, noting he is concerned that the treatment of choice is medication.

“The notion of pumping children full of psycho-stimulants at an early age is troublesome,” Bucci said. “We frankly don’t know the long-term effects of administering drugs at an early age — drugs that affect the brain — so looking for alternative therapies is clearly important.”

Anecdotal evidence from colleagues at the University of Vermont pointed Bucci toward studying exercise and ADHD. Researchers observed that ADHD children in Vermont summer camps, athletes or team sports players were found to respond better to behavioral interventions than more sedentary children. While systematic empirical data is lacking, this association of exercise with a reduction of characteristic ADHD behaviors was persuasive enough for Bucci.

Coupled with his interest in learning and memory and their underlying brain functions, Bucci and teams of graduate and undergraduate students embarked upon a series of experiments to investigate the potential connection between exercise and brain function.

Early on, they found that laboratory rats that exhibit ADHD-like behavior demonstrated that exercise was able to reduce the extent of these behaviors. The researchers also found that exercise was more beneficial for female rats than males, similar to how it affects male and female children with ADHD.

Next they investigated a mechanism through which exercise seems to improve learning and memory called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which is involved in the growth of the developing brain. The degree of BDNF in exercising rats correlated positively with improved memory.

The researchers also found that it had longer-lasting effects in adolescents compared to adults.

“The implication is that exercising during development, as your brain is growing, is changing the brain in concert with normal developmental changes, resulting in your having more permanent wiring of the brain in support of things like learning and memory,” says Bucci. “It seems important to [exercise] early in life.”

Bucci’s latest paper was a move to take the studies of exercise and memory in rats and apply them to humans. The subjects in this new study were Dartmouth undergraduates and individuals recruited from the Hanover community.

According to Bucci, an interesting finding was that a person’s genotype for BDNF affected whether exercise benefited learning and memory.

“This could mean that you may be able to predict which ADHD child, if we genotype them and look at their DNA, would respond to exercise as a treatment and which ones wouldn’t,” he said.

The notion that exercise is good for health, including mental health, is not a huge surprise, he concludes. “The interesting question in terms of mental health and cognitive function is how exercise affects mental function and the brain,” he said.

Source: Dartmouth College

Child exercising photo by shutterstock.

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

Pregnant woman photo by shutterstock.

The study also found that this rewiring involves fibers that supply input to the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that is responsible for sensory perception, motor control, and cognition.

“This study overturns decades-old beliefs that most of the brain is hard-wired before a critical period that ends when one is a young adult,” said Marcel Oberlaender, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Florida Institute (MPFI) and first author on the paper. “By changing the nature of sensory experience, we were able to demonstrate that the brain can rewire, even at an advanced age. This may suggest that if one stops learning and experiencing new things as one ages, a substantial amount of connections within the brain may be lost.”

The researchers examined the brains of older rats, focusing on an area of the brain known as the thalamus, which processes and delivers information obtained from sensory organs to the cerebral cortex. Connections between the thalamus and the cortex have been thought to stop changing by early adulthood, but this was not found to be the case in this study, according to Oberlaender.

As nocturnal animals, rats rely on their whiskers as sensory organs to explore and navigate their environment. This makes the whisker system an ideal model for studying whether the brain can be remodeled by changing sensory experiences, the researchers note. By trimming the whiskers, and preventing the rats from receiving sensory input, the scientists sought to determine whether extensive rewiring of the connections between the thalamus and cortex would occur.

They found that the animals with trimmed whiskers had altered axons, fibers along which information is conveyed from one nerve cell to many others, while those whose whiskers were not trimmed had no changes.

The researchers said their findings were particularly striking as the rats were considered relatively old. This implies that rewiring can still take place at an age not previously thought possible, according to the researchers. Also notable was that the rewiring happened rapidly — in as little as a few days, the researchers add.

“We’ve shown that the structure of the rodent brain is in constant flux, and that this rewiring is shaped by sensory experience and interaction with the environment,” said Oberlaender.

“These changes seem to be life-long and may pertain to other sensory systems and species, including people. Our findings open the possibility of new avenues of research on development of the aging brain using quantitative anatomical studies combined with noninvasive imaging technologies suitable for humans, such as functional MRI (fMRI).”

The study was possible due to advances in high-resolution imaging and reconstruction techniques, developed in part by Oberlaender at MPFI. These techniques enable researchers to trace the fine and complex branching patterns of individual axons, with typical diameters less than a thousandth of a millimeter, throughout the entire brain.

The study was published in the May 24 issue of Neuron.

Source: Max Planck Florida Institute

Over the course of time, it has become widely accepted that human emotions are highly contagious. For example, seeing someone smile often triggers a corresponding emotional response in the observer.

Experts believe that this synchronization of emotional states across individuals may sustain social interaction. That is, when all group members share a common emotional state, their brains and bodies process the environment in a similar fashion.

Finnish researchers at Aalto University and Turku PET Centre believe their research shows how experiencing strong emotions puts individuals in sync.

In the study, participants’ brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they were viewing short, pleasant, neutral and unpleasant movies.

Investigators discovered that feeling strong unpleasant emotions synchronized brain’s emotion processing networks in the frontal and midline regions. However, experiencing highly arousing events synchronized activity in the networks supporting vision, attention and sense of touch.

