Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, a doctoral candidate in Rutgers’ Department of Psychology, explored the consequences for men (and women) when they acted modestly in job interviews.

She co-authored, with graduate fellow Julie E. Phelan and Professor Laurie A. Rudman, “When Men Break the Gender Rules: Status Incongruity and Backlash Against Modest Men” in the journal Psychology of Men and Masculinity.

According to Moss-Racusin, the applicants in the staged interviews were judged equally competent, but the “modest” males were less liked, a sign of social backlash.

Modesty was viewed as a sign of weakness, a low-status character trait for males that could adversely affect their employability or earnings potential. Modesty in women, however, was not viewed negatively nor was it linked to status.

“For men and women, there are things they must and must not be,” Moss-Racusin says.

“Women must be communal and other-oriented, but they must not be dominant. Historically and cross-culturally, men have been stereotyped as more agentic, that is, more independent and self-focused than women.”

In the study, 132 female and 100 male student volunteers (who earned partial academic credit for their psychology course) viewed videotaped, 15-minute job interviews of either males or females. All the applicants were paid actors rehearsed to deliver similar, “modest” responses for the gender-neutral position that required strong technical abilities and social skills.

The researchers sought to determine which gender stereotype promote backlash.

“Women are allowed to be weak while this trait is strongly prohibited in men,” Moss-Racusin said.

“By contrast, dominance is reserved for men and prohibited for women. Thus, gender stereotypes are comprised of four sets of rules and expectations for behavior consist of both ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots’ for each gender.”

The researchers’ prediction that modest male applicants would face hiring discrimination was not supported, however, and she speculates that because men’s status is higher than women’s, meek men are afforded the benefit of the doubt and are less likely to encounter hiring discrimination than dominant women.

Source: Rutgers

The finding may explain why people confess to being so incredibly busy in today’s society.

“The general phenomenon I’m interested in is why people are so busy doing what they are doing in modern society,” says Christopher K. Hsee, of the University of Chicago. He co-wrote the study with Adelle X. Yang, also of the University of Chicago, and Liangyan Wang, of Shanghai Jiaotong University.

“People are running around, working hard, way beyond the basic level.”

Sure, there are reasons, like making a living, earning money, accruing fame, helping others, and so on. But, Hsee says, “I think there’s something deeper: We have excessive energy and we want to avoid idleness.”

For the study, volunteers completed a survey, then had to wait 15 minutes before the next survey would be ready. They could drop off the completed survey at a nearby location and wait out the remaining time or drop it off at a location farther away, where walking back and forth would keep them busy for the 15 minutes.

Either way, they would receive a candy when they handed in their survey. Volunteers who chose to stay busy by going to the faraway location were found to be happier than those who chose to be idle.

Not everyone chose to go to the faraway location. If the candies offered at the two locations were the same, the subjects were more likely to choose to stay idle. But if the candies offered at the two locations were different, they were more likely to choose the far location—because they could make up a justification for the trip, Hsee and his colleagues say.

The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Hsee thinks it may be possible to use this principle—people like being busy, and they like being able to justify being busy—to benefit society.

“If we can devise a mechanism for idle people to engage in activity that is at least not harmful, I think it is better than destructive busyness,” he says.

Hsee himself has been known to give a research assistant a useless task when he doesn’t have anything for them to do, so he isn’t sitting around the office getting bored and depressed.

“I know this is not particularly ethical, but he is happy,” says Hsee.

Source: Association for Psychological Science

According to researchers, the trouble may be in your neurons. A specific area in our brains is responsible for processing information about human and animal faces, both how we recognize them and how we interpret facial expressions.

Tel Aviv University researchers are exploring what makes this highly specialized part of the brain unique, a first step to finding practical applications for that information.

In her “Face Lab” at Tel Aviv University, Dr. Galit Yovel of TAU’s Department of Psychology is trying to understand the mechanisms at work in the face area of the brain called the “fusiform gyrus” of the brain.

She is combining cognitive psychology with techniques like brain imaging and electrophysiology to study how the brain processes information about faces. Her most recent research on the brain’s face-processing mechanisms was published in the Journal of Neuroscience and Human Brain Mapping.

The study of face recognition does more than provide an explanation for embarrassing memory lapses. For instance, it may help business executives better match names with faces, and more important, can lead to better facial recognition software to identify terrorists or criminals. Similar to faces, bodies are also processed by distinct brain areas.

