Pop psychologists, beware! In the current issue of Psychology Today, the magazine’s expert bloggers debunk some of our most cherished conventional wisdom, including popular social myths surrounding anger (no, “venting” doesn’t help), lying (it’s not about eye contact), and romance (Paula Abdul and her cartoon-cat-lover were wrong). The piece isn’t available online, but here are a few fun examples, with links to the Psychology Today blogs the magazine's experts call home:

Venting Reduces Anger
One of my pet peeves is how widely the notion of catharsis has been accepted. People think they will feel better by “getting it all out” or even that a hockey game is a release for their aggression. Aggression begets aggression. People are better off taking a deep breath and counting to 10 than “venting” their hostilities. — Jann Gumbiner, Ph.D., professor at the University of California–Irvine College of Medicine 

Opposites Attract
A persistent myth is that in romance, opposites attract. In fact, one of the most powerful predictors of liking is similarity, regardless of the type of trait—personality, values, interests, or physical characteristics. — Andrew Galperin, graduate student in social psychology at UCLA 

Men Aren’t Romantic
Many people think men are less romantic than women. Yet men fall in love faster (because they are so visual); men tend to be more dependent on their girlfriends or wives for intimacy; men are over two times more likely to kill themselves when a relationship ends; and men show just as much activity in brain regions associated with romantic passion. — Helen Fisher, Ph.D., anthropology professor at Rutgers University

Source: Psychology Today

Watching someone pick up a carrot instead of a cookie makes other people more likely to pick up the carrot, too. On the other hand, watching someone give in and eat the cookie makes people less likely to resist the sweet temptation of the dessert—even if those people have no other social interaction.

People tend to see self-control as a personality trait, not as something influenced by those around them. But according to research highlighted by Jonah Lehrer, self-control and the ability to resist temptation both have a strong social component. That may be why fast-food restaurants bombard the airwaves with images of people giving into temptation—to overwhelm other people’s ability to resist. The research also suggests that self-control can be learned. If just one person starts making the decision to eat healthier, everyone around them may be more likely to eat healthy, too.

Source: The Frontal Cotex 

Image by  Pink Sherbet Photography , licensed under  Creative Commons .

India’s centuries old caste system hasn’t gone away in the digital age. It’s moved online. Global Post reports that Indians have created thousands of groups on the social networking site Orkut related to caste. Examples include the Brahmins of India, The Great Marathas, and i love intercaste marriage. One research company estimated that some 485,000 people are members of 32 different caste-related communities.

Fights and insults have broken out on the site, but for the most part, Global Post reports that discussions have been benign and respectful. Some experts believe that Indians continue to identify deeply with their caste, and that the groups are simply an expression of that identification. Others think that Indian society is becoming increasingly uncomfortable taking about caste, and that social networking sites provide a safer place to discuss the issue.

Source: Global Post 

A Bloomberg School study has doctors in Karachi tagging babies with traceable bracelets to help stem future deadly outbreaks of pneumonia in Pakistan’s children. Researchers are collecting data to convince Pakistan’s government to add a new vaccine for the disease, which kills 13 percent of children under five there.

The tracking devices are a key part of the Karachi Invasive Pneumococcal Disease Surveillance Project that started in late 2008 and will wrap up mid-year. There are 40 clinics involved in the study, in which doctors monitor babies from 6-weeks-old through 18-months-old for cases of pneumonia and transmit data to researchers to track.

“Threaded among the black beads of the study-issued bracelets that adorn more than 4,500 babies in a low-income Karachi neighborhood,” reports Johns Hopkins Public Health, “is a button-size radio frequency identification tag. The device can use radio waves to transmit real-time surveillance data via cell phones to a central computer server.”

The project’s director explains the impressive technology, noting that whether researchers are in Pakistan, Vancouver, or Baltimore they “can all look up on the website and see immediately that today 10 children enrolled in the study, there are five reported illnesses, they went to X or Y physician, and what happened.”  

Source: Johns Hopkins Public Health

Image by featherbacon, licensed under Creative Commons.

How can you tell if people are Republicans or a Democrats? Just look at their faces. In a study published on the science journal PLOS One, participants were able to correctly identify the political leanings of both politicians and college seniors, just by looking at photos their faces. “Republicans were perceived as more powerful than Democrats,” according to the researchers. “Similarly,” the study found that when it comes to personalities, “as individual targets were perceived to be warmer, they were more likely to be perceived as Democrats.” The researchers concluded that people used stereotypes to identify Republicans and Democrats, and often, those stereotypes worked.

(Thanks, Barking Up the Wrong Tree.)

Source:  PLOS One

Take a peek at stunning Svalbard, “the world’s coolest place to learn about global warming,” according to EnRoute. If the name sounds familiar, it’s likely because Svalbard—a Norwegian archipelago that stretches within 620 miles of the North Pole—is home to a certain famous Global Seed Vault. Ensuring the world’s agricultural future, however, is only one part of the science taking place at the beautiful Arctic outpost. Here are a few photos, paired with passages from EnRoute:

“After a century of wresting coal from its stratified geography, near-pristine Svalbard is seeing a new light at the end of the mineshaft,” Susan Nerberg writes for the Air Canada magazine. “Scientific sleuthing (like fossil hunts, research into CO₂ capture and storage and university classes in polar ecology) accounts for an ever-larger chunk of Svalbard’s revamped economy.”

Pictured above, science station “Ny-Alesund is perhaps the world’s epicenter for environmental and climate-change research.” Ten countries have research stations at this international intellectual hub. “During the brief summer, the population swells from 35 to 180 people swishing around in Gore-Tex and fleece,” Nerberg writes. “It doesn’t hurt that Kings Bay, the state-owned company that runs this place, serves up three daily stick-to-your-ribs meals and snacks in a glass-walled mess hall.”

“Svalbard is so spectacular, it makes you feel really insignificant as a human being and even more desperate to protect such a place,” University of Sheffield plant ecologist Gareth Phoenix tells Nerberg. “Planet Earth only has one Arctic. It would be nice to keep it as it is.”

Souce: EnRoute

Images by Torjussen, Alastair Rae, Rerun van Pelt, and Biillyboy, all licensed under Creative Commons.

Fast food chains are often criticized for their obesity-causing, environmentally destructive, and generally low-quality food. Now, according to a recent report, they also have to worry about pathogens from feces into their soft drinks. According to a recent study, 48 percent of beverages tested from 30 different soda dispensers were found to have coliform bacteria, an organism that typically, though not always, comes from feces. Some also contained E.coli. Though none of the beverages exceeded US drinking water standards, the report found that “Most of the identified bacteria showed resistance to one or more of the 11 antibiotics tested.” In other words, fast food restaurants are serving up antibiotic-resistant pathogens that could pose a significant health risk to patrons. And that’s just in the drinks.

(Thanks, Beyond Green, via Mother Jones.)

Source: Science Direct

Image by CMBJ, licensed under Creative Commons.