Canadians who don't like Israel and Judaism tend not to like Jews

The deductions resulting from the following study are absolutely Sherlockian in their brilliance. As reported by Louis Charbonneau in the Canadian newspaper National Post, April 30, 2025:

A new survey finds “an important minority of Canadians” channel strong negative sentiment towards Israel into negative views of Jews.

Israel Independence Day begins the evening of April 30, marking the Jewish state’s 77th birthday, amid a tide of antisemitism in Canada and elsewhere.

“While people certainly have the right to criticize the government of Israel, it’s a serious problem when it descends into antisemitism,” said Jack Jedwab, the president and CEO of the Association for Canadian Studies and the Metropolis Institute, in an email.

Two surveys by Leger Marketing for the Association for Canadian Studies examine Canadians’ views on Israel, Judaism, and Jews, and explore the connections between opinions of Israel and attitudes toward Judaism and Jews. They also investigate the impact of Holocaust awareness on shaping these attitudes.

Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacks triggered the Israel-Hamas conflict, there has been a significant increase in hate crimes targeting Jews across Canada. Of the 1,284 police-reported religion-based hate crimes in Canada in 2023, an alarming 900 targeted Jews, according to the most recent Statistics Canada report.

The first Leger survey, conducted on March 1-2, 2025, asked questions of 1,548 Canadians. The second survey took place between April 17-19 and involved 1,603 Canadians.

One of the findings is that most people who hold a very negative opinion of Israel had the most negative views of Judaism. One survey found that the majority of people holding a negative view of Judaism hold negative views of Jews.

“The study confirms some links between anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment. The observation requires some nuance and is complex, as most Canadians holding negative sentiments toward Israel do not hold very negative sentiments toward Jews. Nonetheless, an important minority of Canadians do indeed channel strong negative sentiment towards Israel into negative views of Jews,” said Jedwab.

“There is a point at which negative sentiment towards Israel translates into an anti-Jewish sentiment.”

The second survey found that older Canadians more likely to view relations between Canada and Israel, as well as between non-Jewish Canadians and Jewish Canadians, positively rather than negatively.

The surveys also looked at how francophones and Quebecers perceived Jews and Judaism.

The survey found that 55 per cent of French-Canadians hold a negative view of Israel, compared to 42 per cent of English Canadians. Quebecers are more likely than the residents of other provinces to assess relations between Jewish and non-Jewish Canadians negatively. Quebecers are also the most likely to have a negative view of Israel. Francophones in Canada are also somewhat more likely to have negative opinions of Judaism and Jews, according to the surveys.

Richard Marceau, vice-president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said one factor is the “lack of contact” between francophones and Jews. “Seventy-five per cent of Quebec Jews are English speaking as a first language,” he said.

Another reason, according to Marceau, is that “francophones, especially in Quebec, tend to have, generally speaking, a more negative view of religion.”

Quebec’s secular stance is reflected in public support for laws like Bill 21, which restricts public officials and certain public sector employees, such as teachers, from wearing religious symbols at work.

The survey found that people who responded they had good knowledge of the Holocaust viewed Jews, Israel and Judaism more favourably.

Marceau said education is an important tool in combating antisemitism. He said that there is generally a lack of understanding about Jews.

“Holocaust education to me is central, because the entire post-World War 2 infrastructure in terms of protection of human rights flew from what we saw in the Holocaust.”

He also said Canada needs better protection of Jewish institutions and a stricter enforcement of existing laws. He also advocates for making the glorification of terrorism a crime.

“It’s not normal that synagogues are vandalized, that Jewish-owned businesses … are vandalized. It’s not normal that to go to synagogue, you actually have to go through different layers of security just to go in to pray,” said Marceau, “It is the promise of Canada that is being broken towards the Jewish people.”

He added that antisemitism impacts all Canadians, not just Jews.

“I think a lot of Canadians see it as a frontal attack on what Canada stands for.”

Country music encourages faster drinking

One wonders just how the research was conducted in the following study; as reported by Associated Press and published in the Edmonton Sun, December 26, 1988:

Phoenix, Arizona--"Wailing, lonesome, self-pitying music" in country western bars makes drinkers there consume alcohol faster, James Schaefer of the University of Minnesota told a recent gathering in Arizona.

The findings came from a 10-year study by Schaefer and a team of other anthropologists of a bar in Missoula, Montana, a lumber and paper-milling town. The survey was supplemented by study of about 2,000 groups in 65 similar saloons in the Minneapolis area over three years.

Schaefer even wrote a country western song on the subject, beginning, "Joe, don't play that country music.
"I drink more, and think sore, and sing right along..."

"No doubt about it," he said, "country and western can be a prescription for trouble among people with little self-control." One reason, he said, is the lyrics' sad songs of lost love, personal freedom, truck driving and the solace of drinking.

The songs and lyrics of Hank Williams, Jimmy Rodgers, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings were particularly powerful drinking inducements, Schaefer found.

Their songs celebrate heavy drinking by making heroes out of drunkards. In contrast, he said, rock 'n' roll singers don't glorify anything or anyone."

But in the country western bars, slower music went with faster drinking. "Hard drinkers prefer listening to slower-paced, wailing, lonesome, self-pitying music during slow times in the bar," said Shaefer. "They seemed to prefer bold, macho, strong-beat-based music when the action in the bar picks up."

And they use the music as a "mood selection device"--picking out three or four songs on a jukebox, he said. "The music maintains the normative flow of emotions and the rhythm of activity--like the sound track in a movie."

"As the mood and tempo of the songs filtered through the bar, key actors could be seen changing the level and intensity of their drinking activity."

Bereavement often leads men to turn to drink

As reported by Emily Braeger of the London Daily Express, April 28, 2022:

Men often turn to drink and recreational drugs to numb the heartbreak of bereavement, research has revealed.

They admitted they reached for alcohol 13 times a month on average, according to the Sue Ryder charity.

And nearly a quarter said they used drugs every day after the death of a loved one.

Women were more likely to use prescription drugs to combat depression and anxiety, the poll said.

Sue Ryder, which has launched a Grief Kind campaign to encourage more openness, said support from friends and family would have prevented many from using drugs or drinking.

The charity's Bianca Neumann said: "This suggests men are turning to short-lasting and numbing coping mechanisms. Encourage them to visit their GP!"