How we perceive faces is not totally intuitive, she says, and therefore raises the question of how this information is combined in our brain to understand how separate face and body areas generate a whole body-image impression.

Identifying “face blindness”

In her research, Dr. Yovel has found that we are better able to recognize faces when we regularly see and interact with them in meaningful settings. It’s as though the face-processing sections of the brain — the fusiform face area being the most distinct — recognizes faces holistically.

Additions to your face, such as a beard or glasses, are assimilated into or incorporated into the face recognition gestalt of the brain, unlike other elements that are irrelevant to facial recognition, such as the chair you’re sitting on. This may be why fashions in hairstyle and eyewear have become so important to personal appearance, she theorizes.

The inability to recognize faces is more common than most people think.

Dr. Yovel says that two percent of all people are born with “face blindness,” scientifically known as prosopagnosia. She hopes her research will enable these people to train themselves, via software and other methods, to better differentiate one face from another — especially when the face is that of a loved one.

Recognizing the faces you meet

“Faces are important,” says Dr. Yovel, who first began to study the neurological basis of face recognition as a post-doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“We meet so many people every day, on the street or at work, and should know whether or not each face is important to us. In principle, faces are very similar to one another. That’s probably why we’ve evolved these complex and specialized face areas in the brain — so that we can more accurately discriminate among the countless faces we encounter throughout our lives.”

Dr. Yovel hopes her studies will lead to new algorithms that can help computers do a better job of recognizing faces, as well as help people who somehow lack this critical social skill. She is currently collaborating with computer scientists at Tel Aviv University to explore new computational algorithms for facial recognition.

Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University

The National Institutes of Health-funded study evaluated an Internet-based weight maintenance intervention involving 348 participants.

Consistent website users who logged on and recorded their weight at least once a month for two and a half years maintained the most weight loss, the study found.

The Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research study is published online in the open access Journal of Medical Internet Research.

“Consistency and accountability are essential in any weight maintenance program. The unique part of this intervention was that it was available on the Internet, whenever and wherever people wanted to use it,” said study lead author Kristine L. Funk, MS, RD, a researcher at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore.

“This study shows that if people use quality weight management websites consistently, and if they stick with their program, they are more likely to keep their weight off,” said study co-author Victor J. Stevens, PhD, co-author and senior investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research.

“Keeping weight off is even more difficult than losing it in the first place, so the fact that so many people (in the study) were able to maintain a good portion of their weight loss is very encouraging to us.”

This Internet-based weight maintenance intervention was part of the Weight Loss Maintenance Trial, one of the largest and longest weight maintenance trials ever conducted — lasting three years and including more than 1,600 people at four study sites across the United States.

To enroll in the trial, participants had to be overweight or obese based on their Body Mass Index and taking medication for high blood pressure or high cholesterol. For the first six months, participants tried to lose weight by attending weekly group meetings at which they were weighed, encouraged to keep food diaries, and given extensive information about exercise and healthy eating.

Participants had to lose at least nine pounds to remain in the trial for the weight loss maintenance phase, which lasted an additional two and a half years and included three groups of randomized participants: one with no intervention, one that had monthly contact with a personal health coach, and one that was given unlimited access to a weight-maintenance website created specifically for the trial.

The Internet group included 348 participants who were encouraged to log in at least once a week. If they didn’t, they received e-mail reminders and followup automated phone messages.

Once on the website, participants were prompted to record their weight, their minutes of exercise, and the number of days they kept food diaries. If they went longer than seven days without recording a weight, the other parts of the website were disabled until they did record their weight.

The website included an interactive bulletin board on which participants could talk with others involved in the study and pose questions to nutrition and exercise experts.

During the first six months of the trial, while they were attending group sessions and before they had access to the website, participants who ended up in the Internet group had lost an average of 19 pounds. Once they were given website access, their objective was to keep off as much of that weight as possible.

Consistent users who logged in and recorded their weight at least once a month for 24 months maintained the greatest weight loss—keeping off an average of nine of the 19 pounds they’d lost during the initial weight loss phase of the trial.

Those who logged on less consistently—at least once a month for 14 months—kept off an average of five pounds. Those who logged on less than that kept off an average of only three pounds of their original weight loss.

At the end of the study, 65 percent of the participants were still logging on to the website. The study authors say they are encouraged by this level of participation because they say it is rare to see that kind of commitment – even in shorter-term weight maintenance studies that use the Internet.

