Psychology Research

An article on the psychological characteristic of vicious dog owners has just appeared online in the compelling academic publication, The Journal of Forensic Sciences , finding that those who who own dangerous dogs are more likely to endorse antisocial and psychopathic character traits and more likely to report criminal behaviour. The study was led by psychologist Laurie Ragatz who collected data from 869 college students who completed an anonymous online questionnaire assessing type of dog owned, criminal behaviors, attitudes towards animal abuse, psychopathy, and personality. It’s only a correlational study but the introduction has a nice summary of the research findings as well as a previous study on the same topic: Each year, 4.7 million people are bitten by dogs, of which 386,000 are seriously injured and over 200 die. Several dog breeds have been labeled “vicious” or of “high-risk” for aggression. To date, only one empirical study has examined the characteristics of persons who choose to own their high-risk dogs. Barnes et al. reports that owners of Akitas, Chow-Chows, Dobermans, Pit Bulls, Rottweilers, and Wolf-mixes endorsed approximately 10 times more criminal convictions than owners of nonvicious dogs. Further, vicious dog owners reported more crimes involving aggression, children, alcohol, and domestic violence than owners of nonvicious dogs. The current research sought to replicate and extend these findings with a college sample. The present study compared nondog owners and owners of vicious, large, and small dogs on engagement in criminal behavior, general personality traits (i.e., impulsive sensation seeking, neuroticism-anxiety, aggression-hostility, activity, and sociability), psychopathy, and attitude towards animal maltreatment. …As hypothesized, a significant difference in criminal behavior was found based on dog ownership type. Owners of vicious dogs were significantly more likely to admit to violent criminal behavior, compared to large dog owners, small dog owners, and controls. The vicious dog owner sample also engaged in more types (i.e., violent, property, drug, and status) of criminal behavior compared to all other participant groups. Personality traits were examined and vicious dog owners were significantly higher than controls on impulsive sensation seeking. Examining psychopathic traits, owners of high-risk dogs endorsed significantly more characteristics of primary psychopathy (e.g., carelessness, selfishness, and manipulative tendencies) than small dog owners. Comparing owners of vicious dogs to other groups, no significant differences were found regarding secondary psychopathy (e.g., impulsiveness or self-defeating behaviors) or attitudes towards animal maltreatment. Among the college sample, the vicious dogs were predominantly male and weighed 68 pounds. The owners had more self-reported overall criminal behaviors as well as violent criminal behavior. They endorsed significantly more sensation seeking and primary psychopathic traits. Link to article. Link to DOI entry for same.