Social media may be bad for your health

As reported by University at Buffalo, January 21, 2022:

Social media use has been linked to biological and psychological indicators associated with poor physical health among college students, according to the results of a new study by a University at Buffalo researcher.

Research participants who used social media excessively were found to have higher levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a biological marker of chronic inflammation that predicts serious illnesses, such as diabetes, certain cancers and cardiovascular disease. In addition to elevated CRP levels, results suggest higher social media use was also related to somatic symptoms, like headaches, chest and back pains, and more frequent visits to doctors and health centers for the treatment of illness.

“Social media use has become an integral part of many young adults’ daily lives,” said David Lee, PhD, the paper’s first author and assistant professor of communication in the UB College of Arts and Sciences. “It’s critical that we understand how engagement across these platforms contributes to physical health.”

The findings appear in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

For decades, researchers have devoted attention to how social media engagement relates to users’ mental health, but its effects on physical health have not been thoroughly investigated. Recent surveys indicate social media usage is particularly high for people in their late teens and early 20s, a population that spends about six hours a day texting, online or using social media. And though a few studies have found links between social media usage and physical health, that research relied largely on self-reporting or the effects of usage with exclusively one platform.

“Our goal was to extend prior work by examining how social media use across several platforms is associated with physical health outcomes measured with biological, behavioral and self-report measures,” said Lee, an expert on health outcomes related to social interactions.

Researchers recruited a diverse sample of 251 undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 24 for the study. Blood samples were collected through finger sticks, and participants also completed questionnaires on physical health and social media usage on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram, the most popular platforms at the time the data were collected in 2017. Those responses were crosschecked with another survey that measured validity by determining the degree to which participants took their role in the study seriously.

“We were able to establish a correlation between the amount of social media use and these physical health indicators,” said Lee. “The more participants used social media, the more somatic symptoms they experienced and visits to the doctor they reported. They also showed higher levels of chronic inflammation.”

Lee says this study is just the beginning of understanding the relationship between social media and physical health.

“By looking at a biological marker in the blood, we were able to find a relatively more objective association between social media usage and physical health, but this correlational finding can’t rule out the possibility that poor health impacts social media usage,” said Lee.

Lee says the aphorism could hold true with social media use and physical health: The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. “In our previous research, we found those high in self-esteem benefited from using social media, but people low in self-esteem did not. So, the effect may be more nuanced.”

“There’s still work to be done,” said Lee. “But right now, I wanted to get the word out there that social media use may have a link to important physical health outcomes.”

Lee’s research team for the current study included colleagues from The Ohio State University: Tao Jiang, a graduate student; Jennifer Crocker, PhD, professor of social psychology; and Baldwin Way, PhD, associate professor of psychology.

Click on the link to see the original journal article Social Media Use and Its Link to Physical Health Indicators by David S. Lee, Tao Jiang, Jennifer Crocker, and Baldwin M. Way in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

Dogs understand humans

As reported by StudyFinds, July 17, 2021 (links in original):

DURHAM, N.C. — Dogs really are “man’s best friend” and “get” humans in a way other animals simply can’t relate to. Sorry “Game of Thrones” fans, a new study finds even the dog’s closest relatives — wolf pups — don’t gel with people the same way.

Researchers from Duke University say 14,000 years of domestication plays a big part in this. In fact, man’s best friend has actually evolved to understand human gestures and look to humans for help in a way that no other animals do.

Study authors, who compared wolf pups raised by humans to dogs who had barely any contact with people, discovered that dogs still outperform their wolf counterparts in tests of their understanding and co-operation with humans. The team behind the research adds their results show dogs instinctively understand people.

“This study really solidifies the evidence that the social genius of dogs is a product of domestication,” says Dr. Brian Hare, a professor of evolutionary anthropology, in a university release.

It’s this ability, Hare says, which makes dogs such great service animals.

“It is something they are really born prepared to do,” the researcher adds.

Much like human infants, the team finds puppies intuitively understand what a human is doing when they point at something. Wolf puppies, on the other hand, did not pick up on this.

“We think it indicates a really important element of social cognition, which is that others are trying to help you,” Hare explains.

“Dogs are born with this innate ability to understand that we’re communicating with them and we’re trying to cooperate with them,” doctoral student Hannah Salomons adds.

In one test, researchers hid a treat in one of two bowls, then gave each dog or wolf puppy a clue to help them find the food. In some trials, the researchers pointed and gazed in the direction of the hidden food. For the others, they placed a small wooden block beside the right spot — a gesture the puppies had never seen before — to show them where they hid the treat.

The results reveal that, even with no specific training, dog puppies as young as eight weeks-old still understand where to go. Researchers add dogs were also twice as likely to get it right in comparison to wolf puppies around the same age who spent more time with people.

More than half (17 out of 31) dog puppies consistently went to the right bowl while none out of the 26 human-reared wolf pups did better than a random guess. Control trials showed the puppies weren’t simply sniffing out the food. Even more impressively, many of the dog puppies got it right on their first try. Absolutely no training necessary, the dogs just got what humans were doing. Despite the results, Salomons says this isn’t about which species is “smarter.”

Dog puppies and wolf puppies proved equally adept in tests of other cognitive abilities, such as memory and motor impulse control, which involved making a detour around transparent obstacles to get food. It was only when it came to the puppies’ people-reading skills that the differences became clear. “There’s lots of different ways to be smart,” Salomons explains. “Animals evolve cognition in a way that will help them succeed in whatever environment they’re living in.”

Other tests show that dog puppies are also 30 times more likely than wolf pups to approach a stranger.

“With the dog puppies we worked with, if you walk into their enclosure they gather around and want to climb on you and lick your face, whereas most of the wolf puppies run to the corner and hide,” the student researcher continues.

When presented with food inside a sealed container, the wolf pups generally tried to solve the problem on their own. Conversely, the dog puppies spent more time turning to people for help, looking them in the eye as if to say “I’m stuck, can you fix this?”

Dr. Hare believes the research offers some of the strongest evidence yet of what’s known as the “domestication hypothesis.” Somewhere between 12,000 and 40,000 years ago, long before dogs learned to fetch, they shared an ancestor with modern wolves. How these feared predators transformed into man’s best friend is still a bit of a mystery.