While the study website is no longer available, there are many useful weight management websites that people can access. The study authors advise consumers to look for these important elements:

• Sites that encourage accountability by asking users to consistently record weight, exercise, and calories consumed
• Sites that include tailored or personalized information
• Sites with interactive features that allow users to communicate with each other and with nutrition and exercise experts
• Sites with accurate health information.

Source: Kaiser Permanente

The internal investigation was commissioned last year by Army commander Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who is the second in command. He says the permissive attitude — where soldiers are allowed to take risks, refuse treatment for drug and alcohol problems, and even commit criminal offenses while remaining enlisted — is linked to a tally of deaths last year that included 160 active-duty soldiers who committed suicide and 146 more who died during risky activity or behavior such as drug use. Seventy-four of those deaths were drug overdoses. The Army noted there were also 1,713 attempted suicides last year.

“This is tragic,” Chiarelli writes in a directive to be sent out to soldiers. “We must realize that on occasion we need to do the right thing for both the soldier and the Army through firm enforcement of discipline, retention and separation polices.”

The report grew out of a series of visits to six Army installations directed by Casey and led by Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli in Spring 2009 to look at suicide prevention efforts in the force.

“What we witnessed were real indicators of stress on the force, and an increasing propensity for Soldiers to engage in high risk behavior,” Chiarelli said. “We recognized almost immediately we had to widen the aperture – risk in the force cannot be mitigated by suicide prevention alone.”

“This comprehensive review exposes gaps in how we identify, engage, and mitigate high-risk behavior among our soldiers. After nearly a decade of war we must keep pace with the expanding needs of our strained Army, and continuously identify and address the gaps that exist in our policies, programs and services,” said Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr.

Casey told the Army’s two- and three-star commanders and command sergeants major recently that “our challenge over the next several years will be to maintain our combat edge at an appropriate tempo while reestablishing garrison systems to better care for our soldiers and families. The combination of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness with these health promotion efforts provides the foundation to improve the resilience of the force.”

Unprecedented operational tempo has dictated that leaders remain primarily focused on preparing for their next deployment. As a result, enforcement of policies designated to ensure good order and discipline has atrophied. This, in turn, has led to an increasing population of Soldiers who display high risk behavior which erodes the health of the force.

The U.S. Army report is entitled the Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, and Suicide Prevention (HP/RR/SP) Report, and attempts to be a comprehensive, transparent review. It outlines and defines problems, documents actions taken, and makes recommendations for how the Army can make substantive changes.

Key findings include:

• Gaps in the current HP/RR/SP policies, processes and programs necessary to mitigate high risk behaviors;
• An erosion of adherence to existing Army policies and standards;
• An increase in indicators of high risk behavior including illicit drug use, other crimes and suicide attempts;
• Lapses in surveillance and detection of high risk behavior;
• An increased use of prescription antidepressants, amphetamines and narcotics;
• Degraded accountability of disciplinary, administrative and reporting processes; and
• The continued high rate of suicides, high risk related deaths and other adverse outcomes.

“These findings demonstrate that many of our programs are unbalanced and lack integration, while reinforcing recommendations that will help us improve the quality of our programs and services,” Chiarelli said.

Secretary of the Army John McHugh has directed that leaders at all levels become familiar with the report. It informs leaders throughout the force about the consequences associated with high risk behavior; provides a candid, transparent and balanced review of HP/RR/SP issues; documents the Army’s actions to date to improve programs and services; integrates policies, processes and programs for oversight of the force; and recommends solutions to eliminate gaps and unnecessary redundancies.

Programs must be realigned to improve support to the Soldier, Family and unit. Reporting and data-sharing on high risk behavior among unit commanders, medical and garrison service providers, and law enforcement officials must be synchronized. The report also promotes continued use of the Department of the Army’s Health Promotion Council which has aggressively addressed this issue for a year-and-a-half.

Report recommendations represent the next phase of the campaign which has already implemented more than 200 separate initiatives over the last 15 months. For example, the Army tightened enlistment standards; established a Community Health Promotion Council at each installation; improved access and coordination between primary (medical) care and behavioral health providers; worked to stabilize unit leadership after redeployment; expanded behavioral health screening; instituted a confidential alcohol treatment program; aggressively recruited new behavioral health counselors; and created 72 new positions for chaplains, among other things.

