It's narcissists who are perfectionists.
Call it their own Snopes.com sleuthing. But hearing again and again that narcissistic self-absorption and perfectionistic striving fuel the current boom in cosmetic surgery, researchers at Canada's Dalhousie University decided to poke around a bit in the assumptions. To do so, they recruited 305 undergraduate women, and had each one complete tried-and-true diagnostic questionnaires returning measures of narcissism and perfectionism, along with one measuring interest in cosmetic surgery.
The researchers discovered that neither narcissism nor perfectionism predicted interest in cosmetic surgery. However, women scoring high on measures for both diagnoses showed the strongest interest in cosmetic surgery of any women in the study.
The implications of this study may be profound--for plastic surgeons. In the June 2011 issuse of Plastic and Reconstruction Surgery: The Journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the authors speculate that cosmetic surgeons' patients may be grandiose and demanding to a fault--and, by diagnosis, "nearly impossible to satisfy," no matter how objectively successful their cosmetic surgery was.
Next up: How would 305 cosmetic surgeons perform on measures of depression, anger, and desire for a new career?
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Saturday, October 01, 2011
Because Mom Likes Valentine's Day and Hates Halloween
A hugely pregnant woman and her OBGYN walk into a bar. The woman says, "When will this baby ever come?" And the OBGYN says, ....
It's a joke waiting for a punchline--that's been delivered (ba-da-bum) in the October 2011 issue of Social Science and Medicine. And here's the punchline: The baby's arrival may be either delayed or hurried along by Mom's emotions.
Researchers at the Yale University School of Medicine's School of Public Health analyzed birth certificate information for all births in the United States for the weeks before and after Valentine's Day and Halloween across 11 years. They determined that on Valentine's Day there was a 3.6% increase in spontaneous births and a 12.1% increase in cesarean births. On Halloween, however, there was a 5.3% decrease in spontaneous births and a 16.9% decrease in cesarean births.
It's a joke waiting for a punchline--that's been delivered (ba-da-bum) in the October 2011 issue of Social Science and Medicine. And here's the punchline: The baby's arrival may be either delayed or hurried along by Mom's emotions.
Researchers at the Yale University School of Medicine's School of Public Health analyzed birth certificate information for all births in the United States for the weeks before and after Valentine's Day and Halloween across 11 years. They determined that on Valentine's Day there was a 3.6% increase in spontaneous births and a 12.1% increase in cesarean births. On Halloween, however, there was a 5.3% decrease in spontaneous births and a 16.9% decrease in cesarean births.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
In Discover Magazine This Month: Man's Best Friends Know Who Their Best Frieinds Are
Dogs Can Help Themselves by Deciphering Human Interactions
In October's Discover Magazine:
Researchers and pet owners have long known that dogs can learn spoken commands and understand certain human gestures. But can they actually eavesdrop—that is, pick up information simply by watching interactions between people? Animal cognition researcher Sarah Marshall-Pescini and her colleagues at the University of Milan believe that dogs do indeed engage in interspecies snooping....
Read the article.
In October's Discover Magazine:
Researchers and pet owners have long known that dogs can learn spoken commands and understand certain human gestures. But can they actually eavesdrop—that is, pick up information simply by watching interactions between people? Animal cognition researcher Sarah Marshall-Pescini and her colleagues at the University of Milan believe that dogs do indeed engage in interspecies snooping....
Read the article.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
In Discover Magazine This Month: The Wine Whisperers
What does California taste like--in a wine? And who are the artisans who can bring that to [groan] fruition? See my Destination Science piece in September's Discover Magazine: "The Wine Whisperers."
ET, Go Home
What If We Call Out to Extraterrestrials, and They Respond?
NASA routinely beams messages into the universe in an attempt to contact extraterrestrial intelligence. In more than 50 years of listening for a response, they've heard zilch. Which might be good. For even as NASA sends messages, some of its scientists wonder what it is they should say, and whether Earth should, indeed, keep putting out the proverbial welcome mat.
In "Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity?", in the June/July 2011 issue of Acta Astronautica, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania's Departments of Geography and Meteorology, and from NASA, systematically analyze a broad range of contact scenarios, categorizing each one as beneficial, neutral, or harmful to humanity. Although the researchers do not perform quantitative analysis on the likelihood of the various scenarios, they do note that a relatively large number fall into the "harmful" category. Because of this, they recommend that Earth's messages to extraterrestrials be written more cautiously.
For example, we should stop sending "About Us" information that includes specifics about our DNA. (It could be used to design biological weapons against us.) Initial communication should be limited to mathematical discourse, and we should take care not to suggest that we want to colonize other planets. Nor should we broadcast that we are less than admirable stewards of the natural resources of our own planet. After all, we want to seem like the sort of neighbors a more advanced civilization would want to keep around.
NASA routinely beams messages into the universe in an attempt to contact extraterrestrial intelligence. In more than 50 years of listening for a response, they've heard zilch. Which might be good. For even as NASA sends messages, some of its scientists wonder what it is they should say, and whether Earth should, indeed, keep putting out the proverbial welcome mat.
In "Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity?", in the June/July 2011 issue of Acta Astronautica, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania's Departments of Geography and Meteorology, and from NASA, systematically analyze a broad range of contact scenarios, categorizing each one as beneficial, neutral, or harmful to humanity. Although the researchers do not perform quantitative analysis on the likelihood of the various scenarios, they do note that a relatively large number fall into the "harmful" category. Because of this, they recommend that Earth's messages to extraterrestrials be written more cautiously.
For example, we should stop sending "About Us" information that includes specifics about our DNA. (It could be used to design biological weapons against us.) Initial communication should be limited to mathematical discourse, and we should take care not to suggest that we want to colonize other planets. Nor should we broadcast that we are less than admirable stewards of the natural resources of our own planet. After all, we want to seem like the sort of neighbors a more advanced civilization would want to keep around.
Praying for Peace
Religion may have caused century upon century of war, but praying--well, that's something we should all get behind. So say researchers from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and from VU University in Amsterdam in "Pray for Those Who Mistreat You: Effects of Prayer on Anger and Aggression" (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, March 18, 2011). In three control-group experiments the researchers determined that the act of praying for strangers who had provoked them actually calmed subjects' anger and aggression--and it did so with almost miraculous speed. If religion is the opiate of the masses, what's praying? Maybe the valium of the oppressed.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
In Discover Magazine This Month: 20 Things You Didn't Know about Magnetism
In the July-August special issue of Discover Magazine:
1 Magnetism is familiar to every fifth grader, but describing it can confound even the most brilliant physicist.
2 Take the case of Richard Feynman. When asked to explain magnetism, he urged his BBC interviewer to take it on faith (video). After seven minutes of stonewalling, he finally said, “I really can’t do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else that you’re more familiar with because I don’t understand it in terms of anything else that you’re more familiar with.”
3 He did break down and try for a few seconds before abandoning the attempt. Those seconds were packed with oversimplifications: “All the electrons [in a magnet] are spinning in the same direction.”
See "things" 4-20.
1 Magnetism is familiar to every fifth grader, but describing it can confound even the most brilliant physicist.
2 Take the case of Richard Feynman. When asked to explain magnetism, he urged his BBC interviewer to take it on faith (video). After seven minutes of stonewalling, he finally said, “I really can’t do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else that you’re more familiar with because I don’t understand it in terms of anything else that you’re more familiar with.”
3 He did break down and try for a few seconds before abandoning the attempt. Those seconds were packed with oversimplifications: “All the electrons [in a magnet] are spinning in the same direction.”
See "things" 4-20.
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