One theory is that, when humans and wolves first met, only the friendliest wolves would have been tolerated and gotten close enough to scavenge on early human leftovers instead of running away. Whereas the shyer, meaner wolves might go hungry, the friendlier ones would survive and pass on the genes that made them less fearful or aggressive toward humans.

The theory is that this continued generation after generation, until the wolf’s descendants became masters at gauging the intentions of people they interact with by deciphering their gestures and social cues.

The findings appear in the journal Current Biology.

HT: Vox Popoli

Young criminals are driven by excitement and influenced by the crime they see around them

This won't come as a surprise to anyone who's familiar with books, movies, or television programs about juvenile delinquency (or who's known any juvenile delinquents, for that matter). As reported by the University of Portsmouth, February 24, 2020:

Young burglars are driven by a desire for excitement when they initially commit crime, new research from the University of Portsmouth has found.

The paper published today highlights the importance of positive emotion in the initial decisions to commit crime which drive the young person into habitual offending.

Researchers compared findings from younger (average age 20) with older, experienced residential burglars (average age 39) after they completed a ‘virtual burglary’ where participants use a simulated environment to choose and burgle a property. They were asked to ‘think aloud’ during the re-enactment and then were interviewed by researchers.

Participants were asked about the days and hours before the burglary to try and establish the processes that led them to be involved in the first place.

Dr Claire Nee, Reader in Forensic Psychology, who led the research, said: “It’s important to understand under what circumstances young people make that initial decision to commit a crime, so we can think about intervention. The role of emotion in driving the desire to commit crime is a much neglected area and our research indicates it could be key to stopping it in its tracks. The excitement drives the initial spate of offending, but skill and financial reward quickly take over resulting in habitual offending.

"What really struck me about the research is how young offenders can’t identify a clear initial decision to commit a burglary – it’s just part of the ‘flow’ of what they’re doing with their adolescent comrades."

The research shows that offenders tended to drift into crime rather than any distinct turning point. Offending was often considered an integral and almost inevitable part of participants’ lifestyles.

One young burglar said: “Like where I’m from… that’s what it’s like, it’s crime, like, that’s the norm.” An adult burglar expressed similar sentiments: “I was just born on the streets… that’s what people do.”

The research discovered a pattern which shows that initiation into burglary is linked originally to the desire for excitement and the ‘thrill’ of committing the offence, but this thrill reduces once the offender has repeatedly committed a crime.

Having completed one burglary, offenders became motivated by the experience of making quick, easy money. One participant said: “I just had so much money and I was thinking, wow, is this what 10 minutes of work is.”

Dr Nee said: “It is fascinating to explore the stages of a criminal’s career, so we can see what motivates them at the start, what continues to motivate them, and how we might be able to intervene.”

The paper is published in the British Journal of Criminology.

Click on the link for the original article Expertise, Emotion and Specialization in the Development of Persistent Burglary by Marco Otte, Zarah Vernham, Jean-Louis Van Gelder, Claire Nee, and Amy Meenaghan.

70 years ago: Time spent watching television is time not spent on other things

On February 7, 1950, a Washington survey reported that television set owners saw fewer films, read less, and listened to the radio less than they did before buying their sets.

People who have trouble falling asleep have the most anxiety--or is it the other way around?

Is it the anxiety that's making it difficult for people to fall asleep, or is it the inability to sleep that's causing the anxiety? Only the scientists know for sure, as reported by Mari Rian Hanger and Nancy Bazilchuk in ScienceNorway, October 9, 2019 (bold, link in original):

Sleeplessness, or insomnia, takes different forms. Some patients have trouble falling asleep at night. Others wake up very early in the morning, without being able to fall back asleep again. A third group struggles with constantly waking during the night.

Now, sleep researchers who have looked at these three types of insomnia have found differences in anxiety levels in people with the different types.

"Patients who have trouble falling asleep have significantly higher levels of anxiety than those who struggle with waking during the night or waking early in the morning," said the lead researcher behind the new study, Daniela Bragantini, a biologist at the Department of Mental Health at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

The study was recently published in the journal Sleep Health.

Population-level study

The researchers had access to information from one of the largest health studies ever performed, called HUNT, the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study. This study of residents of the former county of Nord-Trøndelag includes a database with information on nearly 120,000 individuals. In this case, the researchers relied on data collected from 4317 people between 2006-2008 who had reported at least one symptom of insomnia to the HUNT researchers.

A total of 3616 controls, or people who did not have insomnia, were also included in the sleep study.

Participants had completed a questionnaire in which they answered questions about insomnia and also questions about anxiety.

“We compared their responses and saw that people with insomnia generally had a higher level of anxiety than those who slept well at night,” Bragantini says.

People with insomnia are known to suffer from more anxiety and depression than average. But few researchers have studied the differences between different types of sleep problems.

Trouble falling asleep associated with anxiety

People who had trouble falling asleep, whether combined with other types of sleep problems or alone, had the highest anxiety score.

Those who suffered from waking early in the morning, or waking multiple times at night, had lower levels of anxiety.

“It's interesting that having problems falling asleep is more closely related to anxiety than other insomnia symptoms,” says Bragantini.

She said that the anxiety levels in question were not very high and that not everyone needs professional help. But the differences between people with different symptoms were significant.

It seems that people who have trouble falling asleep struggle to turn off their brains.

“Their brains continue to think, even if it really supposed to be time to sleep. It is difficult to say which comes first, anxiety or insomnia — often the two disorders can sustain each other, so that it becomes a circle of stress. Sometimes it may also be that the anxiety comes first, but that the sleep problems become an independent disorder, which does not necessarily disappear even if the anxiety is treated,” she says.

Other research has shown that a patient’s mental disorders often get better when they are treated for insomnia.

Sleep anxiety can cause insomnia

Concerns over how important sleep is can also cause people to feel anxious, Bragantini said.

“It can be easy to think that it is bad for your health if you don’t get your eight hours of sleep. This type of information can be taken out of context and can feel daunting. It can cause people to develop even more anxiety about their lack of sleep, which makes it even more difficult to sleep at night,” she said.

Bragantini and her co-researchers believe a diagnosis of insomnia actually consists of several different subtypes, based on the symptoms the patients have.

