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Psychology / Behavior
Topics about the evolution of human and animal psychology and behavior
Do bullies get more sex ? Well Yes, and this doesn’t depend on the gender!
Mar 6th
The Gallup, O’Brien, White and Wilson study from 2009 validated the idea that the majority of adolescent victims of peer aggression are abused by same-gender peers; that is 85% of victimization is directed towards same-sex peers indicating an arms race intra-sexual competition that evolved in both males and females.
Also, the study confirmed the lower age threshold of first sexual intercourse that female victims of peer aggression supposedly engage in; the more victimized you are as a female, the more sexual partners you seem to have during your lifetime and the lower the age of first sexual intercourse.
As for the males, the facts are exactly the opposite; it seems, the study concluded, the more bullying you are subjected to, the higher the age for your first sexual intercourse and the less sexual partners you will have during your lifetime. Other studies showed a direct correlation between indirect bullying (peer aggression) between females at a young adult age, that is indirect aggression through hurtful rumor spreading, and the rate of attractiveness of the victim/abuser.
It seems the more attractive you are as a female the more you are going to experience the intra-sexual competition pressures engaged by your less attractive but more angered adolescent same-sex peers. This of course is a behavioral adaptation evolved in the less attractive genetic lines of the female gender to compete with the superior more “pleasing to the eye” and thus healthier genetic set of the same gender.
How does this behavioral strategy achieve its desired effects? Well, on the one hand through communicating to other males and females signals of the victim’s promiscuity and possible infidelity a potential mate might be subjected to. Let’s call it the tribal effect, because in the early ages of our evolutionary history we lived in small groups where everyone knew everyone.
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The reality of jealousy – Who is more vigilant ? Men or Women ?
Mar 5th
I think that from a scientific point of view, apart from the question of whether men or women cheat more often, the question concerning jealousy is a more interesting and enlightening one. Why? Because it reaches at the basic heart and core workings of the strategies men and women use in their mating dance.
More interestingly, even though one might conclude that the question of whether men are more jealous than women is in direct relation with the question of whether women cheat more than men, we will approach the issue separately. Let’s analyze it from the cost effectiveness point of view.
That is what Aaron T. Goetz from The Department of Psychology at California State University and Kayla Causey from The Department of Psychology at Florida Atlantic University did in a study that tried to answer the question of whether there are any sex biased differences in perceptions of infidelity. Do really men often assume the worst?
What were the risks of not being able to detect your partner’s infidelity in the early days of our ancestors? Either if you were a man or a woman you risked losing your reputation, contacting sexually transmitted diseases or terminating the relationship. But more than that, if you were a man you were never sure if you were rearing the offspring that shared half of your genes! A woman always knew that of course, because she was the one giving birth to the child. So the risk of cuckoldry to which a man was exposed to, that is the risk which he was subjected at in investing his time, resources and even his life to rear a child that was not even his, plus the time, effort and resources spent attracting his partner, represented an evolutionary driving force that has not left its effects expected.
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Benefits of quitting smoking – The Why and How of ceasing this bad habit
Feb 17th
Are you a smoker and you can’t quit? Ever wondered what would it take to scare you or excite you enough that it would turn off this potent addiction. Scientists A Parsons, A Daley and R Begh carried a study that showed what influence smoking cessation had on future prognosis after diagnosis of early stage lung cancer.
Lung cancer is the commonest form of cancer in the world. The main cause of it is smoking, data showing us that a life-long smoker has a 20-fold increase in the risk of developing this disease.
So, logically one may deduce that ceasing this habit prior to developing some form of cancer reduces dramatically the chances that you will develop a cancerous tumor. In fact, this statement is highly sustained by scientific data. Until now the problem was that there were no studies taken that showed the beneficial effects such a ceasing would have on people which have already been diagnosed with some form of cancer, specifically lung cancer. Researchers led by A Parsons carried 10 studies in which almost all patients were diagnosed with early stage lung cancer so the results obtained by them would reflect as realistically as possible the actual effects such a ceasing would have.
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Type 2 diabetes lowers self-control abilities – What this teaches us about curing and preventing this disease
Feb 16th
Researchers Kaya T. Ishizawa, Hiroaki Kumano and Atsushi Sato writing for the BioPsychoSocial Medicine Journal showed in a recent study that type 2 diabetes may reduce certain neuro-psychological inhibition functions that lower ones ability to control himself. Patients with diabetes showed lower scores in inhibitory control and control of impulsive responses.
Most importantly is the fact that these deficient characteristics, that do not appear in healthy patients, are not related to the obesity of the patients but are direct consequences of type 2 diabetes.
The Pre-Frontal Cortex(PFC) of the brain is divided in many parts, but for this story we have to know that the dorso-lateral pre-frontal cortex is responsible for regulating executive functions that relate to planning, delayed outcome and specialized cognitive functions, whereas the ventral part of the pre-frontal cortex is responsible with immediate rewards, punishments and inhibition of certain impulsive thoughts. The study tried and managed to show how the interaction of the ventral and dorso-lateral parts of the PFC in the patients with type 2 diabetes resulted in lower self-control scores that, by the nature of the disease that caused these, scores, is in itself a major factor in aggravating type 2 diabetes.