“Continued focus on mentoring and training our leaders and service providers is key to fixing these problems. Part of leadership is creating an environment where it’s okay to ask for help—and where it’s our duty to extend a helping hand,” Chiarelli said. “This, too, is in keeping with the Army Warrior Ethos to never leave a fallen comrade.”

Report findings indicate that there are no universal solutions to address the complexities of personal, social and behavioral health issues that lead to suicide.

“We’ve often said that the Army is a reflection of society, but we have soldiers today who are experiencing a lifetime of stress during their first six years of service. Army leaders at all levels remain dedicated to promoting resiliency, coping skills, and help-seeking behavior across our force,” Chiarelli said.

Source: U.S. Army

Download the report (PDF)

According to new research, bipolar patients who have had more episodes appear to have more overall disability.  Those with more manic episodes have more problems with work and family, and those with more depression have more social difficulty.

“This study shows that disability affects an important proportion of bipolar disorder patients and that previous course-of-illness variables, particularly a high number of manic episodes, and current psychopathology – as indicated by the presence of nicotine dependence or depressive symptoms – may be indicators of disability,” said Dr. Luis Gutiérrez-Rojas from the Institute of Neurosciences at the University of Granada in Spain, who led the research with his colleagues.

Bipolar disorder, also known by its older name “manic depression,” is a mental disorder that is characterized by alternating moods, “highs” (what clinicians call mania) and “lows” (also known as depression).  More than 5 million Americans suffer from bipolar disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, and according to the World Health Organization, it is the sixth leading cause of disability worldwide.

Gutiérrez-Rojas and his colleagues reviewed the psychiatric histories of 108 patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  The Sheehan Disability Scale was used to measure social and family life disability.  Work disability was measured by whether or not the study participant was receiving a disability payment. Slightly more than half of the participants had some form of disability, and 37 percent had two types.

More than three previous manic episodes, current depression, nicotine dependence, and lower educational level were statistically associated with work disability.

Difficulty with social function increased with the number of hospitalizations, with multiple previous episodes of depression, in those who had lack of social support, and with current depression.

In addition, individuals with bipolar disorder who were older, who showed potential signs of alcohol abuse, who had been hospitalized more often, or who had had repeated manic episodes, had more difficulty with family life.

Previous research has shown that repeated episodes and repeated hospitalizations for bipolar disorder can worsen the course of the illness.  Medication noncompliance can make symptoms more difficult to treat. These data should encourage physicians and patients to treat bipolar disorder more aggressively, as repeated episodes can also increase disability in several areas.

“Clinicians should make every effort to prevent relapses, to efficiently treat residual symptoms, and to enhance the social support of these patients,” concludes Gutiérrez-Rojas.

The study is published in the July edition of the journal Psychiatry Research.

Source: Psychiatry Research

In fact, Brigham Young University scientists add social relationships to the “short list” of factors that predict a person’s odds of living or dying.

In the journal PLoS Medicine, BYU professors Julianne Holt-Lunstad and Timothy Smith report that social connections — friends, family, neighbors or colleagues — improve our odds of survival by 50 percent.

Here is how low social interaction compares to more well-known risk factors:

• Equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day
• Equivalent to being an alcoholic
• More harmful than not exercising
• Twice as harmful as obesity

“The idea that a lack of social relationships is a risk factor for death is still not widely recognized by health organizations and the public,” write the PLoS Medicine editors in a summary of the BYU study and why it was done.

The researchers analyzed data from 148 previously published longitudinal studies that measured frequency of human interaction and tracked health outcomes for a period of seven and a half years on average.

Because information on relationship quality was unavailable, the 50 percent increased odds of survival may underestimate the benefit of healthy relationships.

“The data simply show whether they were integrated in a social network,” Holt-Lunstad said.

“That means the effects of negative relationships are lumped in there with the positive ones. They are all averaged together.”

Holt-Lunstad said there are many pathways through which friends and family influence health for the better, ranging from a calming touch to finding meaning in life.

“When someone is connected to a group and feels responsibility for other people, that sense of purpose and meaning translates to taking better care of themselves and taking fewer risks,” Holt-Lunstad said.

In examining the data, Smith took a careful look at whether the results were driven primarily by people helping each other prolong their golden years.

“This effect is not isolated to older adults,” Smith said. “Relationships provide a level of protection across all ages.”

Smith said that modern conveniences and technology can lead some people to think that social networks aren’t necessary.

“We take relationships for granted as humans – we’re like fish that don’t notice the water,” Smith said.