“There may be different reasons for different types of insomnia. I am looking into the different biological causes behind these different types of insomnia,” she says.

Consequently, she thinks different types of insomnia may also require different treatment.

“A person who struggles with falling asleep may need treatment for anxiety, while those who wake up very early in the morning may benefit from other types of treatment. We want to continue this line of inquiry,” says Bragantini.

Most often, anxiety comes first

Ståle Pallesen, who is a professor at the Department of Psychosocial Science at the University of Bergen, says it’s not surprising that people who struggle to fall asleep have the most anxiety.

“If you have a lot of worries, and struggle with anxiety, it is not surprising that it can be difficult to turn off your cognitive activity in the evening when you are trying to sleep. Anxiety patients can also have physical symptoms that make it hard for them to fall asleep,” says Pallesen.

He believes that in some cases, having trouble falling asleep can also lead to anxiety.

“Not being able to sleep at night gives you more time to lie there and worry,” he says.

Still, he believes that in most cases, anxiety comes first, and leads to sleep problems in these patients.

Reference:

Daniela Bragantini et al.: Differences in anxiety levels among symptoms of insomnia. The HUNT study. Sleep Health, August 2019

Child molesters go where the children are

As reported by David Rose in the London Mail on Sunday, June 23, 2018 (link in original):

A devastating report will this week expose the scale and impact of child sexual abuse across the UK.

Researchers have found that abuse is widespread across all communities and social classes – and believe it has been perpetrated in schools and other institutions much more widely than previously thought.

The report – obtained by The Mail on Sunday – is based on the biggest archive of evidence by abuse victims and survivors ever assembled in this country.

It presents detailed accounts from 50 of the 1,400 people who have so far given evidence to the Truth Project, part of the huge Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) set up by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary.

Researchers have found that abuse is widespread across all communities and social classes – and believe it has been perpetrated in schools and other institutions much more widely than previously thought...

...Nabila's parents used to send her to their local mosque in Birmingham for religious instruction from the age of seven.

The Bangladeshi imam, Hafiz Rehman, subjected her to escalating sexual abuse for four years, finally attempting to rape her.

‘I used to think about telling my mum every day as I walked home,’ she says.

‘But I was scared. Would she believe me? How could I say such things about an imam?’

Sometimes she avoided classes by hiding in a graveyard. But she kept silent and even today, as a married mother, ‘intimacy seems dirty. If I do start to enjoy sex, I feel I must have enjoyed it when he was doing those things to me’.

She went to the police years later, and after a second mosque victim came forward, he was convicted in 2016 and sentenced to 11 and a half years in jail.

Astonishingly, Rehman had been on bail and was allowed to stay at home at the end of the trial by claiming he was ill.

He had surrendered his UK passport, but had a second, Bangladeshi one – and the day after he was sentenced he fled there, where he remains. Nabila says abuse is rife in Muslim communities, but ‘never discussed, always covered up.

The culture is, “we will deal with this, we don’t need anyone’s help” – but we don’t tackle it. There is abuse in almost every Asian family.

‘They get away with it in their own community, and then they target vulnerable white girls.

‘This culture has got to change.'...

...Patrick Sandford has had a successful career as a theatre director, actor and playwright.

But for decades he hid a deeply painful secret: he was repeatedly abused by a teacher in his last year at primary school.

Like many victims, this left him terrified of intimacy: he did not have a relationship until he was 26: ‘I didn’t let anyone touch me for 15 years.

‘I thought I was the most hideous, ghastly person, and I blamed the fact I was homosexual on my abuse.’

When he finally started to talk about it decades later, ‘I realised I’d had two lives – a successful professional one and a private psychological battle’.

In 2016, to rave reviews, he wrote and began performing his story in a one-man drama entitled Groomed.

Analysis by IICSA shows 53 per cent of witnesses who spoke to the project have so far been women, while 94 per cent of perpetrators were men.

Forty per cent of victims were aged between three and seven when their abuse started and 32 per cent between eight and 11. More than a third endured multiple ‘episodes’ of abuse.

They described a wide range of consequences in later life, including depression (33 per cent), difficulties with trust and intimacy (28 per cent), thoughts of suicide (28 per cent) and actual suicide attempts (22 per cent).

It is often claimed that most sexual abuse takes place within families. But only 28 per cent of witnesses say they were abused by relatives.

Abbie was abused by a Catholic priest for four years from when she was just seven.

A friend of her family, he assaulted her on days when he took her out and when staying at her family’s home.

Now in her 50s, she told the Truth Project her ordeal ‘destroyed me as a sexual person’.

She has had a successful career and many friends but has ‘never had a serious relationship’, because she says she found sexual thoughts ‘very upsetting’.

Although her abuser was in the Church, Abbie has retained her faith and says it is important to her.

But her attempts to raise what happened with the Church in her 20s were ‘met with disinterest’, she says.

Shockingly, around a quarter were abused by teachers or other educational staff, and a fifth by adult family friends or ‘trusted members of the community’.

Fourteen per cent were abused by members of the clergy, 12 per cent by professionals such as doctors and social workers, and nine per cent by residential care workers.

Rebekah Eglinton, one of IICSA’s clinical psychologists, works closely with the Truth Project. She said: ‘We’re learning that many people have put themselves in positions of trust and authority to have access to children.

'It feels really important that we are here. People tell us again and again how silenced they have felt. This is an opportunity to end that silence and so to hear how we can better protect children.’

Dru Sharpling, the former Crown Prosecutor for London, is the IICSA panel member who heads up the Truth Project. She said some victims’ testimony has been referred to the police, leading to 14 perpetrators being convicted of child sexual abuse so far.

She added: ‘Listening to these accounts can be extremely moving. For some, it’s the first time they’ve disclosed. Others have tried and not been believed.

‘Yet often there were signs when they were still children that something was very wrong – which were not picked up. Sharing these experiences is of inherent value but they will also help IICSA make recommendations to protect children in future.’

The Truth Project continues and those wanting to share their experiences can call 0800 917 1000 or visit truthproject.org.uk.

Fin – not his real name – told the Truth Project he was abused by the head teacher at his training school after he joined the Navy as a boy sailor in the 1950s.

He said that he informed the padre, who did nothing.