This is interesting, from a National Geographic press release: TORONTO, Feb. 12, 2009 – A York University researcher has tracked the migration of songbirds by outfitting them with tiny geolocator backpacks – a world first – revealing that scientists have underestimated their flight performance dramatically. “Never before has anyone been able to track songbirds for their entire migratory trip,” said study author Bridget Stutchbury, a professor of biology in York’s Faculty of Science & Engineering. “We’re excited to achieve this scientific first.” Songbirds, the most common type of bird in our skies, are too small for conventional satellite tracking. Stutchbury and her team mounted miniaturized geolocators on 14 wood thrushes and 20 purple martins, breeding in Pennsylvania during 2007, tracking the birds’ fall takeoff, migration to South America, and journey back to North America. In the summer of 2008, they retrieved the geolocators from five wood thrushes and two purple martins and reconstructed individual migration routes and wintering locations. Data from the geolocators indicated that songbirds can fly in excess of 500 km (311 miles) per day, reports Stutchbury in the Feb. 13 issue of the journal Science. Previous studies estimated their flight performance at roughly 150 km (93 miles) per day. The study, funded in part by the National Geographic Society, found that songbirds’ overall migration rate was two to six times more rapid in spring than in fall. For example, one purple martin took 43 days to reach Brazil during fall migration, but in spring returned to its breeding colony in only 13 days. Rapid long-distance movement occurred in both species, said Stutchbury. “We were flabbergasted by the birds’ spring return times. To have a bird leave Brazil on April 12 and be home by the end of the month was just astounding. We always assumed they left sometime in March,” she said. Researchers also found that prolonged stopovers were common during fall migration. The purple martins, which are members of the swallow family, had a stopover of three to four weeks in the Yucatan before continuing to Brazil. Four wood thrushes spent one to two weeks in the southeastern United States in late October, before crossing the Gulf of Mexico, and two other individuals stopped on the Yucatan Peninsula for two to four weeks before continuing migration. The geolocators, which are smaller than a dime, detect light, allowing researchers to estimate birds’ latitude and longitude by recording sunrise and sunset times. The devices are mounted on birds’ backs by looping thin straps around their legs. The weight of the geolocator rests at the base of the bird’s spine, so as not to interfere with its balance. Stutchbury credits researchers with the British Antarctic Survey for miniaturizing the geolocators. “They hadn’t really been thinking of [attaching them to] songbirds, but when I saw the technology, I knew we could do this,” she said. The study also uncovered evidence that wood thrushes from a single breeding population did not scatter over their tropical wintering grounds. All five wood thrushes wintered in a narrow band in eastern Honduras or Nicaragua. “This region is clearly important for the overall conservation of wood thrushes, a species that has declined by 30 percent since 1966,” said Stutchbury. “Songbird populations have been declining around the world for 30 or 40 years, so there is a lot of concern about them.” She emphasized the importance of this research not only to protect at-risk species of songbirds, but also to gauge environmental concerns. “Tracking birds to their wintering areas is also essential for predicting the impact of tropical habitat loss and climate change,” she said. “Until now, our hands have been tied in many ways, because we didn’t know where the birds were going. They would just disappear and then come back in the spring. It’s wonderful to now have a window into their journey.” The study, “Tracking long-distance songbird migration using geolocators,” was co-authored by Tyler Done, Elizabeth Gow and Patrick Kramer (York University graduate students), John Tautin (Purple Martin Conservation Association), and James Fox and Vsevolod Afanasyev (British Antarctic Survey). source Read the comments on this post…

tags: NYC , New York City , Bob Levy , image of the day In the Spotlight Central Park Grey Squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis . Image: Bob Levy, author of Club George [ larger view ]. Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

A child in the womb is not just some hapless creature waiting to be born into a world of experience. It is preparing. Through its mother, it senses the conditions of the world outside and its body plans its growth accordingly. There is strong evidence that people who are under-nourished as embryos grow up to have higher risks of heart disease and other chronic illnesses. For example, people born to women during the Dutch Famine of 1945 had higher risks of coronary heart disease as adults. We might nod our heads at this as if it were expected news, but it’s actually quite a strange result. After all, during the early stages of pregnancy, the embryo is actually relatively undemanding. Any embryos that get off to an early slow start can easily catch up during the foetal stage, and they can certainly do it after birth. But Jane Cleal and colleagues from the University of Southampton have found, from studying sheep, that catching up may actually be the problem. Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

Read the comments on this post…

On Thursday, for Darwin’s 200th birthday, I went down to Raleigh to the Museum of Natural Science to hear Carl Zimmer’s talk. The room was packed – I got the last empty seat and there were people standing in the back. A very mixed audience, as Museum talks usually are – there were evolutionary biologists there from Nescent and the W.M.Keck Center for Behavioral Biology at NCSU, there were Museum staff, and then there were interested lay-people, museum-goers, with no formal background in science but interested and curious. It is not easy giving a talk to such a mixed audience – how to keep the jaded Evolution-warriors interested, while not going over the heads of the non-experts, but Carl delivered masterfully. After introducing briefly Darwin the person and his work, in broad brush-strokes, Carl did an interesting thing – he chose several stories and told us what Darwin thought and wrote about them, and what we now know due to recent exciting research: from evolution of whales, through human evolution, to bacteria and viruses. The result was that he did not tell but demonstrated two points: first, that Darwin was generally correct, and second, that evolutionary biology made tremendous strides over the past 150 years. With each story one was left to think – how cool Darwin would think the new findings are if he were suddenly resurrected and shown the data! The questions afterwards were good – not high-tech questions one would hear at a scientific conference, but good, thoughtful questions by lay audience, the kind often heard at Science Cafes. And only one question refered to the Culture Wars – how do we deal with the existence and influence of Creationists in the USA? If there were any Creationists in the audience, they certainly remained quiet and inconspicuous. Afterwards, Carl and I went back to Durham and joined a bunch of local bloggers, scientists and science communicators, Craig McClain , Anton Zuiker and Russ Campbell among others, for some food and beer at Tyler’s. Good time was had by all. Finally, you should also check Carl’s latest article in TIME: Evolving Darwin Read the comments on this post…

