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.

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.

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.

Moreover, the anger expressed during a quarrel may represent more than just the current topic of disagreement.

Baylor University researchers say the presentation of anger during a marital argument may reflect the overall climate of your marriage rather than what your partner is feeling at the moment of the dispute.

What’s more, “if your partner is angry, you are likely to miss the fact that your partner might also be feeling sad,” said Keith Sanford, Ph.D. His study — “The Communication of Emotion During Conflict in Married Couples” — is published online in the Journal of Family Psychology.

“I found that people were most likely to express anger, not in the moments where they felt most angry, but rather in the situations where there was an overall climate of anger in their relationship – situations where both partners had been feeling angry over a period of time,” he said.

“This means that if a couple falls into a climate of anger, they tend to continue expressing anger regardless of how they actually feel . . . It becomes a kind of trap they cannot escape.”

Common spats that might fester deal with in-laws, chores, money, affection and time spent on the computer.

Sanford found that when people express anger, they often also feel sad. But while a partner will easily and immediately recognize expressions of anger, the spouse often will fail to notice the sadness.

“When it comes to perceiving emotion in a partner, anger trumps sadness,” he said.

Sometimes the acknowledgment and understanding of genuine sadness during a conflict can help the partners grow closer. The awareness of sorrow can potentially help couples to break out of a climate of anger.

“A take-home message is that there may be times where it is beneficial to express feelings of sadness during conflict, but sad feelings are most likely to be noticed if you are not simultaneously expressing anger,” Sanford said.

The findings were based on self-reporting by 83 married couples as well as observation and rating of their behavior by research assistants, who were given permission by the couples to videotape them through a one-way mirror.

Couples were asked to choose two areas of conflict and talk to each other about them — one chosen by the wife, the other by the husband. They also were asked to rate their emotions and those of their partners before and after each discussion.

One would expect that partners’ emotional intelligence on how their partner feels would be high because of the “insider knowledge” making it easier for them to read each other, Sanford said.

But the only time in which couples made significant use of insider knowledge to distinguish emotions was in interpreting soft emotions — such as hurt or disappointment — in conflicts about specific events, the study showed.

While women expressed soft emotions more, they were no better at perceiving hard emotions (such as anger) than soft ones, Sanford said.

Source: Baylor University

An angry couple fighting photo by shutterstock.

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.

The findings, published in the open-access online journal PLoS ONE, suggest that we unconsciously make gay and straight distinctions, which could affect anti-discrimination policies.

“It may be similar to how we don’t have to think about whether someone is a man or a woman or black or white,” said lead author Joshua Tabak, a psychology graduate student at the University of Washington. “This information confronts us in everyday life.”

He claims that this ability to “spontaneously assess” sexual orientation based on observation or instinct conflicts with the assertion that if people just kept their sexual orientation to themselves then no one else would know and discrimination wouldn’t exist, an argument frequently used by opponents of anti-discrimination policies for lesbian, gay and bisexual people.

In the study, 129 college students viewed 96 photos of young adult men and women who identified themselves as gay or straight. Concerned that facial hair, glasses, makeup, and piercings might provide clues, the researchers only used photos of people who did not have these. They also cropped the grayscale photos so that only faces, not hairstyles, were visible.

For women’s faces, participants were 65 percent accurate in telling the difference between gay and straight faces when the photos flashed on a computer screen for 50 milliseconds, about a third of the time of an eyeblink. Even when the faces were flipped upside down, participants were 61 percent accurate in telling the two apart, Tabak reported.

At 57 percent accuracy, they had a harder time differentiating gay men from straight men, he continued. Accuracy slipped to 53 percent — still statistically above chance — when the men’s faces appeared upside down, he added.

The difference in accuracy for men’s and women’s faces was driven by more false alarm errors with men’s faces — that is, a higher rate of mistaking straight men’s faces as gay, he said.

He postulates that this may be because people are more familiar with the concept of gay men than with lesbians, so they may have been more liberal in judging men’s faces as gay. Another possibility is that the difference between gay and straight women is simply more noticeable than the difference between gay and straight men, he said.

Don’t think you have gaydar? You’re not alone. Tabak said that in his experiments there were “always a small number of people with no ability to distinguish gay and straight faces.”

It’s unclear why some have better gaydar than others, since studies have only tested this in college students, he said. He speculated that “people from older generations or different cultures who may not have grown up knowing they were interacting with gay people” may be less accurate in making gay vs. straight judgments.