Fin began wetting his bed, and went AWOL, for which he was then beaten in ‘ceremonial’ fashion.

The Navy decided Fin was ‘unfit’ to serve and discharged him. He has, he says, had ‘a good life, financially’, but has struggled with his personal relationships, avoiding attachment for fear of ultimate rejection.

‘I wonder what my life could have been like if I had not been sexually abused,’ he said.

HT: Vox Popoli

Addictions expert says that legalization of marijuana could lead to greater use

As reported by Kieran Leavitt of StarMetro Edmonton, June 3, 2018:

EDMONTON—With cannabis legalization on the horizon, Alberta Health Services is trying to grapple with how and where people can use the substance — but also how they can help people quit if they want to stop using it.

“It does worry me,” said AHS executive director for addiction and mental health, Mark Snaterse.

“When we look at some parts of the world that have done this (legalization), they have found that in many instances, recreational users of marijuana will often become daily or regular users of marijuana.”

He’s a veteran in the world of addictions, having been involved for 26 years and in his current role as director for nine. He has reason to be concerned, while most people who come to use his department’s services are addicted to myriad substances, many are addicted to marijuana.

“When we look at everybody coming into our services for all different kinds of substance use, the top two are alcohol and marijuana,” he said.

According to data Snaterse provided from all of Alberta in 2016-2017, only one per cent of people who accessed addiction services came solely using marijuana.

However, of people taking multiple substances, 52 per cent of them included marijuana in their list of substances they were taking. Of those people, 25 per cent identified that marijuana was a problem they wanted to be treated for.

Therefore, of the approximately 13,500 people that accessed addiction services and listed marijuana as a substance they used in 2016 and 2017, around 3,300 acknowledged marijuana was a problem for them.

Snaterse also said mental illness is commonly exacerbated by marijuana use.

“A lot of the people we care for have a persistent and chronic mental illness,” he said. “There certainly is a strong link between people’s ability to remain well and their use of substances such as marijuana.”

His department offers addictions counselling and one-on-one support for people dealing with dependency to marijuana. The treatment style is very individualistic, Snaterse said.

Some will be in residential treatment, where they spend a certain amount of time. Some just need to have conversations with counsellors and others might have to be outpatients dealing with things more independently.

Snaterse said they deal with marijuana withdrawal as well, saying people can experience high anxiety or other emotional symptoms.

No substitute exists for people wanting to ween themselves off cannabis, he said.

May 31 marks World No Tobacco Day and folks all over the globe gathered in protest to tobacco products.

In Edmonton, Chris Sikora, medical officer for health with Alberta Health Services, spoke to the cessation of smoking but also said they’re also grappling with legalization of cannabis and what it means for them.

At the Kaye Edmonton Clinic Thursday, AHS promoted their resources for quitting smoking available to those struggling, but have updated their policy to include quitting the use of cannabis.

People dealing with substance abuse can access addiction counselling, outpatient support, residential support or peer support through AHS. Typically people will go for a consultation to see what the best course of treatment is. This applies to tobacco, e-cigarette and cannabis use as well.

AHS also updated their policies to ban cannabis use on all of their properties, with Sikora saying although cannabis will be legal to consume, it shouldn’t mean creating an unsafe environment where people are cared for.

“What isn’t right… is exposing others to those substances in an unnecessary manner that increases risk the risk of harm to other individuals,” said Sikora.

AHS has a free help line people can call if they want assistance in dealing with addiction, available by dialling 1-866-332-2322.

Laughter is contagious

A neuroscientist confirms it, in an interview with Andrew Anthony in the British newspaper The Guardian, December 24, 2017 (bold, links in original):

Sophie Scott is a senior fellow at University College London. She is an expert in cognitive neuroscience, particularly in relation to communications. This year, she is giving the Royal Institution Christmas lectures looking at how evolution has shaped our bodies to communicate with each other. She also does standup comedy...

...Many animals laugh, including, apparently, rats. What have rats got to laugh about?
They laugh for the same reasons as other animals: it’s a social behaviour. We tend to associate laughing with jokes and humour in adult humans, but actually laughter is always something that happens primarily around members of your own species. Particularly the ones you know, particularly the ones you like. Rats laugh when they’re tickled and when they’re playing. That’s true of apes and humans too.

What are the advantages of laughter over a wry smile?
They are twofold. Laughter is a very strong cue to others to join in. So it works as a behaviourally contagious phenomenon. It also feels good to laugh. You get a kick from laughter. It’s having an effect at multiple levels. There’s some very good research from Robert Levenson on positive affect. If both members of a couple laugh or smile, they can deal with stressful situations. But only if they both do it.

We’re 30 times more likely to laugh with someone than on our own. Is laughing alone an activity that should be of concern?
All laughter’s good. Don’t worry about laughing on your own. It’s a statistical phenomenon – you’re much more likely to do it around other people. I realised the other day the same is true of speaking. You’re much more likely to talk around other people.

This is why they're called "emergencies"

An emergency is, by definition, a situation demanding immediate attention, which might come as a surprise to staff at Canadian hospitals. As reported by Sheryl Ubelacker of The Canadian Press, July 10, 2017:

TORONTO – Patients whose emergency surgeries are delayed due to a lack of operating room resources have an increased risk of death or a need for extra recovery time in hospital, a Canadian study suggests.

Researchers at the Ottawa Hospital found surgical delays for patients with serious injuries or life-threatening conditions such as a hip fracture, appendicitis or an aneurysm had almost a 60 per cent higher risk of dying compared to those who received more timely treatment.

The study, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, showed that patients who didn’t get into the OR within a standard time frame for their condition had an almost five per cent risk of dying, compared to a 3.2 per cent risk for those whose surgeries weren’t delayed.

On average, delayed-surgery patients also stayed in hospital after their operation 1.1 days longer and cost the hospital $1,409 more than patients who did not have to wait.

“For the first time, we have strong evidence that the sooner you get to the operating room for an emergency surgery, the better off you are, regardless of your condition before surgery,” said senior author Dr. Alan Forster, vice-president of quality, performance and population health at the Ottawa Hospital.

Urgent surgeries are those considered necessary within 24 hours of a patient being diagnosed, in most cases at a hospital emergency department. Such surgeries represent 13 per cent of all operations performed in Ontario, according to the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.

