Painkiller Side-Effects: This Common Drug Increases Risk-Taking

The painkiller is found in 600 different drugs.

The painkiller is found in 600 different drugs.

Acetaminophen — known as Tylenol in the US and paracetamol elsewhere — makes people take bigger risks, research finds.

Taking the popular painkiller makes people view risky activities as less so.

People report being more likely to speak their mind on an unpopular issue at work, change career in their 30s or even take up skydiving.

Acetaminophen is a painkiller that is used in at least 600 different medicines.

Most people are not aware of the wide range of psychological side-effects the drug has.

Previous studies have shown that acetaminophen reduces both positive and negative emotions, the ability to empathise and changes how the brain processes information.

Dr Baldwin Way, the study’s first author, said:

“Acetaminophen seems to make people feel less negative emotion when they consider risky activities — they just don’t feel as scared.

With nearly 25 percent of the population in the U.S. taking acetaminophen each week, reduced risk perceptions and increased risk-taking could have important effects on society.”

For one of the studies in the research, some participants took a standard 1,000 mg dose of acetaminophen.

Then all the participants started pumping up a balloon, for which they were offered a greater reward for each pump they put in.

Dr Way explained how the experiment worked:

“As you’re pumping the balloon, it is getting bigger and bigger on your computer screen, and you’re earning more money with each pump.

But as it gets bigger you have this decision to make: Should I keep pumping and see if I can make more money, knowing that if it bursts I lose the money I had made with that balloon?”

People who had taken acetaminophen carried on pumping and were more likely to burst the balloon.

Dr Way said:

“If you’re risk-averse, you may pump a few times and then decide to cash out because you don’t want the balloon to burst and lose your money.

But for those who are on acetaminophen, as the balloon gets bigger, we believe they have less anxiety and less negative emotion about how big the balloon is getting and the possibility of it bursting.”

Dr Way thinks the results have some topical implications, since people are told to take acetaminophen for initial COVID symptoms:

“Perhaps someone with mild COVID-19 symptoms may not think it is as risky to leave their house and meet with people if they’re taking acetaminophen.”

The study was published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (Keaveney et al., 2020).

How To Use The Curiosity Gap To Motivate Change

Curiosity can help people make healthier choices and change their behaviour.

Curiosity can help people make healthier choices and change their behaviour.

Curiosity is a powerful way to motivate people, research finds.

It can even help people make healthier choices.

Across four experiments, researchers found that people’s curiosity encouraged them to take the stairs and eat more healthily.

Dr Evan Polman, the study’s first author, said:

“Our research shows that piquing people’s curiosity can influence their choices by steering them away from tempting desires, like unhealthy foods or taking the elevator, and toward less tempting, but healthier options, such as buying more fresh produce or taking the stairs.”

For example, in one experiment 200 people were given a choice between two cookies.

One of them was plain, but they were told it was a ‘fortune cookie’ that contained some personal information about them.

The other cookie held no such intriguing information, but was covered with chocolate and sprinkles.

Still, 71 percent of people chose the fortune cookie, preferring some personal information to mere chocolate and sprinkles.

(Incidentally, the fortune cookies all contained the same, extremely disappointing line for everyone: “You are not illiterate”.)

Dr Polman said:

“By telling people if they choose the ordinary cookie they’ll learn something about themselves via the fortune inside of it, it piqued their curiosity, and therefore they were more likely to pick the plain cookie over the more tempting chocolate-dipped option.”

In a second experiment, researchers promised to reveal the secret to a magic trick — this also strongly motivated people’s behaviour.

In a third experiment, people were encouraged to use the stairs rather than the lift by the posting of trivia questions at the bottom, with the answers in the stairwell.

Dr Polman said:

“Evidently, people really have a need for closure when something has piqued their curiosity.

They want the information that fills the curiosity gap, and they will go to great lengths to get it.”

The effect — sometimes known as the ‘curiosity gap’ — was surprisingly powerful, and can be put to good use, said Dr Polman:

“Our results suggest that using interventions based on curiosity gaps has the potential to increase participation in desired behaviors for which people often lack motivation.

It also provides new evidence that curiosity-based interventions come at an incredibly small cost and could help steer people toward a variety of positive actions.”

The study was presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, 2016 (Polman et al., 2016).

Emodiversity: How To Achieve A Healthy Diversity Of Emotions (M)

People who experience a wider range of emotions — both positive and negative — are mentally healthier.

People who experience a wider range of emotions -- both positive and negative -- are mentally healthier.


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Avoid These Emotions For A Stronger Immune System

It is the reaction to stress that is important, rather than the stress itself.

It is the reaction to stress that is important, rather than the stress itself.

Negative emotions like sadness and anger are linked to higher levels of inflammation in the body, which can compromise the immune system.

Higher inflammation is part of the body’s response to things like infections and wounds.

Chronic inflammation can lead to health problems like cancer, heart disease and obesity.

However, a previous study shows that people who remain calm or cheerful in the face of irritations have a lower risk of inflammation.

In other words, it is the reaction to stress that is important, rather than the stress itself.