Source: University of Washington

Research from Kristina Durante, Ph.D., assistant professor of marketing at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) College of Business, shows that hormones associated with ovulation influence women’s perception of men as potential fathers.

“Previous research has shown in the week near ovulation women become attracted to sexy, rebellious and handsome men like George Clooney or James Bond,” said Durante. “But until now it was unclear why women would ever think it’s wise to pursue long-term relationships with these kinds of men.”

In her first study, women viewed online dating profiles of either a sexy man or a reliable man during periods of high and low fertility. The women were asked to guess how much help they could expect from the men in caring for the baby and around the house. As the women got nearer to ovulation, they thought the sexy man would contribute more to these domestic duties.

“Under the hormonal influence of ovulation, women delude themselves into thinking that the sexy bad boys will become devoted partners and better dads,” said Durante. “When looking at the sexy cad through ovulation goggles, Mr. Wrong looked exactly like Mr. Right.”

In another study, women interacted directly with male actors who played the roles of sexy cad and reliable dad once during ovulation and again at low fertility. Again, ovulating women thought that the sexy cad — but not the reliable dad — would contribute more to childcare, but only if she were his partner.

“When asked about what kind of father the sexy bad boy would make if he were to have children with another woman, women were quick to point out the bad boy’s shortcomings,” said Durante. “But when it came to their own child, ovulating women believed that the charismatic and adventurous cad would be a great father to their kids.”

“While this psychological distortion could be setting some women up to choose partners who are better suited to be short-term mates, missing a mating opportunity with a sexy cad might be too costly for some women to pass up,” Durante continued. “After all, you never know if he could be the ‘one.’”

“Ovulation Leads Women to Perceive Sexy Cads as Good Dads” was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Source: University of Texas at San Antonio

According to a new study published in the Journal of Family Issues, the risk of divorce among military marriages has not seen a real increase since the current military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq began, though they have led to lengthy deployments overseas.

Researchers Benjamin R. Karney, David S. Loughran, and Michael S. Pollard analyzed records from 1998 to 2005 from the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System, which collects data about the male population of active military members, and compared them to the Current Populations Surveys from the same years, which documents statistics about civilians.

The researchers sought to compare the marital and divorce status of military personnel and civilians in the years immediately before and after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The researchers found that, despite the fact that more service members began to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2005, the divorce rates for military couples remained constant, and did not exceed the divorce rates of civilian couples.

The researchers said they took measures to control for differences in age, race, education level, and employment. They found that not only were servicemen either equally or less likely to be divorced than civilians, but that this disparity increased with older or retired servicemen.

“A possible explanation for this pattern is that time spent in military service enhances the stability of military marriages,” the researchers said.

They noted that the benefits provided to married military members, such as full health care coverage, cost of living bonuses, and the ability to live off-base with their families, also contribute to marriage stability.

Source: SAGE, Journal of Family Issues

“Sadly, our results show that many women must cope with multiple forms of violence, and that some combinations of violent experiences put women at risk for HIV, other STDs or unplanned pregnancy, not to mention the risks from the violence itself,” said lead author Jennifer Walsh, Ph.D., of The Miriam Hospital’s Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine.

Although previous research has linked sexually risky behavior and diverse forms of violence, such as childhood maltreatment and sexual abuse, domestic abuse, and exposure to community violence, very few studies have considered patterns of violence and their impact on sexual risk-taking, according to the researchers.

The study included 481 women attending an urban STD clinic who were assessed for a previous history of violence and sexually risky behaviors. The women were primarily African-American and most were poor.

Overall, these women reported high rates of exposure to violence compared to the general population. All types of violence were interrelated, with women who experienced one type being more likely to experience other forms as well, the researcher noted.

Using a statistical technique known as latent class analysis to find common patterns in the data, researchers identified four classes of women with different experiences of violence: Women with low exposure to violence (39 percent); women who were predominantly exposed to community violence (20 percent); women who were predominantly exposed to childhood maltreatment (23 percent); and women who experienced multiple forms of violence (18 percent).

The team found that the women who reported experiencing multiple forms of violence and those who were exposed to community violence had the highest levels of risky behavior, including a higher number of sexual partners and alcohol and drug use before sex.