“Some surgeries need to be done very promptly,” said Forster, an internist and researcher. “The hip fracture is a really good example because that’s one that really should be done within that 24-hour time frame.”

The reasons for delays were known in 39 per cent of cases. The most common causes for delay were that operating rooms were already in use or surgeons, anesthetists or surgical nursing staff were not available, he said.

“If you only have minutes or hours to plan, then you really have to have those resources available,” said Forster, adding that it’s difficult for patients and their families when an urgent surgery has to be put off.

“People are obviously very worried about their loved ones, they’re obviously worried about themselves, they’re often in discomfort as a result … The best thing is to get folks into the OR immediately when they’re supposed to be and minimize those anxieties, minimize their pain.”

To conduct the study, the researchers examined data from 15,160 adults who had emergency surgery at the Ottawa Hospital between January 2012 and October 2014. They found that 2,820 of these patients, or almost 20 per cent, experienced a delay.

Researchers spent the first three months of the study collecting data on the demand for emergency surgeries. In January 2013, the hospital began using a new method for scheduling such operations, including dedicating OR time specifically for emergency procedures and spreading elective surgeries more evenly throughout the week.

After the hospital implemented this new model, there was a significant decrease in the number of urgent surgeries that had to be delayed.

“There was a massive improvement in patients getting to emergency surgeries on time with this new model,” said Forster. “It might seem counterintuitive, but having unused time in expensive operating rooms could save both money and lives.”

Still, he said there are certain barriers to implementing a system with operating suites designated for emergency surgeries – which may at times sit unused.

“People running operations are always looking to make sure their budgets are maintained. It’s difficult to create capacity and then plan not to use it.”

In a related CMAJ commentary, Dr. David Urbach of Women’s College Hospital, says the study findings provide the most credible evidence to date that long delays to emergency surgery are harmful.

“These findings will ring true for many of us who have worked in an operating room in a Canadian hospital,” writes Urbach, surgeon-in-chief at the Toronto hospital.

“Global hospital budgets in an era of constrained public financing force surgical departments to strive for maximum efficiency; most optimize utilization of operating rooms and staff at maximum capacity for elective surgery, while assiduously avoiding any unbudgeted activity.”

The authors note that even though the study was conducted at one centre, the findings are likely generalizable to other hospitals across the country.

“We need to think about how we make OR resources available for urgent surgery differently,” said Forster.

Click on the link to see the original report Association of delay of urgent or emergency surgery with mortality and use of health care resources: a propensity score–matched observational cohort study in CMA Journal, July 10, 2017.

Drinking young leads to dying young

Now that scientists have discovered that drinking alcohol at an early age can lead to an early death, don't be surprised if they announce similar discoveries about the early practice of smoking, drug use, or other bad habits. The following article abounds in euphemisms: "alcohol abuse disorder;" "alcohol use disorder;" "abuse sufferers;" "alcohol addiction." I'm surprised "alcohol dependency" and "alcohol-dependent" weren't included. The term "drunkenness" is mentioned, which is far more honest. The Bible never uses such euphemisms, or even terms such as "alcoholism" or "alcoholic"--terms popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous in an effort to relabel a sin as a disease--but uses such terms as "drunkenness," and says that "drunkards" will not inherit the Kingdom of God (I Corinthians 6:10). I'm not going to mention the innumerate use of the word "DOUBLES" in the original Daily Mail headline.

As reported by Alexandra Thompson in the London Daily Mail, June 9, 2017 (bold in original):

Getting drunk before your 15th birthday nearly doubles your risk of an early death, new research reveals.

Those who get inebriated at a young age are 47 percent more likely to die prematurely, a study found.

Researchers believe early drinking may increase a person's risk of suffering a life-threatening alcohol abuse disorder in later life.

Lead author Dr Hui Hu from the University of Florida, said: 'Early onset of drinking and drunkenness are associated with alcohol use disorders and therefore may play a role in elevated alcohol use disorder-related mortality rates.'

Other experts add excessive alcohol-consumption at a young age can increase a person's 'risk-taking behavior' and lead to mental health issues.

How the study was carried out

Researchers from the University of Florida analyzed the drinking habits and death records of almost 15,000 adults, who were followed for three decades.

The researchers examined data from the early 1980s that asked the participants if they had ever been drunk and how old they were when it first occurred.

At the time of the interviews, most participants were aged between 18 and 44-years-old.

Key findings

Compared to study participants who said they never got drunk, those who did so at least once before they turned 15 were 47 percent more likely to die during the study period.

Getting drunk at 15 or older increased the risk of death during the study by 20 percent.

Some 61 percent of the study's participants said they had been drunk at some point, with around 13 percent of first-time cases occurring before they turned 15.

Of those who got drunk young, around 37 percent were suffering from an alcohol abuse disorder at the time of the interviews, compared to 11 percent of abuse sufferers who did not get intoxicated until they were older.

By the end of the study, 26 percent of those who got drunk young had died, compared to 23 percent of those who got drunk later and 19 percent who had never been inebriated.

Why early drinking is risky

Excessive drinking at a young age is thought to be linked to alcohol abuse in later life.

Dr Hu said: 'Early onset of drinking and drunkenness are associated with alcohol use disorders and therefore may play a role in elevated alcohol use disorder-related mortality rates.'

Yet alcohol addiction may not be the only factor contributing to young drinkers' early death risk.

Dr Hu said: 'We found that an estimated 21 percent of the total effects of early drunkenness were mediated through alcohol use disorders, suggesting that many other factors in addition to alcohol use disorders may play important roles.'

Dr Michael Criqui, a public health researcher at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study, said: 'We know that alcohol abuse leads to earlier mortality, but it is also possible that earlier abuse reflects other genetic or environmental characteristics that lead to earlier mortality.'

Early drunkenness may point to other factors such as risk-taking behavior, mental health issues or a lack of social or economic support that influences health and longevity, noted Dr. Gregory Marcus, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study.

How to interpret the results

Dr Marcus said: 'No one should interpret these data to mean that their fate is sealed.

'On the contrary, these findings are useful exactly because they may help us identify those at risk so we can prevent these adverse outcomes.'

Yet Mr Joy Bohyun Jang of the institute for social research at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study, added that the study demonstrates an early mortality risk exists even among people without alcohol addiction, which all drinkers should be aware of.

