Author Interviews, Psychological Science / 08.08.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Daniel Conroy-Beam Department of Psychology University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The main finding is that sex differences in mate preferences are much larger than we previously appreciated. So large, in fact, that if we knew nothing about a person but what they desired in a mate, we could predict their sex with 92.2% accuracy. Previous research has emphasized sex differences on individual preferences: how physically attractive should my mate be? How old should they be? How kind should they be? But we don’t pick our mates based on individual preferences; we use all of our preferences together. It’s not as though we want one partner who is attractive, and another who is intelligent, and another who is kind. We want one partner who is all of those things at once. We looking for partners with patterns of features. It turns out the patterns men and women are looking for are strikingly different. In fact, the patterns men are looking for barely overlap with the patterns women are looking for. (more…)
Author Interviews, Psychological Science, Sleep Disorders / 01.05.2015

Jaime L. Tartar PhD Behavioral Neuroscience Major Chair Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences Nova Southeastern University Fort Lauderdale, FloridaMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jaime L. Tartar PhD Behavioral Neuroscience Major Chair Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences Nova Southeastern University Fort Lauderdale, Florida Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Tartar: We set out to understand how poor sleep quality can influence emotion processing. Our rationale for this study was that although sleep perturbations are known to impair cognitive performance, it is not currently clear how poor sleep alters emotion processes. However, given that poor sleep quality is closely associated with the development of mood disorders, it is important to understand how sleep quality affects emotional functioning. We specifically examined the possibility that poor sleep quality creates a cognitive bias in memory and interpretation for emotionally negative stimuli. This would result in maladaptive emotional experiences- for example, through enhanced memory for emotionally negative events (which is also a common characteristic of depression). The idea that negative cognitive bias occurs with poor sleep quality is also consistent with the finding that sleep loss increases sensitivity to emotional stimuli as well as increases undesirable mood states like irritability, anger, and hostility.  It is particularly noteworthy that sleep perturbations result in increased emotionality since sleep perturbations are shown to result in a decrease in non-emotional cognitive processes (attention and memory).  In order to clarify the role of sleep quality on emotion processing, we tested the relationship between sleep quality and a negative cognitive bias through the use of an emotional memory task.  We also aimed to contrast these findings with performance on a non-emotional attention task since sleep impairments have previously been shown to cause impairments in (non-emotional) sustained attention. An interesting feature of the study was that we also accounted for potential confounding effects of stress sensitivity and chronotype (ones preferred time of day) since these are both factors known to be related to sleep quality. We found that, compared to those who reported good subjective sleep quality, participants who reported poor subjective sleep quality showed a negative cognitive bias towards emotionally negative stimuli. Also in agreement with previous work, we show that poor sleep quality has a negative effect on affective symptom measures- poor sleep quality relates to increased depressive symptoms, greater state and trait anxiety, and higher total mood disturbance (increased tension, fatigue, confusion and less vigor). Consistent with previous findings, we also found that subjective sleep quality was related to a decrease in performance on a sustained attention task. Although previous research suggests that stress sensitivity and chronotype would be important variables to consider in the impact of sleep perturbations on emotion processing, we did not find any stress, chronotype, or time of testing effects on these measures. (more…)
Addiction, Author Interviews, Case Western, Psychological Science / 29.04.2015

Maria Pagano, PhD Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, Division of Child Psychiatry Cleveland, OHMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Maria Pagano, PhD Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, Division of Child Psychiatry Cleveland, OH MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? Dr. Pagano: Socially anxious adolescents quickly figure out that alcohol and drugs can provide ease and comfort in social situations that are anxiety provoking.  Reaching for a substance to change how you feel can quickly become a knee-jerk reaction, can develop into an addiction, and robs youths of learning how to tolerate interpersonal differences and uncomfortable feelings, developing emotional maturity, and cultivating self acceptance. Adolescents who fear being criticized by their peers are likely to not speak up in group therapies during treatment, which can limit their benefit from treatment.  There is a lot of healing that comes sharing your insides with others. Socially anxious patients may not get this healing nor let others really get to know who they are and give input to their lives Higher peer helping in AA during treatment means getting active in low intensity tasks like putting away chairs, or making coffee at a 12-step meeting.  It is less about needing peer assistance or expecting praise or recognition from giving service.  It is more about adopting the attitude of "how can I be helpful?" (more…)
Author Interviews, Psychological Science, Weight Research / 08.03.2015

