hotmedfax2018

I have a bad habit, at least, according to my son and husband.  I talk to strangers .   They hate standing around when I'm making new friends! Now a new study says that o ur trust in strangers is dependent on their resemblance to others we’ve previously known, newswise.com reports.  The study, led by a team of psychology researchers, shows that strangers resembling past individuals known to be trustworthy are trusted more; by contrast, those similar to others known to be untrustworthy are trusted less. Now this sounds kind of obvious. And yes, I talk to everybody, especially women with babies (oh, how I miss those days!). “Our study reveals that strangers are distrusted even when they only minimally resemble someone previously associated with immoral behavior,” explains the work’s lead author, Oriel FeldmanHall, who led research as a post-doctoral fellow at NYU and who is now an assistant professor in Brown University’s Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, a...

Now here's a scary thought.  Thrive under an abusive boss ?  You may be a psychopath. In the workplace, employees respond differently to abusive management styles, in part due to their varying levels of psychopathy, according to a new study from the University of Notre Dame, newswise.com reports. Certain types of “psychopaths” actually benefit and flourish under abusive bosses, according to a new study by  Charlice  Hurst , assistant professor of management in Notre Dame’s  Mendoza College of Business . “There are primary and secondary dimensions of psychopathy,” Hurst explains. “Both consist of high levels of antisocial behavior.  However, people who score high in primary psychopathy lack empathy and are cool-headed and fearless. They don’t react to things that cause other people to feel stressed, fearful or angry. Secondary psychopaths are more hot-headed and impulsive. “We found that primary psychopaths benefit under abusive supervisors. Relativ...

I read something very interesting recently in The New York Times, a column by a reporter who covers the boroughs.  He was in a subway station where there was a man sitting on the edge of the pavement who was alternately laughing and crying. Since it was late at night and the reporter feared for his safety, he thought about trying to get the man to stop the sounds, to not call attention to them. But fearing that this man would jump on the tracks, the reporter stayed with him until a supervisor could be called.  The supervisor came and called medical personnel.  Once they saw that he needed no immediate treatment (wasn't bleeding or had an injured limb), they left. Still concerned, the reporter stayed with the man, hoping he could find out if there was family that could be called.  A subway train roared into the station, the man suddenly jumped on, and the reporter never saw him again. Now, what would you have done? A new study suggests tells us that the brain ...

Now this is interesting.  You know that women and science and math don't usually go together, right?  And forget about asking them to figure out the size of the carpet that would fit in the living room.  But now a new study says that women, at least, some, tend to avoid certain fields especially when you link intellectual talent to them.   According to newswise.com, l inking success in certain fields to intellectual talent undermines women's interest in them. “We know that women are underrepresented in fields whose members believe you have to be brilliant to succeed,” explains Andrei Cimpian, an associate professor in New York University’s Department of Psychology and the study’s senior author. “These findings reveal one reason why this is the case: when certain fields or jobs are linked to intellectual talent or brilliance, which is seen as a masculine trait in our culture, women’s interest declines.” "These messages also undermine women’s sense of how ...

I'm not going to bore you to death about how stress makes us sick.  You'd have to be living under a rock not to know that.  But a new study links stress and our immune cells, and as we all know, that's what protects us from illness. A really scary study has found that stress exacerbates pancreatic cancer. Now, I'm both a cancer and infertility survivor and the stress of trying not to feel stress about either almost did me in.   But this new study finds that  certain types of stress interact with immune cells and can regulate how these cells respond to allergens, ultimately causing physical symptoms and disease. The study illustrated how a  stress receptor, known as corticotropin-releasing factor, or CRF1, can send signals to certain immune cells, called mast cells, and control how they defend the body. During the study, researchers compared the histamine responses of mice to two types of stress conditions – psychological and allergic – where the im...

Having trouble getting to sleep?  Maybe do one of the things I hate most.  Make a to-do list . A new study says that w riting a “to-do” list at bedtime may aid in falling asleep, according to a Baylor University study, newswise.com reports. Research compared sleep patterns of participants who took five minutes to write down upcoming duties versus participants who chronicled completed activities. “We live in a 24/7 culture in which our to-do lists seem to be constantly growing and causing us to worry about unfinished tasks at bedtime,” says lead author Michael K. Scullin, Ph.D., director of Baylor’s Sleep Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratory and assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience. “Most people just cycle through their to-do lists in their heads, and so we wanted to explore whether the act of writing them down could counteract nighttime difficulties with falling asleep." Think you're alone?  Other studies show that 40% of Americans have trouble droppi...

Want to know how dangerous driving really is?  If you ride a motorcycle -- or drive in a car -- listen up. A new study has found that "inattentional blindness" affects all of us when we drive.  Say what?   According to newswise.com, t he disproportionately high number of motorcycle-related traffic accidents may be linked to the way the human brain processes - or fails to process - information. So why should that affect you if you never ride a motocycle? It applies to cars, too. A person's failure to notice an unexpected object located in plain sight, might explain the prevalence of looked-but-failed-to-see (LBFTS) crashes, the most common type of collision involving motorcycles.  It also applies to pedestrians, too, crossing at a crosswalk where there's a turning car (two people in my small town have been killed that way in the last several months), newswise.com reports. Despite clear conditions and the lack of other hazards or distractions, drivers w...

I'm as guilty as anyone. Not a great student myself, I'm constantly at my son (who is) to be a better one. It all started when I learned a friend's son is #2 in the class. Kids today are significantly more addicted to perfection and perfectionism than in earlier years, newswise.com reports. And it's probably because of parents like us. Sadly, this excessive desire to succeed can, as you would imagine, have serious negative consequences. Many places have seen an increase in teen suicides and while the rise can't entirely be attributed to this need to be perfect at all things, certainly stress to be just that is putting a terrific strain on our kids. My son has always been a good student but as he nears college, I'm suddenly finding myself to be obsessing over PSAT scores (mine were in the low 800s), grades (straight A's on his recent progress report) and where he stands in the class (don't know, don't want to know). His social life has...