“That constant interaction is not only beneficial psychologically but directly to our physical health.”

Source: Brigham Young University

The work may improve current predictive algorithms that depend on self-reporting by at-risk individuals — information that often proves misleading when suicidal patients wish to hide their intentions.

Both new tests are easily administered within minutes on a computer, giving quick insight into how patients are thinking about suicide, as well as their propensity to attempt suicide in the near future.

“Experts have long sought a clear behavioral marker of suicide risk,” says Harvard psychology professor Matthew K. Nock, an author of two papers describing the new assessments of suicidal behavior.

“The current approach, based on self-reporting, leads to predictions that are scarcely better than chance, since suicidal patients are often motivated to conceal or misrepresent their mental state.

“We sought to develop more sophisticated, objective measures of how psychiatric patients are thinking about suicide. Our work provides two important new tools clinicians can use in deciding how to treat potentially suicidal patients.”

Nock and colleagues report on the tests in two papers, one in the current Journal of Abnormal Psychology and a second published in Psychological Science.

Unlike many previous efforts focused on biological markers of suicidal behavior, their work identifies two behavioral markers: subjects’ attention to suicide-related stimuli, and the extent to which they associate death or suicide with themselves.

In one study by Nock’s group, 124 patients in a psychiatric emergency department were administered a modified Stroop test measuring speed in articulating the color of words on a computer screen.

Suicidal individuals were found to pay more attention to suicide-related words than to neutral words.

“Suicide Stroop scores predicted six-month follow-up suicide attempts above and beyond well-known risk factors such as a history of suicide attempts, patients’ reported likelihood of attempt, and clinicians’ predictions regarding patients’ likelihood of attempt,” says co-author Christine B. Cha, a doctoral student in psychology at Harvard.

A second study adapted the Implicit Association Test developed by Harvard psychologist Mahzarin R. Banaji, using reaction times to semantic stimuli to measure 157 subjects’ automatic mental associations — in this case, the strength of associations between words related to “self” and words related to either “life” or “death/suicide.”

Participants were shown pairs of words on a screen, with response speed revealing unconscious associations between the terms. For instance, a rapid response to stimuli associating self with death/suicide suggests a strong unconscious association between the two.

Nock and his colleagues found that those participants with strong associations between self and death/suicide were six times more likely to attempt suicide within the next six months than those holding stronger associations between self and life.

“These findings suggest that a person’s implicit cognition may guide which behavior he or she chooses to cope with extreme distress,” Nock says.

“More specifically, an implicit association with death/suicide may represent one of the final steps in the pathway to suicide.”

Source: Harvard University

Researchers from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research also determined that approximately one in 25, or more than 1 million, reported symptoms associated with serious psychological distress (SPD), which includes the most serious kinds of diagnosable mental health disorders.

Of those adults with either “perceived need” or SPD, only one in three reported visiting a mental health professional for treatment, a factor potentially attributable to fear of stigmatization, as well as lack of insurance coverage, the researchers said.

The study draws on data from the 2005 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), which is administered by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

“There’s a lot of need, but also a lot of obstacles connecting those in need to the services that can help them,” said David Grant, the study’s lead author and director of the CHIS.

“Part of the problem may be stigma. It’s hard for many Californians to acknowledge they need help — to their family, friends or their doctor. The challenge for policymakers and providers is to both target appropriate services to those with needs and to reduce fear.”

Grant noted that since the data was collected, the state has suffered an economic downturn, resulting in high unemployment.

“The recession has created even more stress for people,” he said. As a result, the study “is probably an underestimate of the true level of mental health need in California right now.”

Among the findings:

Women at risk
Women were nearly twice as likely as men (22.7 percent vs. 14.3 percent) to say they needed help for a mental or emotional health problem (“perceived need”), such as feeling sad, anxious or nervous.

Working-age adults at risk
The prevalence of perceived need was twice as high for adults under 65 as for those 65 and older (20.2 percent vs. 9.2 percent).

Income a significant factor
The poorest adults — those living below 100 percent of the federal poverty level — were much more likely to report symptoms associated with SPD than those with incomes that were even just slightly higher. The poorest were more than five times as likely to report SPD as those living at or above 300 percent of the federal poverty level.

Distress pervasive regardless of race or ethnicity
Although racial and ethnic disparities in mental health were found in the study, those differences diminished when adjusted for income. These findings suggest that mental health status is more closely related to socioeconomic status than ethnicity or place of birth.