Painting of the face and body has a history dating back at least 10,000 years. According to Pliny the Elder even 2,000 years ago the Romans were using natural products in ways we would instantly recognise: they had rouge, deodorants, hair dye, wrinkle removers, breath fresheners and much more. Over the years those using cosmetics have attracted admiring glances from others for all sorts of reasons – including ritualistic and honorific – but often, especially in modern times, the context has been sexual. But does the application of these products make any difference to the way other people behave? While it might affect perceptions both positively and negatively, does it actually encourage others to make the first move? A direct approach Now some answers come in a new study by social psychologist Nicolas Geugen ( Geugen, 2008 ). In his experiment, reported in the North American Journal of Psychology , Geugen had two young women sit in a bar in France, in the first condition with makeup on, and in the second condition with their faces simply cleaned and moisturised. Then they waited for men to chat them up. When a man tried to start a conversation (nonverbal behaviours didn’t count) one of the women signalled to experimental confederates that contact had been made by crossing her arms. Then she politely turned the man down, saying they were waiting for friends to arrive. This procedure was repeated over 60 observational periods of one hour in two different bars. Here’s what happened: No makeup condition : The first man ‘made contact’ with the two women after an average of 23 minutes, and thereafter they were hit on 1.5 times per hour. With makeup condition : The first man tried it on after only 17 minutes and the average number of chancers per hour was 2. These results certainly suggest the makeup was effective in changing men’s behaviour, with one third more men approaching the two women when they were made-up. But while this study is good fun, there are a couple of problems the authors acknowledge. First wearing makeup could have given the two women more confidence, subtly changing their behaviour and encouraging men to approach. This may well have accounted for the men’s behaviour instead of the makeup. Second it may be difficult to generalise as the study was carried out in France – men in very different cultures might respond in quite another way. How does makeup work? These aside, though, the other interesting question it raises is exactly how makeup works. While makeup seems to work by increasing perceived attractivity, it can also signal a willingness to interact or even availability. Further, cosmetics can send signals about status: one study published in the International Journal of Cosmetics Science has found that people judge women wearing cosmetics as higher earners with more prestigious jobs ( Nash et al., 2006 ). Researchers have even looked at which components of makeup are most attractive to men. A recent study has found that eye makeup has the most powerful effect on female perceived attractivity, followed by foundation; lipstick, surprisingly, was found to have little independent effect ( Mulhern et al., 2003 ). Nowadays, though, discussions about makeup seem tame, even quaint, considering the more radical methods people use for changing their appearance, like cosmetic surgery. But one aspect is still cutting-edge: men wearing makeup. So, I wonder how long it will be until Nicolas Geugen is returning to these bars on the west coast of France, this time with two young men wearing makeup, ready to see who approaches? [Image credit: Uh ... Bob ]

This month’s British Journal of Psychiatry has another one of its fantastic ‘psychiatry in 100 words’ series, with this month’s column focusing on literature. The short piece is by psychiatrist Femi Oyebode who is the author of a recent book (pictured on the left) on the subject that covers everything from literary accounts of drug abuse to the use of narrative in fictional accounts of mental illness. Literature and psychiatry — in 100 words Reading works of fiction and attending to the language, the dialogue, the mood is like listening to patients. In both activities, we enter into other worlds, grasp something about the inner life of characters whose motivations may be unlike our own. D. H. Lawrence referring to this aspect of the novel wrote: `It can inform and lead into new places the flow of our sympathetic consciousness, and it can lead our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life’. Is this not also, partly, the task of psychiatry? Link to ‘Literature and psychiatry — in 100 words’. Link to details of ‘Mindreadings: Literature and Psychiatry’ book.