He said: 'Those with alcohol use disorders may receive attention to their alcohol use behaviors by practitioners or they themselves may be cautious about their alcohol use.

'But what this study tells us is that those without alcohol use disorder may need the same level of attention if they experience drunkenness early in their life.'

Mainstream media don't like Donald Trump

It must be true, because Harvard University says so. As reported by Heat Street, May 19, 2017 (links in original):

A major new study out of Harvard University has revealed the true extent of the mainstream media’s bias against Donald Trump.

Academics at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzed coverage from Trump’s first 100 days in office across 10 major TV and print outlets.

They found that the tone of some outlets was negative in as many as 98% of reports, significantly more hostile than the first 100 days of the three previous administrations:



The academics based their study on seven US outlets and three European ones.

In America they analyzed CNN, NBC, CBS, Fox News, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

They also took into account the BBC, the UK’s Financial Times and the German public broadcaster ARD.

Every outlet was negative more often than positive.

Only Fox News, which features some of Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters and is often given special access to the President, even came close to positivity.

Fox was ranked 52% negative and 48% positive.

The study also divided news items across topics. On immigration, healthcare, and Russia, more than 85% of reports were negative.

On the economy, the proportion was more balanced – 54% negative to 46% positive:



The study highlighted one exception: Trump got overwhelmingly positive coverage for launching a cruise missile attack on Syria.

Around 80% of all reports were positive about that.

The picture was very different for other recent administrations. The study found that President Obama’s first 100 days got a good write-up overall – with 59% of reports positive.

Bill Clinton and George W Bush got overall negative coverage, it found, but to a much lesser extent than Trump. Clinton’s first 100 days got 40% positivity, while Bush’s got 43%:



Trump has repeatedly claimed that his treatment by the media is unprecedented in its hostility.

This study suggests that, at least when it comes to recent history, he’s right.

Click on the earlier link or here to see the original article News Coverage of Donald Trump’s First 100 Days by Thomas E. Patterson of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, May 18, 2017.

See also Michael Goodwin's column American Journalism is Collapsing Before Our Eyes in the New York Post, August 21, 2016.

The mainstream media coverage of Donald Trump reminds me of a comment made by white liberal South African comedian Pieter-Dirk Uys in an interview with TVOntario early in 1988. The apartheid regime was still in power in South Africa, and Mr. Uys said that the media coverage of anti-apartheid Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu was so biased against him that if he walked on water, it would be reported as "Bishop Tutu cannot swim."

HT: Infogalactic News

Prompt treatment of sepsis may save lives

It occurs to this blogger that the prompter the treatment of any medical emergency, the more likely it is that the life of the patient will be saved--assuming, of course, that the medical professionals know what they're doing. As reported by Lauran Neergaard of Associated Press, May 22, 2017:

WASHINGTON — Minutes matter when it comes to treating sepsis, the killer condition that most Americans probably have never heard of, and new research shows it's time they learn.

Sepsis is the body's out-of-control reaction to an infection. By the time patients realize they're in trouble, their organs could be shutting down.

New York became the first state to require that hospitals follow aggressive steps when they suspect sepsis is brewing. Researchers examined patients treated there in the past two years and reported Sunday that faster care really is better.

Every additional hour it takes to give antibiotics and perform other key steps increases the odds of death by 4 percent, according to the study reported at an American Thoracic Society meeting and in the New England Journal of Medicine.

That's not just news for doctors or for other states considering similar rules. Patients also have to reach the hospital in time.

"Know when to ask for help," said Dr. Christopher Seymour, a critical care specialist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine who led the study. "If they're not aware of sepsis or know they need help, we can't save lives."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year began a major campaign to teach people that while sepsis starts with vague symptoms, it's a medical emergency.

To make sure the doctor doesn't overlook the possibility, "Ask, 'Could this be sepsis?'" advised the CDC's Dr. Lauren Epstein.

Once misleadingly called blood poisoning or a bloodstream infection, sepsis occurs when the body goes into overdrive while fighting an infection, injuring its own tissue. The cascade of inflammation and other damage can lead to shock, amputations, organ failure or death.

It strikes more than 1.5 million people in the United States a year and kills more than 250,000.

Even a minor infection can be the trigger. A recent CDC study found nearly 80 percent of sepsis cases began outside of the hospital, not in patients already hospitalized because they were super-sick or recovering from surgery.

In addition to symptoms of infection, worrisome signs can include shivering, a fever or feeling very cold; clammy or sweaty skin; confusion or disorientation; a rapid heartbeat or pulse; confusion or disorientation; shortness of breath; or simply extreme pain or discomfort.

If you think you have an infection that's getting worse, seek care immediately, Epstein said.

Doctors have long known that rapidly treating sepsis is important. But there's been debate over how fast. New York mandated in 2013 that hospitals follow "protocols," or checklists, of certain steps within three hours, including performing a blood test for infection, checking blood levels of a sepsis marker called lactate, and beginning antibiotics.

Do the steps make a difference? Seymour's team examined records of nearly 50,000 patients treated at New York hospitals over two years. About 8 in 10 hospitals met the three-hour deadline; some got them done in about an hour. Having those three main steps performed faster was better — a finding that families could use in asking what care a loved one is receiving for suspected sepsis.

Sepsis is most common among people 65 and older, babies, and people with chronic health problems.

But even healthy people can get sepsis, even from minor infections. New York's rules, known as "Rory's Regulations," were enacted after the death of a healthy 12-year-old, Rory Staunton, whose sepsis stemmed from an infected scrape and was initially dismissed by one hospital as a virus.

Illinois last year enacted a similar sepsis mandate. Hospitals in other states, including Ohio and Wisconsin, have formed sepsis care collaborations. Nationally, hospitals are supposed to report to Medicare certain sepsis care steps. In New York, Rory's parents set up a foundation to push for standard sepsis care in all states.

"Every family or loved one who goes into a hospital, no matter what state, needs to know it's not the luck of the draw" whether they'll receive evidence-based care, said Rory's father, Ciaran Staunton.

Click on the link to see the original article Early, Goal-Directed Therapy for Septic Shock — A Patient-Level Meta-Analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine, March 21, 2017.