Insurance coverage improves access to services
Adults with health insurance coverage were almost twice as likely to have received mental health services during the previous 12 months as adults without health insurance.

Stigma, cultural factors may impede access to services
Men, adults aged 65 or older, and Latino and Asian immigrant groups were far less likely to seek help with a mental health professional than other groups. The authors note that these findings suggest that stigma and cultural factors may pose a significant barrier to care.

Source: UCLA

Scientists used Mayo Clinic records to identify 27 people who experienced rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder for at least 15 years before developing one of three conditions: Parkinson’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies or multiple system atrophy.

Multiple system atrophy is a disorder that causes symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease.

People with REM sleep behavior disorder often act out their dreams with violent movements, such as punching, which can injure themselves or bed partners.

The research is published in the July 28, 2010, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The study found that the time between the start of the sleep disorder and the symptoms of the neurologic disorders ranged up to 50 years, with an average span of 25 years.

Of the participants, 13 were diagnosed with dementia, 13 others were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and one person was diagnosed with multiple system atrophy.

“Our findings suggest that in some patients, conditions such as Parkinson’s disease or dementia with Lewy bodies have a very long span of activity within the brain and they also may have a long period of time where other symptoms aren’t apparent,” said study author Bradley F. Boeve, MD, with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

“More research is needed on this possible link so that scientists may be able to develop therapies that would slow down or stop the progression of these disorders years before the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease or dementia appear.”

It is not known how many people who experience REM disorder may develop diseases such as Parkinson’s or dementia.

A corresponding editorial noted there is no evidence that narcolepsy, with or without REM disorder, will later lead to neurodegenerative disorders.

Source: American Academy of Neurology

According to the study, heterosexual men, gay men and lesbian women provoke a softer reaction in narcissistic men, according to psychologist Dr. Scott Keiller from Kent State University at Tuscarawas.

Why do male narcissists seem to lash out most at women?

The researcher suggest it may be due to women’s unparalleled potential for gratifying, or frustrating, men’s narcissism. They are crucial players and even gatekeepers in men’s quests for sexual pleasure, patriarchal power and status.

“Although narcissists may want to maintain feelings of superiority and power over all people, narcissistic heterosexual men are particularly invested in subordinating heterosexual women,” noted Dr. Keiller.

“The results suggest that narcissistic hostility is associated with a group’s potential to provide or withhold gratification rather than ideology about a group’s sexual orientation or conformity to heterosexual gender roles.”

Research to date has shown that narcissists’ low empathy, feelings of entitlement, and perceptions of being deprived of ‘deserved’ admiration and gratification can make them prone to aggression and vengeance.

Dr. Keiller’s study looks at whether narcissists’ hostility is targeted at heterosexual women and men, gay men and lesbian women in the same way and with the same intensity. Each group represents a different combination of perceived conformity to traditional gender roles on the one hand, and potential for gratifying a heterosexual man on the other.

A total of 104 male undergraduates, aged 21 years on average, from a large university in the Midwest US took part in the study survey. Keiller looked at measures of narcissism, sexist attitudes toward women and traditional female stereotypes, sexist attitudes toward men and heterosexual male stereotypes, and attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women.

He found that men’s narcissism was linked most strongly to hostility toward heterosexual women, more so than toward any other group including heterosexual men, gay men and lesbian women. In fact, men’s narcissism was linked to favorable attitudes toward lesbians and was unrelated to attitudes toward gay men. Narcissism was not, however, associated with greater acceptance of homosexuality in general.

According to the author, these results suggest that narcissistic men believe that heterosexual relationships should be patriarchal rather than egalitarian.

The findings are published online in the journal Sex Roles.

Source: Springer

Reference

Keiller, S.W. (2010). Male narcissism and attitudes toward heterosexual women and men, lesbian women and gay men: hostility toward heterosexual women most of all. Sex Roles. DOI 10.1007/s11199-010-9837-8

The earlier in life an individual’s bipolar symptoms appear, and the longer the illness goes undiagnosed and untreated, the more severe the illness seems to be throughout life.

According to Dr. Robert M. Post, from the Bipolar Collaborative Network in Bethesda, Md., “Both childhood onset and treatment delay were associated with a persistently more adverse course of illness rated prospectively in adults.”

