Friday, September 30, 2016
Attractiveness Judged by Group Composition
http://ift.tt/2dcdwhB
New research from the UK suggests that if you want to be considered as good-looking, then it is best to hang out with a group of relatively unattractive individuals.
In the study, Royal Holloway University of London investigators discovered judgements of attractiveness vary depending on who is nearby, and how good-looking they are in comparison.
A person will rank higher on a scale of attractiveness when compared alongside less attractive people, than they would when judged alone.
The finding runs counter to common opinion that a person’s perceived level of attractiveness is somewhat fixed. However, the new study shows that context is key to assessing attractiveness.
Dr Nicholas Furl, a psychology professor and author of the study explains: “Rightly or wrongly, the way people look has a profound impact on the way others perceive them. We live in a society obsessed with beauty and attractiveness, but how we measure and understand these concepts is still a grey area.”
He continued, “Until now, it’s been understood that a person’s level of attractiveness is generally steady. If you saw a picture of George Clooney today, you would rate him as good-looking as you would tomorrow. However, this work demonstrates that the company we keep has an effect on how attractive we appear to others.”
The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, demonstrates that how attractive we are is far from static, it can fluctuate. According to the paper, an averagely attractive face surrounded by undesirable faces will become more appealing than it would on its own.
Participants in the study were asked to rate pictures of different faces for attractiveness, one by one. They were then asked to assess the same faces, placed alongside ones perceived to be undesirable. When adding these ‘distractor faces’, the attractiveness of the same faces increased from the first round of ranking.
Participants were then shown two attractive faces, alongside a ‘distractor’ face and asked to judge between them. The presence of the less attractive face was found to make the viewers more critical between the attractive face, as Dr Furl explained:
“The presence of a less attractive face does not just increase the attractiveness of a single person, but in a crowd could actually make us even more choosey! We found that the presence of a ‘distractor’ face makes differences between attractive people more obvious and that observers start to pull apart these differences, making them even more particular in their judgement.”
Furl concluded, “It’s perhaps not too surprising that we are judged in relation to those around us. This is a trope often seen in teen movies and romantic comedies, where a character associates themselves with a less attractive friend to elevate their own dating stakes.
“Last year’s film The Duff, – an acronym for the rather unfortunate and unfair term ‘Designated Ugly Fat Friend’ explored how the main character felt being physically compared to her friendship group. As in life, this film showed that how we perceive beauty and attractiveness isn’t fixed.
There are many other ways in which we decide who we are attracted to. There will certainly be more research in years to come on this complicated area of human interaction, and I am excited to see where this research takes us.”
Source: Royal Holloway
Related Articles
What Have Orson Wells, Pokemon and Current Trends On Social Media All Got in Common? Are You A Voice Or An Echo?
http://ift.tt/2cQmJwf
Back in 1938 Orson Welles caused a bit of a stir with his realistic radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds” which was dramatised and adapted to depict a Martian invasion of Earth. Updating H.G. Wells’ 19th-century science fiction novel War of the Worlds for national radio, Orson Welles probably did not suspect the ensuing […]
The post What Have Orson Wells, Pokemon and Current Trends On Social Media All Got in Common? Are You A Voice Or An Echo? appeared first on Adam Eason.
Mouse Study Shows Alcohol Alters Molecular Path Like Rapid Antidepressants
http://ift.tt/2d0Ub0z
New research suggests having a few drinks when you are down may indeed help your mood.
In the mouse study, investigators found that alcohol produces the same neural and molecular changes as drugs that have proven to be rapidly effective antidepressants.
Wake Forest investigators say the effects are explained by biochemistry.
“Because of the high comorbidity between major depressive disorder and alcoholism there is the widely recognized self-medication hypothesis, suggesting that depressed individuals may turn to drinking as a means to treat their depression,” said the study’s principal investigator, Kimberly Raab-Graham, Ph.D.
“We now have biochemical and behavioral data to support that hypothesis.” This, however, does not at all suggest that alcohol can be regarded as an effective treatment for depression.
“There’s definitely a danger in self-medicating with alcohol,” Raab-Graham said. “There’s a very fine line between it being helpful and harmful, and at some point during repeated use self-medication turns into addiction.”
In their study, Raab-Graham and her colleagues found that a single dose of an intoxicating level of alcohol worked in conjunction with the autism-related protein FMRP to transform an acid called GABA from an inhibitor to a stimulator of neural activity. This amount of alcohol has been shown to block NMDA receptors (proteins associated with learning and memory).
Investigators discovered that these biochemical changes resulted in non-depressive behavior of the mice lasting at least 24 hours.
This study demonstrated that alcohol followed the same biochemical pathway as rapid antidepressants in the animals, while producing behavioral effects comparable to those observed in people.
In recent years, single doses of rapid antidepressants such as ketamine have proven capable of relieving depressive symptoms within hours and lasting for up to two weeks, even in individuals who are resistant to traditional antidepressants.
“Additional research is needed in this area, but our findings do provide a biological basis for the natural human instinct to self-medicate,” Raab-Graham said.
“They also define a molecular mechanism that may be a critical contributor to the comorbidity that occurs with alcohol use disorder and major depressive disorder.”
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. The research was supported by an National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism pilot grant along with additional grants from the National Science Foundation and other awards.