Typical everyday stressors include things like arguments with family, friends or co-workers, ongoing worries about money and childcare concerns.

Being able to remain positive in the face of these types of stressors is vital.

Women are particularly vulnerable to increased inflammation if they do not deal with the build-up of stress, the same previous study found.

Long-term stress has also been found to damage the brain’s short-term memory system.

Again, it is inflammation that causes short-term memory problems.

Once the inflammatory immune response to stress resolves, the problems disappear.

Emotions can be changed

The latest study included 220 people whose feelings were tracked over a two-week period.

The results showed that the more their negative moods accumulated, the higher their levels of inflammation.

Positive mood was linked to lower levels of inflammation — but only in men.

Emotions can be changed, Dr Jennifer Graham-Engeland, the study’s first author, underlined:

“Because affect is modifiable, we are excited about these findings and hope that they will spur additional research to understand the connection between affect and inflammation, which in turn may promote novel psychosocial interventions that promote health broadly and help break a cycle that can lead to chronic inflammation, disability, and disease.”

The study was published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity (Graham-Engeland et al., 2018).

The Most Important Trait For An Entrepreneur (Better Than High IQ) (M)

The trait — which involves the ability to understand emotions and relieve stress — is more important than IQ for entrepreneurs.

The trait -- which involves the ability to understand emotions and relieve stress -- is more important than IQ for entrepreneurs.


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Human Nature Is Surprisingly Forgiving, Research Shows

Most people are quick to see the good in others and slow to condemn.

Most people are quick to see the good in others and slow to condemn.

Most people are quick to forgive others who have behaved badly in the past, research suggests.

The majority tend to give others the benefit of the doubt, offering forgiveness even in the face of bad behaviour.

In other words, most are quick to see the good in others — indeed, want to see it — and are slow to condemn.

It might help explain why some people stay in bad relationships.

Dr Molly Crockett, study co-author, said:

“The brain forms social impressions in a way that can enable forgiveness.

Because people sometimes behave badly by accident, we need to be able to update bad impressions that turn out to be mistaken.

Otherwise, we might end relationships prematurely and miss out on the many benefits of social connection.”

The research included over 1,500 people in a series of experiments.

They observed strangers who had to make a decision in a moral dilemma.

Should they inflict electrical shocks to gain money?

‘Good’ strangers were seen to mostly refuse to shock others, while ‘bad’ strangers were observed often going ahead with it.

The observers were asked about the moral character of the strangers.

The results revealed that people were relatively quick to forgive bad behaviour and avoided condemning people as ‘truly bad’.

However, people were confident that the ‘good’ strangers were ‘truly good’.

Dr Crockett said:

“We think our findings reveal a basic predisposition towards giving others, even strangers, the benefit of the doubt.

The human mind is built for maintaining social relationships, even when partners sometimes behave badly.”

Ms  Jenifer Siegel, the study’s first author, said:

“The ability to accurately form impressions of others’ character is crucial for the development and maintenance of healthy relationships.

We have developed new tools for measuring impression formation, which could help improve our understanding of relational dysfunction.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour (Siegel et al., 2018).

The Reason Teenagers Are So Negative

Adolescents can spot the slightest sign of negative emotion in another person’s face.

Adolescents can spot the slightest sign of negative emotion in another person’s face.

People are at their most sensitive to angry faces and social threats when they are teenagers, research finds.

Adolescents can spot the slightest sign of negative emotion in another person’s face.

This partly helps to explain why the social world of adolescents feels so fraught with danger to them.

However, with age, people in general become less sensitive to anger and fear, while retaining their sensitivity to happiness.

Dr Laura Germine, study co-author, said:

“From studies and anecdotal evidence, we know that the everyday experiences of an adolescent is different from a middle aged or older person, but we wanted to understand how these experiences might be linked with differences in basic emotion understanding.”

For the study, 9,546 people took a test of emotional sensitivity.

The test measured how sensitive people are to facial cues of happiness, anger and fear.

Dr Lauren A. Rutter, the study’s first author, explained the results:

“We found that sensitivity to anger cues improves dramatically during early to mid-adolescence.

This is the exact age when young people are most attuned to forms of social threat, such as bullying.

The normal development of anger sensitivity can contribute to some of the challenges that arise during this phase of development.”

The study also found that women of all ages are more sensitive to anger and fear than men.

However, both young and old, men and women, are equally good at detecting happiness, the study found.

Dr Germine explained:

“It’s well established that there is an age-related decline in the ability to decode emotion cues, in general, but here we see very little decline in the ability to detect differences in happiness.

What’s remarkable is that we see declines in many visual perceptual abilities as we get older, but here we did not see such declines in the perception of happiness.

These findings fit well with other research showing that older adults tend to have more positive emotions and a positive outlook.”

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (Rutter et al., 2019).

How Stress May Boost Thinking Skills And Make Your Brain Younger (M)

While we tend to think of stress as something to be avoided, it does provide the brain with stimulation.

While we tend to think of stress as something to be avoided, it does provide the brain with stimulation.


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