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, is a mental disorder that is characterized by alternating periods of mania (elevated or agitated mood) and depression. Bipolar disorder affects more than 5 million American adults according to the National Institute of Mental Health.  Although the average age of onset is 25 years, there is an increasing awareness of the disease in children.  Bipolar disorder in children often presents differently than in adults and can be difficult to diagnose.

Post and his colleagues followed 529 adult outpatients with bipolar disorder over a period of four years.  The average age of the patients was 42. The participants were rated daily using the National Institute of Mental Health-Life Chart Method.  The study participants also completed questionnaires regarding the history of their symptoms and illness.

15 percent of the participants had symptoms before the age of 13 and 35 percent between the ages of 13-18.  During the first year of followup, compared to the patients whose symptoms developed as an adult, those with childhood onset had more manic and depressive episodes, more severe episodes of mania and depression, more days depressed, more rapid cycling, and fewer days of normal mood.

After following the participants for four years, those with onset during childhood, compared to those with adult onset, continued to have on average longer and more severe periods of depression, and fewer days of normal mood.

On average, the earlier the age at which symptoms appeared, the longer it took for the patients to be diagnosed.  In addition, the longer the delay in diagnosis, the more time patients spent depressed, the more episodes of depression they had, the worse the episodes were, and the more rapid the cycling of episodes.

There is a great deal of controversy in the media regarding the increasing awareness and diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children.  This study is significant in that it might help encourage parents to seek earlier diagnosis and treatment, if they suspect bipolar disorder in their children.  These results may also encourage earlier referral from pediatricians, and more aggressive treatment by psychiatrists.

Writes Post, ”These data should help foster efforts to ensure earlier and more effective treatment of bipolar illness in children and adolescents.”

“The findings emphasize the importance of early intervention in bipolar disorder,” says Post. “Whether early intervention to shorten the delays to first treatment could alter this adverse course of illness in adulthood, or whether early onset is harbinger of worse course regardless of intervention, remains to be studied.”

Dr. Post’s results are published in the July edition of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Source: Journal of Clinical Psychiatry

The findings are published in the August issue of the British Journal of Urology.

Dysfunction rose with age in all categories except orgasm, with more than half of women aged from 18 to 30 reporting orgasm problems, significantly higher than women aged 31 to 54.

Researchers asked 587 women aged from 18 to 95, who attended a urology clinic in New Jersey, about six key areas of female sexual dysfunction (FSD): lack of desire, arousal issues, lack of lubrication, problems achieving orgasm, lack of satisfaction and pain during intercourse.

“We found that 63 percent of the women suffered from FSD and that there were significant links between FSD and age, menopausal status and use of selective antidepressants,” says co-author Dr. Debra Fromer.

Twelve percent of the women who took part in the study were aged 18-30, 27 percent were 31-45, 25 percent were 46-54, 24 percent were 55-70 and 12 percent were 70 or over. They attended a typical American metropolitan urology practice caring for conditions such as urinary incontinence, urinary tract infections, pelvic floor problems and kidney stones.

Key findings of the survey included:

• The most sexually active age groups were 31-45 year-olds (87 percent), 18-30 year-olds (85 percent) and 46-54 year-olds (74 percent). It then fell sharply in 55-70 year-olds (45 percent) and in women who were over 70 (15 percent).
• The top overall problem was lack of desire (47 percent), followed by orgasm problems (45 percent), arousal issues (40 percent), lack of satisfaction (39 percent), lack of lubrication (37 percent) and pain (36 percent).
• Five of the six categories increased as the women got older: desire from 36 to 96 percent, arousal from 27 to 54 percent, lubrication from 26 to 45 percent, satisfaction from 28 to 88 percent and pain from 10 to 56 percent.
• The only category that bucked the trend was orgasm, with problems higher in the 18-30 age group (54 percent) than in the 31-45 (43 percent) and 46-54 (48 percent) age groups. It then rose to 66 percent at 55-70 and 87 percent when women were over 70.The top three problems by age group were:
  • 18-30: orgasm (54 percent), desire (36 percent) and satisfaction (28 percent)
  • 31-45: desire (48 percent), orgasm (43 percent) and satisfaction (40 percent)
  • 46-54: desire (65 percent), satisfaction (53 percent) and orgasm (48 percent)
  • 55-70: desire (77 percent), orgasm (66 percent), satisfaction (65 percent)
  • Over 70: desire (96 percent), satisfaction (88 percent) and orgasm (87 percent).