Source: Wake Forest University
Related Articles
New Weight Loss Approach Helps People Keep It Off
http://ift.tt/2cGj1BU
Losing weight is often not as difficult as maintaining the weight loss over time. A new study suggest a new behavioral treatment method can help people lose more weight and keep it off longer than traditional methods.
The new approach is called Acceptance-Based Behavioral Treatment (ABT), a strategy that links the weight loss effort to a larger personal value beyond weight loss for its own sake. This approach was found to help people adhere to diet and physical activity goals better than a traditional approach in a randomized clinical trial.
Traditional weight loss strategies or Standard Behavioral Treatment (SBT) classically encourage reduced caloric intake and increased physical activity.
The study was part of the well regarded Mind Your Health trial, and is one of the first of its kind. Investigators found that participants who received ABT (which includes all behavioral skills taught in SBT) lost 13.3 percent of their initial weight at one year, compared to 9.8 percent weight loss at one year for participants who received SBT only.
This difference represents a clinically significant 36 percent increase in weight lost for those in the ABT group. In addition, the likelihood of maintaining a 10 percent weight loss at 12 months was one-third greater for ABT with a rate of 64 percent versus 49 percent for ABT alone.
As Thomas Wadden, PhD, FTOS, and Robert Berkowitz, MD, FTOS point out in their accompanying commentary, weight loss with ABT is among the largest ever reported in the behavioral treatment literature without use of an aggressive diet or medication.
“We’re excited to share this new proven therapy with the weight-loss community, and in fact this is one of the first rigorous, randomized clinical trials to show that an alternative treatment results in greater weight loss than the gold standard, traditional form of behavioral treatment” continued Forman.
The ABT sessions emphasized the following principles with the participants to achieve adherence to diet and exercise goals in order to lose weight. Principles include:
• Choose goals derived from freely-chosen personal life values, such as living a long and healthy life or being a present, active grandparent.
• Recognize that weight-control behaviors will inevitably produce discomfort (such as urges to eat, hunger, cravings, feelings of deprivation and fatigue) and a reduction of pleasure (such as choosing a walk over watching TV or choosing an apple over ice cream).
• Increase awareness of how cues impact eating and activity-related decision making.
In the study, 190 participants with overweight or obesity were randomly assigned to SBT alone, or ABT (which fused both behavioral skills from SBT with acceptance-based skills). Participants attended 25 treatment groups over a one-year period, which consisted of brief individual check-ins, skill presentations and a skill-building exercise.
All interventionists were doctoral-level clinicians with experience delivering behavioral weight loss treatments.
“These findings are a boon to clinicians, dietitians and psychologists as they add a new dimension to behavioral therapy that can potentially help improve long-term outcomes for people with obesity,” said Steven Heymsfield, MD, FTOS, a spokesperson for The Obesity Society.
“This study is one of the first of its kind, and offers promise of a new tool to add to the toolbox of treatments for overweight and obesity.”
This is the second study of ABT as part of the Mind Your Health trial, and it found an even more pronounced advantage from ABT than the first study. Forman offers several potential explanations, including the use of experienced clinicians and a revised ABT protocol that focuses on general willingness and accepting a loss in pleasure and less on coping with emotional distress, cravings and hunger.
“These are exciting findings for which I congratulate the authors,” said Wadden in an accompanying commentary.
“Like all new findings, they need to be replicated by other researchers before ABT can be considered a reliable means of increasing weight loss with SBT,” he added. Wadden noted that treatment comparison studies of different psychotherapies have shown that when researchers feel strongly that their therapy will work best, it can influence outcomes.
Therefore, Wadden believes future research should be conducted by therapists who did not develop ABT. Additionally, he said, “Future studies of ABT would be enriched by reporting on changes in depression, susceptibility to food cues and motivation for change in both the ABT and SBT groups.
Long-term follow-up after treatment would also be beneficial to determine if ABT improves weight-loss maintenance compared with SBT.”
The study and its accompanying commentary appear in Obesity, the scientific journal of The Obesity Society (TOS).
Source: The Obese Society
Best of Our Blogs: September 30, 2016
http://ift.tt/2cFQwta
It can be an isolating path when you speak honestly. But when you do it in company of those who are comfortable sharing theirs, it’s like coming home.
All of us are looking to be heard, and validated for who we are. But many of us are too afraid of rejection to remove our protective shells. It’s much easier to hide behind false perfection or superficial niceties.
But when we share what we really think and how we really feel, we open the light in. This light invites others to share their own truth. That’s how we blossom. That’s how we begin to change the world.
The next time someone asks how you feel. Be like our bloggers this week. Take a risk in your relationships. Be honest with them and yourself.
Why Unloved Daughters Fall for Narcissists
(Knotted) – You succumb to their charm every time. Why do narcissists captivate you so? Your childhood will explain why.
11 Superpowers of Kids with ADHD
(Stress Better) – You’re used to hearing all the bad things about ADHD. Here are the surprising strengths that also come with it.
How to Stop Dating the “Wrong” People and Attract Healthy Love
(Happily Imperfect) – You’ve asked yourself this a million times. But here’s the real reason why you keep falling for the wrong partner.
Losing Yourself in a Relationship: 5 Things to Avoid
(Relationship Corner) – You don’t just get involved in relationships. You get submerged into them. Here’s how to stop getting enmeshed.
The One Thing Every Kid with Anxiety Should be Doing
(Parenting Anxious Kids) – If you’re helping your child cope with anxiety by having them think of something else, try this instead.
Related Articles
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)