It’s that time of the semester again. The time when Sci has to present at her Journal Club. I know I’ve talked about Journal Club a couple of times, but what is the purpose of a Journal Club? For those not in grad school, what IS a Journal Club? For my MRU, Journal Club is a small-sized class, usually held weekly, wherein students take turns presenting a paper they find awesome. The class then (theoretically) holds a good discussion based on the paper. I say (theoretically) because grad students are often tired, excessively overworked, and usually don’t have time to read the paper beforehand. So the discussion is not always stimulating. But for the best papers it usually is. So what is the purpose of people presenting papers to each other? Well, in grad school you get a lot of experience in a lot of things. Things like learning new methodologies, trying new techniques, time management, tearing your hair out, and alcoholism. You get training in how to analyze and interpret your data, and how to write that data up for publication. In some programs, you even get experience in how to write your first grant. But there are a couple of things the typical grad student in biomed will not have a lot of experience in: 1) Presenting hefty science. Those of us in biomed do not TA classes to fill our plates and pay our rent (though some of us, like Sci, do anyway). In some programs, it is possible to go an entire year without ever presenting your data to an audience other than your cat. Usually committee meetings are required, and sometimes public seminars, but often not. And so a grad student can emerge from the chrysalis of PhD a TERRIBLE presenter if they are not careful. 2) Telling a good paper from a bad one. In a perfect world, all grad students would be able to tell good papers from bad without a problem. Their lab and mentor would guide them through with a gentle hand. Often, however, this is not the case, and you’ll show what you thought was a good paper to your advisor, only to be greeted with “Are you kidding!?! That guy’s a crackhead!” In both of these scenarios, Journal Club is there for you. You get experience presenting a paper full of hefty science, and it’s up to you to present what you know to be the best new research in the field. In the small class, there won’t be too many people to laugh at you, and you’re more likely to get constructive feedback on why the paper was or was not good, what they could have done better, and what they probably ARE doing now for their next publication. So Journal Club is useful, and it is up to Scicurious to therefore present some good science. Science that is well thought out, elegant, and may even be presented with a little bow on the top. And that is why I’m asking you all for your input! I want to know not only that I will pick a good paper, but also that I can present it in a way that is clear. With that in mind, let’s get started on the first of the three possible offerings which I can sacrifice on the alter of my Journal Club: St. Onge and Floresco. “Dopaminergic modulation of risk-based decision making”. Neuropsychopharmacology, 2009, 34, 681-697. Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