Margaret C. Campbell, Phd | Professor | Marketing Chair, Doctoral Curriculum Program Committee 437 Leeds School of Business University of Colorado at Boulder Boulder, CO 80309-0419MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Margaret C. Campbell, Phd | Professor | Marketing Chair, Doctoral Curriculum Program Committee 437 Leeds School of Business University of Colorado at Boulder Boulder, CO 80309-0419   Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Campbell: People try to maintain healthy body weights, attain academic and career success, save money for a car, a house, or retirement, and achieve a host of other goals that require repeated, goal-consistent behaviors. Unfortunately, consumers’ efforts often fall short. For example, 68% of Americans are overweight (Weight Control Information Network 2010), 46% who begin college do not graduate within six years (Associated Press 2006), and although 93% say that saving for retirement is important, only about 60% are actually saving (TIAA-CREF 2010) and approximately 50% have accumulated less than $25,000 (Helman, VanDehrei and Copeland 2007). Understanding goal pursuit and consumers’ choices to continue effort toward a goal that requires repeated goal-consistent behaviors is thus important. People need to be able to make progress on important goals that substantially impact their quality of life. Monitoring the influence of behavior on distance from a focal goal has been identified as important for successful goal pursuit - such as weight loss. In seven experiments, we find that people tend to have a “progress bias” such that they perceive that goal-consistent behaviors (such as avoiding eating a piece of cake) help progress more than equivalent-sized goal-inconsistent behaviors (such as eating a piece of cake) hurt progress. An experiment on exercise and eating shows that the progress bias can lead to poor understanding of progress and thus, premature release of the goal. In this study, the progress bias resulted in people with a goal of expending more calories than they consumed ended up consuming more than they expended. (more…)
Author Interviews, Gender Differences / 23.02.2015

photo_Vasileios ZikosMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Vasileios Zikos Assistant Professor Research Institute for Policy Evaluation and Design (RIPED) and School of Economics University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce (UTCC) Bangkok, Thailand Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Zikos: Economic studies that look at subjective well-being typically focus on how and why life circumstances affect an individual’s life satisfaction. While such studies provide valuable insights on the average effects of life changes, they often find substantial variability in the way individuals react to life events. In this study we take a step toward identifying sources of individual heterogeneity by focusing on the link between physical or mental illnesses and health satisfaction and asking whether gender and personality can explain how people cope with becoming ill. Earlier studies in psychology suggest that personality traits might be relevant to health and health-related behaviors. This allows us to hypothesize what could be the specific role of personality traits when people confront being ill. Our study is based on data collected in the British Household Panel Survey, a national longitudinal data set from the United Kingdom. The survey asked people about their happiness and satisfaction with aspects of their life. It also asked about their physical and mental health and about their personalities, among other things. Our study separates people into three groups: with physical illness only, with mental illness only and with both physical and mental types of illness. Because earlier studies found evidence of personality differences between genders, we conduct our analysis separately for men and women. We found that illness implies a strong negative effect on the individual’s health satisfaction. Men are less affected by a single-symptom illness than women, but are more affected when more than one symptom is present. The number of symptoms doesn’t change how women are affected. Moreover, women with one of two distinct personality types are less affected by mental illness than all other personality types. The first personality type, high levels of agreeableness, experience high quality relationships in their lives. The second type, women with low levels of conscientiousness, have little need for achievement, order or persistence. For men, however, we did not find statistical evidence that personality affects how they cope with illness. (more…)