Researchers believe this shows that sharing others’ emotional states provides individuals with a somatosensory and neural framework that helps individuals understand others. That is, the neural cues help people understand others’ intentions and actions and allow a person to “tune in” with them.

Such automatic tuning facilitates social interaction and group processes, said psychologist Dr. Lauri Nummenmaa from Aalto University.

The results have major implications for current neural models of human emotions and group behavior, but also deepen our understanding of mental disorders involving abnormal socioemotional processing, Nummenmaa said.

Source: Academy of Finland and Aalto University

Brain scans photo by shutterstock.

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

Genetic man photo by shutterstock.

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

Child looking out door photo by shutterstock.

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

Man eating a pizza photo by shutterstock.

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

The UK study suggests older people with robust brain “wiring” – connections of nerve fibers from different and distinct areas of the brain – are able to process information quickly and that this makes them generally smarter. Accordingly, the research suggests joining distant parts of the brain together with better wiring improves mental performance, signifying that intelligence is not found in a single part of the brain.

Moreover, a degraded condition of this wiring or “white matter” – the billions of nerve fibers that transmit signals around the brain – can negatively affect our intelligence by altering networks and slowing down processing speed.

University of Edinburgh researchers say this demonstrates that the deterioration of white matter with age is likely to be a significant cause of age-related cognitive decline.

In the study, the research team used three different brain imaging techniques in compiling the results, including two that have never been used before in the study of intelligence. These techniques measure the amount of water in brain tissue, indicate structural loss in the brain, and show how well the nerve fibers are insulated.

The researchers examined scans and results of thinking and reaction time tests from 420 people in the Lothian Birth Cohort of 1936, a group of nearly 1,100 people whose intelligence and general health have been tracked since they were 11years of age.

Study author and psychologist Dr. Lars Penke said, “Our results suggest a first plausible way how brain structure differences lead to higher intelligence. The results are exciting for our understanding of human intelligence differences at all ages.

“They also suggest a clear target for seeking treatment for mental difficulties, be they pathological or age-related. That the brain’s nerve connections tend to stay the same throughout the brain means we can now look at factors that affect the overall condition of the brain, like its blood supply.”

As our society ages, uncovering the secrets of good thinking skills in old age is a high priority.

“The research team is now looking at what keeps the brain’s connections healthy,” Penke said. ”We value our thinking skills, and research should address how we might retain them or slow their decline with age.”

Co-author Mark Bastin, M.D., said, “These findings are exciting as they show how quantitative brain imaging can provide novel insights into the links between brain structure and cognitive ability. This is a key research area given the importance of identifying strategies for retaining good mental ability into older age.”

Such findings could have a real impact on tackling mental decline in later life, including dementia.

Source: University of Edinburgh

New research suggests the brain’s visual perception system automatically and unconsciously guides decision-making. The process by which the brain selects one choice over another is driven by what is known as valence perception.

Valence is the positive or negative information automatically perceived in the majority of visual information. The process integrates visual features and associations from experience with similar objects or features. In this way, it is the process that allows our brains to rapidly make choices between similar objects.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have published their findings in the journal Frontiers in Psychology and are now in the process of commercializing the findings for use by online companies.

Researchers believe the findings offer important insights into consumer behavior in ways that traditional consumer marketing focus groups cannot address. For example, asking individuals to react to package designs, ads or logos is simply ineffective.

Instead, companies can use this type of brain science to more effectively assess how unconscious visual valence perception contributes to consumer behavior.

To transfer the research’s scientific application to the online video market, the CMU research team is in the process of founding the start-up company neonlabs through the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps).

“This basic research into how visual object recognition interacts with and is influenced by affect paints a much richer picture of how we see objects,” said Michael J. Tarr, Ph.D. “What we now know is that common, household objects carry subtle positive or negative valences and that these valences have an impact on our day-to-day behavior.”

Tarr added that the NSF I-Corps program has been instrumental in helping the neonlabs’ team take this basic idea and teaching them how to turn it into a viable company. “The I-Corps program gave us unprecedented access to highly successful, experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who provided incredibly valuable feedback throughout the development process,” he said.

NSF established I-Corps for the sole purpose of assessing the readiness of transitioning new scientific opportunities into valuable products through a public-private partnership. The CMU team was awarded a $50,000, six-month grant to investigate how understanding valence perception could be used to make better consumer marketing decisions.

They are launching neonlabs to apply their model of visual preference to increase click rates on online videos, by identifying the most visually appealing thumbnail from a stream of video. The web-based software product selects a thumbnail based on neuroimaging data on object perception and valence, crowd-sourced behavioral data and proprietary computational analyses of large amounts of video streams.

“Everything you see, you automatically dislike or like, prefer or don’t prefer, in part, because of valence perception,” said Sophie Lebrecht, Ph.D., lead author of the study and the entrepreneurial lead for the I-Corps grant. “Valence links what we see in the world to how we make decisions.”

Lebrecht continued, “Talking with companies such as YouTube and Hulu, we realized that they are looking for ways to keep users on their sites longer by clicking to watch more videos. Thumbnails are a huge problem for any online video publisher, and our research fits perfectly with this problem.

“Our approach streamlines the process and chooses the screenshot that is the most visually appealing based on science, which will in the end result in more user clicks.”

Source: Carnegie Mellon University

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.