The popular media has portrayed men and women as psychologically different as two planets – Mars and Venus – but these differences are vastly overestimated and the two sexes are more similar in personality, communication, cognitive ability and leadership than realized, according to a review of 46 meta-analyses conducted over the last 20 years.
According to the meta-analysis of studies on gender differences reported on in the current issue of the American Psychologist, males and
Prison bullying is not a one-way process, according to new research funded by the ESRC. Among bullies, it found that 71 per cent were also victims, and of those who had themselves been intimidated, 57 per cent bullied others.
Professor John Archer and Dr Jane Ireland of the University of Central Lancashire found no evidence to back the theory that ‘bully-victims’ – those who are both bullies and on the receiving end – are a special type of person.
Their findings, based
Tall people are more prepared to take risks than small people, women are more careful than men, and the willingness to take risks markedly decreases with age: these are the findings arrived at by researchers from the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), the University of Bonn and the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin. For their study they evaluated more than 20,000 interviews with people from all over Germany and additionally confirmed the findings by experiment. What
Men who slide down the social ladder during their lifetime take the blow much harder than women in the same position, a new study shows.
Women were twice as likely to be downwardly mobile but generally avoided the depression and poor psychological wellbeing that researchers found in men in the same position.
Men who experienced a downward social shift were four times more likely to experience depression than men who improved their social status, whereas there was no
How you interact with your children when they’re just starting kindergarten helps determine their behavior by the time they finish fourth grade, according to a study published in the September/October 2005 issue of the journal Child Development. The study, from researchers at Wichita State University in Kansas, found that early parent-child relationships, including warmth, good communication and parental tracking of child behavior, serve as important building blocks for later monitoring (k
Nature or nurture? It’s the eternal question for so many human interactions and personality traits. Now, it appears, nature may play a larger role than nurture when it comes to family relationships between adolescents and their parents.
Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and George Washington University in Washington, D.C., used data on 674 families, each with a same-sex adolescent pair, to evaluate the factors that made up the relationships and individual p
If you suffered from piles, would you want your friends asking about your condition in public? Most people wouldn’t, yet new research suggests that the older you become the more likely you are to make someone blush with embarrassment in that way.
But old people may not intend to be rude: in fact, age-related changes in brain function may explain their lack of tact, according to a new Australian study just published in the journal Psychology and Aging.
Tests carried ou
Young children may be missing out on ‘pretend’ games like pirates and spacemen due to the demands of the school curriculum, according to research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
The project, led by Dr Sue Rogers at the University of Plymouth, found that reception classes were not always designed to meet the needs of 4-5 year olds. ‘Children of this age learn to make friends as well as to use their imagination through role play,’ says Dr Rogers. ‘We know th
One in seven businesses in Tayside, Scotland, have employed migrant workers in the past two years, and a similar proportion say they could or will do so again in the next two years.
These are among the initial finding of the first full-scale survey of migrant labour in Tayside, currently being carried out by Scottish Economic research, based at Abertay University’s Dundee Business School.
Six hundred local employers have responded to an initial survey, and SER is now con
Government efforts to increase employment by reforming incapacity benefits are likely to have a limited impact unless accompanied by more effective regional policies to create new jobs in Britain’s older industrial areas, according to a new report published by the thinktank Catalyst, and authored by academics at Sheffield Hallam and Cambridge Universities.
The government believes that many of the 2.7 million people on incapacity benefits could take up work, and sees this as a
New technology will exacerbate rather than ease the problem of identity theft, according to new research at the University of East Anglia.
Criminologist Dr Emily Finch will outline her new research on the increasingly sensitive issue at the BA Festival of Science in Dublin next week, concluding that the introduction of identity cards in the UK would fail to combat identity theft.
She will challenge the assumption that technology-based security systems provide the solu
Single-parent families headed up by lone mothers are the fastest growing family in Australia. Now researchers at the University of Western Sydney ask: Does growing up without a dad at home change a woman’s life, particularly the way she forms relationships with men?
The 12-month study is being led by Associate Professors Debra Jackson and Louise O’Brien from the UWS School of Nursing, Family and Community Health, and also involves nursing honours researcher, Leah East
In the September issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics Noam Chomsky explores the link between human language, which is regarded as the factor that stimulated the great leap forward and our conception of fundamental human rights. The paper is based on the address delivered by Professor Chomsky while receiving his honorary degree in Psychology at the University of Bologna, April 1, 2005.
In this paper Chomsky describes how his work in linguistics and his concern with human rights were
A report published in the September issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics by a group of investigators of the University of Barcelona suggests that cognitive deficits may occur in bipolar disorder.
In clinical practice, bipolar patients complain of cognitive deficits such as attentional or memory disturbances. The main aim of this study was to determine whether subjective cognitive complaints were associated with objective neuropsychological impairments.
Sixty euthym
Scientists at the University of Liverpool have discovered that the human brain favours familiar-looking faces when choosing a potential partner.
The research team found that people find familiar faces more attractive than unfamiliar ones. They also found that the human brain holds separate images of both male and female faces and reacts to them differently depending on how familiar it is with their facial features.
Dr Anthony Little, from the University’s School of Biologi
In the face of strong competition, FOI is to take part in one of thirteen research projects to be awarded funding for research relating to the fight against terrorism under the EU’s security research programme.
— The project concerns the improvement of cooperation between countries in order to fight terrorism and organised crime more effectively, says Martin Rantzer, Head of Division at FOI.
The aim of the project is to enable the various authorities and nations to exchang
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