“Given the ties between multiple violent experiences and sexual risk-taking, clinicians working with women who experience violence or who are at risk for HIV/STDs may need to consider the overlap between the two in order to impact sexual health consequences,” Walsh said

Those who work with women who have experienced one type of violence should ask about other types of violence “to get a complete picture.”

The researcher adds further research is needed to understand how and why violent experiences are associated with sexually risky behavior to help develop more effective interventions.

Source: Lifespan

Condom photo by shutterstock.

In two separate studies, researchers examined the stability and satisfaction of intimate relationships among college students with a history of childhood emotional maltreatment (CEM).

The studies, published in the Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology, suggest that emotional abuse as a child impacted relationship fulfillment due to self-criticism.

Researchers discovered that participants had an extremely strong tendency to self-criticize, and this interfered with their relationship satisfaction.

The studies also revealed that some participants had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to the emotional abuse they endured. Researchers suggest this could be the result of internalizing behaviors caused by the maltreatment or by a child’s inability to properly comprehend their circumstances.

Childhood maltreatment includes sexual and physical abuse, emotional maltreatment and neglect. Childhood maltreatment is a significant contributor to the dramatic increase in referrals to university counseling centers, researchers believe.

Investigators believe childhood maltreatment also generates self-criticism causing a destructive effect on romantic relationships.

“Over time, this tendency might be consolidated, becoming a defining part of a person’s personality, and ultimately derailing relationships in general and romantic relationships in particular,” said Dana Lassri, whose doctoral dissertation, supervised by psychologist Dr. Golan Shahar, served as the basis for the study.

Lassri believes that even though these findings were gathered from college-age individuals, the behaviors could potentially worsen throughout adulthood.

Source: American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

However, researchers discovered that both men and women are jealous of peers who have strong social skills.

In the study, a group of researchers from Spain, the Netherlands and Argentina analyzed the differences between men and women in feelings of envy and jealousy at work.

“Women with a high level of intrasexual competition are more jealous if the rival is more attractive and more envious if the rival is more powerful and dominating. They did not get any results in men, as no rival characteristics that provoke jealousy or envy predicted intrasexual competition,” said psychologist Dr. Rosario Zurriaga, one of the authors of the study.

Intrasexual rivalry is competition with other people of the same sex caused by the desire to obtain and keep access to the opposite sex.

Zurriaga, together with researchers at the universities of Groningen (the Netherlands) and Palermo (Argentina) analyzed this type of rivalry using questionnaires distributed directly to 200 subjects in their workstations.

Investigators distinguished between two emotions: jealousy and envy. Jealousy is a threat or loss of success in a relationship due to interference from a rival and implies a loss or threat of loss of what they had. Envy is a response to another person who has success, skills or qualities that they desire and involves feeling inadequate in comparison to the envied person.

According to their results, sexual competition generally causes more jealousy and envy in women. However, rivals’ social skills provoke both emotions, both in men and women.

“This result shows the importance of social skills in work environments” Zurriaga stated.

The researchers hope the findings will allow proactive interventions to improve the workplace environment.

“Our research intends to clarify the role of emotions like envy and jealousy at work. These feelings have not been studied in working contexts and can cause stress in workers and negatively affect the quality of working life,” the researchers added.

“This is one of the first studies that examines rivals’ characteristics in this environment and contributes to a better understanding of conflicts and problems that can occur in working relationships.”

Study participants represented a variety of business sectors with 26 percent of participants involved in administration, 21 percent in services sector, 30 percent in education and the rest in health and other professions.

Participants were equally balanced by gender, with an average age of 36 years, and 11 years with their current company.

Source: FECYT – Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology

In three experiments, researchers discovered the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when helping a stranger than are atheists, agnostics and less religious people.

Paradoxically, social scientists found that compassion consistently drove less religious people to be more generous. For highly religious people, however, compassion was largely unrelated to how generous they were.

The findings will be published in the July issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Experts say the results challenge a widespread assumption that acts of generosity and charity are largely driven by feelings of empathy and compassion.

In the study, researchers discovered the link between compassion and generosity was found to be stronger for those who identified as being non-religious or less religious.

“Overall, we find that for less religious people, the strength of their emotional connection to another person is critical to whether they will help that person or not,” said UC Berkeley social psychologist Dr. Robb Willer, a co-author of the study.

“The more religious, on the other hand, may ground their generosity less in emotion, and more in other factors such as doctrine, a communal identity, or reputational concerns.”

Compassion is defined in the study as an emotion felt when people see the suffering of others which then motivates them to help, often at a personal risk or cost.

