Politics is a fascinating area for me - massive PR campaigns designed to sway millions of people to a certain ideological viewpoint. A viewpoint that those who are doing the persuading may or may not actually hold, but which they espouse because that’s what the people they’re trying to influence want their leaders to espouse. Here is a meta-study that attempts to tease out what political conservativism is all about, at its core.
Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:
* Fear and aggression
* Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
* Uncertainty avoidance
* Need for cognitive closure
* Terror management
“From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination,” the researchers wrote in an article, “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” recently published in the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin.
Read: Researchers help define what makes a political conservative
Free online book about authoritarians & those who follow them.
Read: The Authoritarians
Yet another reason sex is good for you.
Biologist Winnifred Cutler found that regular sex is good for you. It orchestrates a woman’s body biologically, regulating the flow of hormones that make it fertile and, in turn, increase well-being. It also props up testosterone levels in men.
Read: Psychology Today: Sex by Schedule
An earlier article (from before I had this blog) about why sex is good for you.
IT DOES not take a degree in medicine to work out that sex is good for you. Anything that is free, feels fabulous and leaves you glowing is plainly a good idea.
But scientists are now beginning to understand that the perceived feel-good effects of sexual intercourse are merely the tip of the iceberg. Sex, they are discovering, can offer protection from depression, colds, heart disease and even cancer.
Read: The secret of being in rude health is intercourse
If it’s not the lions, it’s lying around all day doing nothing.
“If you live in a baboon troop in the Serengeti, you only have to work three hours a day for your calories, and predators don’t mess with you much. What that means is you’ve got nine hours of free time every day to devote to generating psychological stress toward other animals in your troop,” he explained. “They’re just like us: They’re not getting done in by predators and famines; they’re getting done in by each other.”
Read: LiveScience.com - Why Humans (and Baboons) Stress So Much
More about Martin Seligman and his quest to make everyone happy.
One new study showing change in happiness levels followed thousands of Germans for 17 years. It found that about a quarter changed significantly over that time in their basic level of satisfaction with life. (That’s a popular happiness measure; some studies sample how one feels through the day instead.) Nearly a tenth of the German participants changed by three points or more on a 10-point scale.
Other studies show an effect of specific life events, though of course the results are averages and can’t predict what will happen to particular individuals. Results show long-lasting shadows associated with events like serious disability, divorce, widowhood, and getting laid off.
Read: Discovery Channel :: News - Human :: The Art of Happiness, by Prescription
More proof that Happiness is filling in the right circle on the questionairre.
Choice Quotes:
“Once average annual income is above $20,000 a head, higher pay brings no greater happiness.”
“Happiness is better equated with satisfaction than pleasure, says Emory University psychiatrist Gregory Berns in Satisfaction (Henry Holt, 2005), because the pursuit of pleasure lands us on a never-ending hedonic treadmill that paradoxically leads to misery.”
“…in an experiment in which subjects anticipated that they would prefer an assortment of snacks, when it actually came to eating the snacks week after week, subjects in the no-variety group said that they were more satisfied than the subjects in the variety group. “
Read: Scientific American: (Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (via Action Institute Power Blog)
Reason # 428 to move to Denmark…
The Eurobarometer study said the most content in the bloc were the Danes, 97 percent of whom declared themselves “happy.” The Dutch, Belgians, Irish and Swedes, followed by respondents from Luxembourg and Finland, were not far behind in the happy stakes.
The British, at 92 percent, were found to be happier than the French (90 percent) and the Germans (82 percent).
(Actually, I don’t know what the first 427 reasons might be, but this one looks pretty good.)
Read: Most Europeans Feel Happy, Surveys Show
Ontario gaming officials pulled 87 slot machines that appeared to show subliminal messages. How the they figured out there were subliminal messages in the game is still a mystery.
The games flash winning jackpot symbols at players for a fifth of a second, long enough for the brain to detect even if the players are not aware of the message, some psychologists told CBC News.
It’s not clear if messages are influencing gamblers’ behaviour. That would take further testing, experts said.
Whether or not this affected the behavior of those playing the games remains to be seen, but I suspect the machine’s manufacturer’s and vendors have some very interesting data.
Read: Ontario removes video slot machines flashing winning images (via Mind Hacks)
Try to infect all the tiles on the screen by changing the color of one tile (it will infect all tiles of the same color that are adjacent).
Play: Virus (via kottke.org)
If you ever wanted to ride the Cyclone & get a Nathans hot dog, this may be the summer to do it.
Not only will this be the last summer for Astroland, but the bulldozers are already at work tearing up the go-kart track and batting cages.
Read: Sanitized, Vegas-style Coney Island coming soon