Ever since we published the first genetic scan for male sexual orientation, one of the most frequent questions I get asked is "why are people gay." While I have done my best to share information about the science of sexual orientation (this blog being one example), I am not an animator so I haven’t explored cartoons as an option. Fortunately, I don’t have to now because a cartoon recently posted on YouTube does a fairly good job. The video tries to take on two of what I like to call "the big three arguments against gay people." If you listen to enough anti-gay rhetoric you will find it usually comes down to at least one of the following statements, "I don’t believe in it, its unnatural, it’s a choice." After discovering these beliefs to be the root of most anti-gay propaganda Watch the video and then let me fill in some of the details from research on sexual orientation.   Parents. The video starts out with theories about parental influences on sexual orientation, like having a distant father or overbearing mother making a man gay. In fact, this was a theory put forward by some Psychologists and Psychiatrists. It was also used to explain why some people were schizophrenic. Eventually it was disproved in both cases. For example, in the 1970 researchers at the Kinsey Institute conducted a large survey and found no support for the idea that these kinds of parental influences made children gay (Bell, Weinberg, & Hammersmith, 1981). In the 28 years since that book was published there hasn’t been any credible evidence showing that any kind of parental behavior changes the sexual orientation of their children. Being gay is natural. Next the video tackles the question of if homosexuality is "natural." This is one of the big three. I don’t believe something being "natural" is a good argument for or against it. After all, lead is natural, but that doesn’t mean I want it in my drinking water. Nevertheless, the point made in the cartoon about animals is true. Many species of animals engage in same-sex behavior and some have members that exhibit primary sexual attractions to their own sex. A few very good books have addressed this topic (Bagemihl, 1999; Sommer & Vasey, 2006). You don’t decide who to love. When Martha says "You don’t just decide who to love," I think she is right. Research shows that sexual attractions emerge around the time of puberty. If you think back to puberty, do you remember making a choice of who you would be attracted to? In fact, research shows that it doesn’t matter what your sexual orientation is, it tends to emerge around the time of puberty. All indications are that people don’t choose their sexual orientation. It’s in our genes. Twin research has indeed found that if one identical twin is gay the other twin is also more likely to be gay. More importantly from a scientific perspective, is the fact that identical twins are significantly more likely to have the same sexual orientation than fraternal twins (Mustanski, Chivers, & Bailey, 2002). One of the best of these studies found the heritability of sexual orientation to be 62% (Kendler, Thornton, Gilman, & Kessler, 2000). This means that 62% of why some people are gay and others are straight is due to genetic effects. The cartoon is right in saying this is higher than handedness, which has a heritability of around 25% (Medland, Duffy, Wright, Geffen, & Martin, 2006). Older brothers. One of the most established findings in all of developmental psychology is that each older brother increases the chance that a man will be gay. Younger brothers don’t seem to have an effect and neither do sisters. In fact, siblings don’t seem to be related to a women’s sexual orientation at all. But among men, each older brother increases the chance of homosexuality by about 33% (Blanchard & Bogaert, 1996). It has been hypothesized that this effect is due to mothers producing antigens to male fetuses and that these antigens have effects on the developing brain (Blanchard, 2008). However, the cartoon seems to make it seem like this is a fact, when at this stage it is only a theory. My therapist made me straight. The video ends with a discussion of whether it is possible to change a person’s sexual orientation through therapy or prayer. Conclusive research has yet to show this is possible and some very well respected doctors have said it is not possible (for a good summary of research in this area see Professor Gregory Herek’s website). The video is correct in saying that all major mental health organizations have some out with statements saying that homosexuality is not a mental illness and attempts to change it are not advisable (for example, see the statement by the American Psychological Association). I hope you enjoyed the cartoon. Share it by clicking the "Share/Email" button below and maybe if enough people watch it the statement "I don’t believe in it, its unnatural, it’s a choice," will become a think of the past. References Bagemihl, B. (1999). Biological exuberance : animal homosexuality and natural diversity (1st ed.). New York: St. Martin’s Press. Bell, A. P., Weinberg, M. S., & Hammersmith, S. K. (1981). Sexual Preference: Its development in men and women. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Blanchard, R. (2008). Review and theory of handedness, birth order, and homosexuality in men. Laterality, 13(1), 51-70. Blanchard, R., & Bogaert, A. F. (1996). Homosexuality in men and number of older brothers. American Journal of Psychiatry, 153, 27-31. Kendler, K. S., Thornton, L. M., Gilman, S. E., & Kessler, R. C. (2000). Sexual Orientation in a U.S. National Sample of Twin and Nontwin Sibling Pairs. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 157, 1843-1846. Medland, S. E., Duffy, D. L., Wright, M. J., Geffen, G. M., & Martin, N. G. (2006). Handedness in twins: joint analysis of data from 35 samples. Twin Res Hum Genet, 9(1), 46-53. Mustanski, B. S., Chivers, M. L., & Bailey, J. M. (2002). A critical review of recent biological research on human sexual orientation. Annual Review of Sex Research, 12, 89-140. Sommer, V., & Vasey, P. L. (2006). Homosexual behaviour in animals : an evolutionary perspective. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press. © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.