While the study examined the link between religion, compassion and generosity, it did not directly examine the reasons for why highly religious people are less compelled by compassion to help others.

However, researchers hypothesize that deeply religious people may be more strongly guided by a sense of moral obligation than their more non-religious counterparts.

“We hypothesized that religion would change how compassion impacts generous behavior,” said study lead author Laura Saslow, Ph.D.

Saslow said she was inspired to examine this question after an altruistic, nonreligious friend lamented that he had only donated to earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti after watching an emotionally stirring video of a woman being saved from the rubble, not because of a logical understanding that help was needed.

“I was interested to find that this experience — an atheist being strongly influenced by his emotions to show generosity to strangers — was replicated in three large, systematic studies,” Saslow said.

In the first experiment, researchers analyzed data from a 2004 national survey of more than 1,300 American adults. Those who agreed with such statements as “When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them” were also more inclined to show generosity in random acts of kindness, such as loaning out belongings and offering a seat on a crowded bus or train, researchers found.

When they looked into how much compassion motivated participants to be charitable in such ways as giving money or food to a homeless person, non-believers and those who rated low in religiosity came out ahead.

“These findings indicate that although compassion is associated with [people being more social] among both less religious and more religious individuals, this relationship is particularly robust for less religious individuals,” say the researchers.

In the second experiment, 101 American adults watched one of two brief videos, a neutral video or a heartrending one, which showed portraits of children afflicted by poverty. Next, they were each given 10 “lab dollars” and directed to give any amount of that money to a stranger.

The least religious participants appeared to be motivated by the emotionally charged video to give more of their money to a stranger.

“The compassion-inducing video had a big effect on their generosity,” Willer said. “But it did not significantly change the generosity of more religious participants.”

In the final experiment, more than 200 college students were asked to report how compassionate they felt at that moment. They then played “economic trust games” in which they were given money to share — or not — with a stranger.

In one round, they were told that another person playing the game had given a portion of their money to them, and that they were free to reward them by giving back some of the money, which had since doubled in amount.

Those who scored low on the religiosity scale, and high on momentary compassion, were more inclined to share their winnings with strangers than other participants in the study.

“Overall, this research suggests that although less religious people tend to be less trusted in the U.S., when feeling compassionate, they may actually be more inclined to help their fellow citizens than more religious people,” Willer said.

Source: University of California – Berkeley

Instead, many women choose to exercise at night to minimize the chance of being seen, or they simply avoid outdoor exercise altogether.

According to Mind, which seeks to promote good mental health and reduce stigma of mental distress, these avoidance tactics are unfortunate since outdoor exercise can be as effective as antidepressants in treating mild to moderate depression and anxiety and is increasingly being prescribed as a form of therapy.

Researchers surveyed 1,450 women and found that when feeling depressed, women were more likely to choose the following activities over exercising: eat comfort food (71 percent), listen to sad music (32 percent), spend time social networking (57 percent), go to bed (66 percent), or find a way to be alone (71 percent).

The survey also revealed:

• Two out of three women feel conscious about their body shape when exercising in public;
• Many doubt their own ability compared to others; 65 percent think it’s unlikely they’ll be able to keep up in an exercise group and almost half feel they will look silly in front of others based on a lack of coordination;
• 60 percent are nervous about how their body reacts to exercise — how different parts move, sweating, passing gas or turning red;
• Two-thirds feel that if they joined an exercise group, other women would be unwelcoming and cliquish, with only 6 percent thinking they would most likely make new friends.

In response to these feelings, many women have taken extreme steps to reduce the risk of embarrassment:

• Over half reported exercising very early in the morning or late at night simply to avoid being seen by others;
• Almost two-thirds of women choose to exercise in a location where they’re unlikely to run into people they know;
• Over half don’t leave the home when exercising, so they won’t be seen — even though exercising outside is more effective for lifting mood than staying inside;
• 67 percent wear baggy clothing when exercising in order to hide their figure.

“We all know that walking, cycling, even gardening are good for our mental health, however, for many of us exercising in the great outdoors can be incredibly daunting, especially if already feeling low and self-confidence is at rock bottom,” said Beth Murphy, head of information at MIND.

“At these times you can feel like the only person in the world experiencing this, but Mind’s research highlights that far from being alone, 90 percent of women are in exactly the same boat. It’s time we start talking about how exercise makes us feel. We urge women to take the first step, invite a friend on a nature date and begin to support each other in taking care of our mental well-being.”

