COLUMBUS, Ohio – In most cases, your profile photo on Facebook tells viewers what they need to know to form an impression of you – no words are necessary, new research suggests.
College students who viewed a Facebook photo of a fellow student having fun with friends rated that person as extraverted – even if his profile said he was “not a big people-person.” (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research challenges the conventional thinking that young children use language just as adults do to help classify and understand objects in the world around them.
In a new study involving 4- to 5-year-old children, researchers found that the labels adults use to classify items – words like “dog” or “pencil” – don’t have the same ability to influence the thinking of children. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Both children and the elderly have slower response times when they have to make quick decisions in some settings.
But recent research suggests that much of that slower response is a conscious choice to emphasize accuracy over speed.
In fact, healthy older people can be trained to respond faster in some decision-making tasks without hurting their accuracy – meaning their cognitive skills in this area aren’t so different from younger adults. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Men may think about sex more often than women do, but a new study suggests that men also think about other biological needs, such as eating and sleep, more frequently than women do, as well.
And the research discredits the persistent stereotype that men think about sex every seven seconds, which would amount to more than 8,000 thoughts about sex in 16 waking hours. In the study, the median number of young men’s thought about sex stood at almost 19 times per day. Young women in the study reported a median of nearly 10 thoughts about sex per day. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – High school health classes fail to help students refuse sexual advances or endorse safe sex habits when teachers focus primarily on testing knowledge, a new study reveals.
But when teachers emphasized learning the material for its own sake, and to improve health, students had much better responses. In these kinds of classrooms, students had lower intentions of having sex and felt better able to navigate sexual situations.
“A focus on tests doesn’t help students in health classes make healthier choices,” said Eric M. Anderman, lead author of the study and professor of educational psychology at Ohio State University. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers who have been working for nearly a decade to piece together the process by which an enzyme repairs sun-damaged DNA have finally witnessed the entire process in full detail in the laboratory.
What they saw contradicts fundamental notions of how key biological molecules break up during the repair of sunburn – and that knowledge could someday lead to drugs or even lotions that could heal sunburn in humans. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Even temporary “breakups” can be distressing for some people – at least when it comes to their favorite television programs.
A new study examined how college-aged television viewers reacted when their favorite shows went off the air or were replaced with reruns as a result of the television writers’ strike of 2007-08.
The results revealed the important role television plays in the lives of some viewers – particularly those who use television for companionship and those who feel they have a strong “relationship” with their favorite TV characters. (more…)