  “FSD can have a major effect on women’s quality of life,” says Dr. Fromer. “Self-esteem, sense of wholeness and relationships can be seriously and adversely affected, exacting a heavy emotional toll. Researchers have found significant associations between major categories of sexual dysfunction, reduced physical and emotional satisfaction and general well-being. That is why it is so important to ensure that problems are identified and tackled wherever possible. For example a number of hormone and other drug treatments have been shown to benefit women with FSD.”

  Known risk factors for FSD include age, a history of sexual abuse or sexually transmitted infections, depression, lower socioeconomic status, lifestyle, overall physical health and sexual experience.

  “Interestingly, our study found very similar levels of dysfunction to an age-matched Turkish study,” adds Dr. Fromer.

  “This suggests a biological cause for FSD rather than societal or cultural factors, although they make some contribution to certain psychological aspects of the disorder.”

  Source: Wiley-Blackwell

Although the sample is small, the research is meaningful. Most prior studies have relied on recall; few have tracked participants from childhood to adult life, say the authors.

The study is published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

They base their findings on 482 people, who were part of the Providence, Rhode Island birth cohort of the National Collaborative Perinatal Project.

The quality of their interactions with their mothers at the age of eight months was objectively rated by a psychologist during routine developmental assessment.

At the end of each session, the psychologist completed an assessment of how well the mother had coped with her child’s developmental tests and how she had responded to the child’s performance.

The amount of affection and attention she gave to her child was also categorized, with descriptors ranging from “negative” to “extravagant.”

Mental health was subsequently assessed in adulthood at the average age of 34, using a validated symptom checklist, which captures both specific elements— such as anxiety and hostility— and general levels of distress.

At the eight-month assessment, one in 10 interactions (46) were characterized by a low level of maternal affection toward the infant. Most (85 percent; 409) were characterized by normal levels of affection.

The remaining 6 percent (27) were characterized by very high levels of maternal affection.

When the specific elements of the checklist were analyzed, those whose mothers had been observed to be the most affectionate at the eight-month assessment had the lowest levels of anxiety, hostility, and general distress.

There was more than a seven-point difference in anxiety scores between those whose mothers had displayed low or normal levels of affection and those whose mothers had displayed high levels.

And there was more than a three-point discrepancy in hostility scores and a five-point difference in overall general distress scores.

This pattern was seen across all the various elements of the symptom checklist: the higher the mother’s warmth, the lower the adult’s distress.

The authors conclude that their findings back up the assertion that even very early life experiences can influence adult health.

High levels of maternal affection are likely to facilitate secure attachments and bonding, say the authors.

This not only lowers distress, but may also enable a child to develop effective life, social, and coping skills, which will stand them in good stead as adults.

Source: BMJ-British Medical Journal

For decades research has shown that listening to music alleviates anxiety and depression, enhances mood, and can increase cognitive functioning, such as spatial awareness.

However, until now, research has not addressed how we listen to music. For instance, is the cognitive benefit still the same if we listen to music while performing a task, rather than before it?

Further, how does our preference for a particular type of music affect performance?

The new study, found in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, shows that listening to music that one likes while performing a serial recall task does not help performance any more than listening to music one does not enjoy.

The researchers explored the ‘irrelevant sound effect’ by requiring participants to perform serial recall (recall a list of eight consonants in presentation order) in the presence of five sound environments: quiet, liked music (e.g., Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Stranglers, and Arcade Fire), disliked music (the track “Thrashers” by Death Angel), changing-state (a sequence of random digits such as “4, 7, 1, 6”) and steady-state (“3, 3, 3”).

Recall ability was approximately the same, and poorest, for the music and changing-state conditions.

The most accurate recall occurred when participants performed the task in the quieter, steady-state environments. Thus listening to music, regardless of whether people liked or disliked it, impaired their concurrent performance.

Lead researcher Nick Perham explains: “The poorer performance of the music and changing-state sounds are due to the acoustical variation within those environments. This impairs the ability to recall the order of items, via rehearsal, within the presented list. Mental arithmetic also requires the ability to retain order information in the short-term via rehearsal, and may be similarly affected by their performance in the presence of changing-state, background environments.”

Although music can have a very positive effect on our general mental health, music can, in the circumstances described, also have negative effects on cognitive performance.

Perham remarks, “Most people listen to music at the same time as, rather than prior to performing a task. To reduce the negative effects of background music when recalling information in order one should either perform the task in quiet or only listen to music prior to performing the task.”

Source: Wiley-Blackwell