Category: Psychology

Oliver James, writing in The Guardian, draws attention to research that investigates the connection between achievement and thinness in women. Studies have shown that a female preference for smaller breasts and buttocks when viewing female silhouettes is associated with ‘masculine’ careers and greater academic achievement. Could this be partly because women with a curvy shape are perceived, on average, to be less competent and less intelligent?

The assertion of the article that ‘career women’ strive for more masculine figures is highly speculative. After all, a thin figure might simply be the result of avoiding a curvy figure, rather than the striving for a ‘masculine’ ideal. Other claims that female emancipation is historically associated with a slighter silhouette might be a coincidence. Nevertheless, there’s some interesting circumstantial evidence here.
The Guardian

“A college student becomes so compulsive about cleaning his dorm room that his grades begin to slip. An executive living in New York has a mortal fear of snakes but lives in Manhattan and rarely goes outside the city where he might encounter one. A computer technician, deeply anxious around strangers, avoids social and company gatherings and is passed over for promotion.

Are these people mentally ill?”

NY Times

Lobotomy and Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) represent the two bookends of psychosurgery’s fall and rise. Since the Nobel Prize was won in 1949 for the findings on which the lobotomy was based, it has been mostly downhill for the procedure.

More generally, surgical intervention for mental illness – psychosurgeries – have been shunned for some time. But with the advent of DBS, psychosurgery is making a come-back. DBS involves direct electrical stimulation using electrodes implanted in the brain. The procedure has been shown to be very effective in the treatment of severe depression.

In this article in The Guardian, David Beresford describes his experiences of DBS as a treatment for his advanced Parkinson’s – for which it is also effective. A welcome side-effect he describes is a substantial lift in mood to the extent that he has experienced bouts of uncontrolled laughter.
The Guardian
Radio 4 programme about psychosurgery

You may have seen a story in the media earlier in the week about the genetic component of the female orgasm. It cropped up all over the place including The Guardian and BBC News. Dr Petra Boynton (left), the sex and relationship psychologist, took issue with a few things about the research:

“Today the world of sexology, particularly those working in the area of sexual dysfunction got a little upset.

That’s putting it mildly. Actually they were very angry about the latest study supposedly proving women’s orgasmic problems are genetic.”

In two excellent posts she proceeds to dismantle the research. Great stuff. This is what blogging is all about – a right to reply. And because of it, we’re all better informed.
Women, orgasm and genetics & Women! Don’t orgasm too easily

The new trend of online marriages in China has been highlighted after a man who, not content with having a real-world wife, married a woman online he had never met in real life. When his non-virtual wife found out she accused him of bigamy and sued him for divorce and psychological injury.

“…Lin found that her husband had got married with a woman two years ago and they had a child together on the Internet. To her surprise, when questioned about this, Zhang replied, “This on-line marriage is not real and it’s impossible for us to meet each other. Just like on-line chatting, I only do this to pass the time. Take it easy.”

Commentators are partly putting the rising trend in online marriages down to its popularity with middle school children. However, Chinese psychologists and sociologists are emphasising the increasing isolation in a society in which most children are only children.
China Daily

Avert your eyes if easily offended because today we tackle the subject of objectophilia. That’s falling in love with things, rather than people, and apparently ‘things’ includes pets.

Volkmar Sigusch, a sex psychologist and researcher, sees this objectophilia as part of a trend he calls neo-sexuality which also takes in the newly ‘asexual‘. The story from Deutsche Welle describes people falling in love with their pets, and one woman who was ‘enraptured’ with a ferry.

When I first read this I thought – what a load of rubbish. Firstly it seems unfair to put dogs in the same category as ferries. Secondly there seems to be no earthly reason to have a photo of a blonde girl loading a washing machine (or is there?).

Then I thought about a few guys I know and their iPods, and a few girls and their shoes. Do they love their iPods and shoes in the same way they love their partners? Of course not.

What seems most likely is that people are just more lonely nowadays and are increasingly substituting objects for other people.
Deutsche Welle (complete with more cheesy photos)
Get technical with Sigusch’s article from the Archives of Sexual Behaviour (honestly, not nearly as exciting as it sounds)

“Commencement speakers have long offered graduating seniors the same warm and gooey career advice: Do what you love.

And graduates have long responded the same way: They’ve listened carefully, nodded earnestly, and gone out and become accountants. No surprise. On every day except graduation day, young people are taught that their futures depend not on following their bliss, but on mastering dutiful (and less lovable) abilities like crunching numbers and following rules.”

Daniel Pink suggests why, in the modern economic climate, doing what you love might actually be the sensible thing to do.
NY Times [Via Neuroethics & Law Blog]

Now, being a loyal follower of all things psychological, as I’m sure you are, you’ll have heard of synaesthesia by now. If not, trundle on over to Wikipedia and have a quick read.

Originally when this cross-sensory perception became known, researchers were keen to see if people were really having a really real experience or whether it was, to some extent, a fiction. How permanent actually is the connection between, for example, the number 32 and the smell of recently cut grass. Real synaesthetes passed the test and so researchers moved onto something more advanced.

Here in the latest research published in Neuron, a heavyweight-type journal, V S Ramachandran (Reith lecturer from 2003) and others have found further evidence that synaesthetes are experiencing something real and different from the rest of us.

Putting people into an fMRI scanner, the researchers found that synaesthetes showed greater activation in the colour perception region of the cortex. Not only that but different synaesthetes showed different patterns of activation suggesting they might each be having diverse experiences.
ScienceDaily (Press Release)
Individual Differences among Grapheme-Color Synesthetes: Brain-Behavior Correlations [Full article PDF]

Perhaps verging on the ghoulish today, but still a good reality check for all students of the mind/brain – whether amateur or professional:

A story from the NYT about the Cornell Brain Society founded in 1899 when collecting brains was cool.

And in case you want to a send a brain to them, here’s how to pack it for transport. If you are sending your own brain, please make sure beforehand that you no longer require it.