Source: Mind

Woman jogging photo by shutterstock.

And if they are, could a tablet computer be a better route to encourage abused women to get help in a safer, more expeditious manner?

Researches from nursing schools at the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins University said their primary goal is to identify pregnant abused women and help them move toward a better, sounder, safer future — for themselves and their children.

Drs. Linda Bullock and Phyllis W. Sharps, both professors of nursing, said that research has long shown that women who suffer abuse prior to pregnancy are likelier to be abused during pregnancy, and those abused during pregnancy have a higher risk of abuse in the early weeks after the baby is born.

“If you don’t address the violence, you’re not going to have positive pregnancy outcomes for babies and their moms,” said Bullock. “You’re leaving the elephant in the room.”

Part of the issue, she said, is that those doing the asking — who are part of state and federal programs that offer women at high risk for poor pregnancy outcomes access to at-home health care visits — have widely varied skills. Abused women may not feel comfortable enough to confess their situation.

Moreover, the discomfort extends to the nurses asking the questions — a factor that may influence getting an honest answer from the victim.

A previous study led by Bullock and Sharps found that often “the nurses themselves feel uncomfortable about asking about the abuse, and that fact may be the barrier between a woman getting help and considering leaving their abuser — or not.”

“What we find is that when we’re using real, live home visitors, they’re very uncomfortable asking about abuse,” Bullock said. “There is a huge variety of educational levels among these folks. And many have been abused themselves.”

The abuser is often present during these home visits and monitoring what is said.

Of the 4,000 women to be assessed in Baltimore and rural areas of Virginia and Missouri, half will be screened for abuse by the current method – being asked orally, by a visiting nurse. The other half will be handed a mobile tablet (akin to an iPad or an Android hand-held computer) and earbuds by the visiting nurse, and then guided through a series of on-screen questions and prompts about intimate partner violence.

Should the abuser enter the room, a “safety button” prompts a cloaking video.

Though it remains to be proven, Sharps and Bullock hypothesize that using mobile tablets will increase the number of women who identify themselves as victims of domestic abuse by as much as one-third.

And once they’re identified, women who are victims can be given appropriate interventions that range from the straightforward — having extra sets of house and car keys, a packed bag with several days’ supplies of clothes and toiletries, having a “safety plan” to exit the residence quickly — to the more complex: protective order information, shelter locations and creating a repository for important paperwork, like Social Security cards and marriage and birth certificates.

Researchers believe the study will help policymakers to better appropriate money set aside by the Affordable Health Care Act for home visits and prenatal care for some of the nation’s most vulnerable, impoverished women.

Mobile health, using technology for assessment and intervention, will add another dimension to the researchers’ work.

“What makes this new grant exciting is introducing mobile health technology into traditional prenatal home visits,” Sharps said. “Our ultimate aim is to improve maternal and infant health outcomes.”

Source: University of Virginia

In a study of more than 200 individuals successfully treated for breast cancer, investigators discovered that two-thirds continued to have “a moderate level of worry,” although they had been free of cancer for three years.

Moffitt Cancer Center researchers have published their findings in the journal Psycho-Oncology.

“Little is known about the factors associated with cancer worry,” said paper lead author Paul B. Jacobsen, Ph.D.

“In order to evaluate those factors, this study examined associations between breast cancer worry and demographic factors, such as age, and clinical factors, such as having had chemotherapy, fatigue, greater symptom burden and greater perceived risk perception of recurrence.”

Jacobsen and his colleagues found that women who reported physical symptoms and fatigue were more concerned about a return of cancer.

“Understanding the characteristics associated with cancer worry can help identify those who are likely to experience such fears,” Jacobsen explained. “Understanding those factors is important because worry can be linked to health behaviors.”

Paradoxically, some worry about cancer may lead to improved health habits although too much worry can lead to unhealthy behaviors.

“Of particular interest were the significant effects of risk perception,” Jacobsen added. “It is logical that those who perceive themselves to be a greater risk for recurrence – which may not correspond to actual risk – worry more.”

Researchers believe that fatigue, symptom burden and risk perception are associated with cancer worry among breast cancer survivors.

Furthermore, lingering fatigue and other symptoms may remind breast cancer survivors of their disease and, in turn, raise cancer worry.

Source: Moffitt Cancer Center