Prairie voles as a novel model of socially facilitated excessive drinking.
“Social relationships strongly affect alcohol drinking in humans. Traditional laboratory rodents do not exhibit social affiliations with specific peers, and cannot adequately model how such relationships impact drinking. The prairie vole is a socially monogamous rodent used to study social bonds. The present study tested the prairie vole as a potential model for the effects of social affiliations on alcohol drinking. (more…)
Emotional and uncontrolled eating styles and chocolate chip cookie consumption. A controlled trial of the effects of positive mood enhancement.
“The study tested the effects of positive mood enhancement on chocolate chip cookie consumption in the context of emotional and uncontrolled eating styles. The relationship between emotional eating style and chocolate chip cookie intake was assumed to be mediated by uncontrolled eating style. Further, it was hypothesized that the effectiveness of the positive mood enhancement may be more salient among those who have effective control of their eating. (more…)
Serious as a heart attack: health-related content of late-night comedy television.
“Although the medical community hoped that Vice President Dick Cheney’s public experiences with heart problems and subsequent treatments would serve to raise awareness, educate the public about heart disease and treatment options, and showcase advances in cardiac care, late-night comedians saw Cheney’s health problems as joke fodder. Comedians like Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Conan O’Brien ridiculed Cheney in their monologues, suggesting the vice president was frail, weak, and near death-certainly not a “poster boy” for contemporary cardiac care. (more…)
Volunteer bias in erotica research: effects of intrusiveness of measure and sexual background.
“Volunteer characteristics and volunteer rates across several laboratory experiments of sexual arousal were compared. Conditions were created to assess which component of the experimental setting was responsible for low volunteer rates in experiments using genital measurement. Subjects were 324 male and 424 female undergraduate students who had volunteered for an experiment on sexuality and personality. After completing several measures of sexual experience and attitude, subjects received a written description of one of the following conditions and were asked if they wished to volunteer: sexual film, sexual film and subjective rating of arousal, sexual film and assessment through forehead temperature, sexual film and assessment with a device that was placed over the clothes and measured genital heat flow, sexual film and assessment with the heat flow device while partially undressed, or sexual film and assessment with the vaginal photoplethysmograph or penile strain gauge while partially undressed. (more…)
Differential facial responses to four basic tastes in newborns.
“The distinctiveness and recognizability of taste-elicited facial expressions in newborns were examined in 2 studies. Sucrose, sodium chloride, citric acid, and quinine hydrochloride solutions were presented to 12 infants at 2 hours of age. In Study 1, the anatomically based Facial Action Coding System adapted for infants (Baby FACS) was used to obtain detailed, objective descriptions of the infants’ videotaped facial responses to each solution. Facial responses to sucrose were characterized primarily by facial relaxation and sucking. The responses to salty, sour, and bitter solutions shared the same hedonically negative upper- and midface components but differed in the accompanying lower-face actions: lip pursing in response to sour and mouth gaping in response to bitter. There was no distinctive facial expression for sodium chloride. These findings demonstrate that newborns differentiate sour and bitter from each other and from salt, as well as discriminating sweet versus nonsweet tastes. (more…)
More than “just a joke”: the prejudice-releasing function of sexist humor.
“The results of two experiments supported the hypothesis that, for sexist men, exposure to sexist humor can promote the behavioral release of prejudice against women. Experiment 1 demonstrated that hostile sexism predicted the amount of money participants were willing to donate to a women’s organization after reading sexist jokes but not after reading nonhumorous sexist statements or neutral jokes. (more…)
An inventory and update of jealousy-evoking partner behaviours in modern society.
“The goal of the present study was to identify the most important jealousy-evoking partner behaviours and to examine the extent to which these behaviours evoke jealousy. Based on the literature, a questionnaire was constructed containing 42 jealousy-evoking partner behaviours, including a partner’s extra-dyadic involvement with someone else by means of modern communication devices, such as the Internet. A second study examined the extent to which undergraduates and a community sample experienced jealousy in response to these partner behaviours. (more…)
“Falsification of illness occurs when a patient fabricates symptoms or induces a physical illness. A recent review of the literature covering the past 3 decades identified 42 published case studies of falsified illness in children younger than 18 years of age (1). The psychiatric term for illness falsification is “factitious disorder,” which is defined as an intentional, self-inflicted, or fabricated illness or symptom motivated solely by the individual’s need to assume the sick role, without external incentives (2). Children are at risk of developing a chronic pattern of illness falsification with the potential for serious self-harm as the sophistication of their fabrications increase. Therefore, early detection and intervention is essential (1). We report a unique case of a factitious illness in which an adolescent diluted stool samples with water to feign chronic diarrhea. (more…)
Positioning the booty-call relationship on the spectrum of relationships: sexual but more emotional than one-night stands.
“Most research on human sexuality has focused on long-term pairbonds and one-night stands. However, growing evidence suggests there are relationships that do not fit cleanly into either of those categories. One of these relationships is a “booty-call relationship.” The purpose of this study was to describe the sexual and emotional nature of booty-call relationships by (a) examining the types of emotional and sexual acts involved in booty-call relationships and (b) comparing the frequency of those acts in booty-call relationships to one-night stands and serious long-term relationships. (more…)
“Two 18-year-old men were seen for second-degree burns to the dorsum of their knees, ankles, and feet. Upon investigation, it was revealed that the burns were self-inflicted and resulted from the application of crushed garlic with the intent of exemption from work. (more…)