Pregnant women waddle

I wonder why that is; could it have something to do with carrying inside their bodies? Here in Edmonton, women are able to waddle without being pregnant; they're just plain fat.

As reported by Unity Blott (!) of the London Daily Mail, July 3, 2016:

Women really do 'waddle' like penguins when they are pregnant, according to new research.

The unique way that mums-to-be walk has been measured for the first time thanks to a sophisticated 3D motion capture system that is used in Lord of the Rings and other CGI blockbusters.

It has allowed scientists to study how women are forced to adjust their everyday movements, from getting up from a chair to changing direction while walking.

After filming mums-to-be at various stages of pregnancy, they found that baby bumps can change a woman's gait as early as in the first trimester.

The researchers also found that accidental falls cause up to a quarter of all trauma injuries during pregnancy, and that expectant mothers have the same level of risk as a 70-year-old woman.

Hiroshima University's Professor Koichi Shinkoda, who conducted the research, said: 'Biomechanics studies like ours, (looking at) how humans move, are valuable for many things like making our built environments safer or designing mobility skills.'

The study is the first of its kind; previous body scan analysis has almost exclusively focused on men of European descent.

One study in 1996 looked at pregnant women in Canada; however, the imaging technology available at the time means the data is now considered outdated.

Yasuyo Sunaga, a doctoral student in Professor Shinkoda's lab, explained: 'Prior to our study, there were almost no theory-supported models of the movement of pregnant women.

'This model is just the start of our goal of contributing to a safe and comfortable life before and after childbirth for pregnant women.'

3D motion capture is use to bring movies like Avatar to life, and now it has shed light on the precise movements of pregnant women such as standing up, turning, walking and even carrying a light load. Special flooring was also used to measure the force of their steps.

The team brought eight women into the lab at three different times during their pregnancy, as well as seven non-pregnant women, and used infrared cameras to record their movements.

After computer analysis, the researchers created virtual models to represent the average pregnant woman.

The model confirms scientists' current understanding of why pregnant women walk differently; even during the first trimester, their centre of mass is further forward, they lean backwards while standing, and they bend their hips less while walking.

This combination can cause them to trip over their toes and more easily lose their balance.

Computer models like this allow researchers to study the limits of what type of movements are safe without putting any real participants in dangerous situations.

Yasuyo Sunaga added: 'We want to find the ideal way for new mothers to carry their baby, what exercises are most effective to return to non pregnant fitness, and what physical postures are best for work in the home or office.

'Now that we have the appropriate data, we hope to apply our model and make it possible to problem-solve these concerns of daily life.'

The study has been published online in the journal Applied Ergonomics.

Click on the link for the abstract to the original article, Biomechanics of rising from a chair and walking in pregnant women by Yasuyo Sunaga, Masaya Anan, Koichi Shinkoda, Applied Ergonomics, Volume 44, Issue 5, September 2013, pp. 792-798.

"Real" men don't like to go to the doctor...

...which is why we die younger than women, as reported by Agence France-Presse/Relaxnews, March 24, 2016:

A newly published American psychological study has set out to investigate whether male life expectancy -- which is shorter than female life expectancy by an average of five years -- could be affected by social and psychological factors like choice of doctor and honesty.

"Why do men die earlier than women?" That's the question Diana Sanchez, associate professor of psychology at Rutgers University in the USA and doctoral student Mary Himmelstein, set out to answer in a recent study published in the Preventive Medicine journal and the Journal of Health Psychology.

They found that men who had traditional beliefs about masculinity -- such as showing bravery, courage and emotional restraint -- were more likely to ignore their health problems or delay acting on them.

The pair studied a group of 250 men, who were given a questionnaire designed to gauge their ideas about manhood and their preferences when choosing a doctor.

The results showed that participants with the highest scores on the masculinity scale were more likely to choose a male doctor, assuming them to be more competent that their female counterparts.

The scientists then recruited 250 university students and gave them a similar questionnaire. Each participant was also interviewed about their health by male and female medical or nursing students.

Paradoxically, the higher they scored on the masculinity scale, the less likely they were to talk openly about their symptoms and current health problems with male doctors. "That's because they don't want to show weakness or dependence to another man, including a male doctor," explains Diana Sanchez.

Ironically, this same group of volunteers was found to be more honest about their medical symptoms with female doctors, the authors found.

The pair published similar findings in 2014 in the Journal of Health Psychology. The study showed that men with strong, traditional ideas about masculinity were less likely to seek medical help, and were more likely to downplay their symptoms and suffer worse health outcomes than women or men who did not share those values.

"Men can expect to die five years earlier than women, and physiological differences don't explain that difference," said Diana Sanchez.

Click on the links to see the abstracts of the original journal articles by Mary Himmelstein and Diana Sanchez:

Masculinity impediments: Internalized masculinity contributes to healthcare avoidance in men and women, Journal of Health Psychology, October 7, 2014

Masculinity in the doctor's office: Masculinity, gendered doctor preference and doctor–patient communication, Preventive Medicine, Volume 84, March 2016, Pages 34–40

Girls are different from boys in their texting habits...

...with resulting differences in school performance. Once again, psychologists treat every example of obvious differences between males and females as if they've made a profound discovery.

As reported in a press release from the American Psychological Association, October 5, 2015:

WASHINGTON - Teenage girls who compulsively text are more likely than their male counterparts to do worse academically, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"It appears that it is the compulsive nature of texting, rather than sheer frequency, that is problematic," said lead researcher Kelly M. Lister-Landman, PhD, of Delaware County Community College. "Compulsive texting is more complex than frequency of texting. It involves trying and failing to cut back on texting, becoming defensive when challenged about the behavior, and feeling frustrated when one can't do it..."

...Girls do not text more frequently than do boys, but they appear to text for different purposes, Lister-Landman said. "Borrowing from what we know about Internet communication, prior research (e.g., Baron, 2004) has shown that boys use the Internet to convey information while girls use it for social interaction and to nurture relationships," she said. "Girls in this developmental stage also are more likely than boys to ruminate with others, or engage in obsessive, preoccupied thinking, across contexts. Therefore, it may be that the nature of the texts girls send and receive is more distracting, thus interfering with their academic adjustment."

Go here for full text of the original article.

Behavioural scientists don't seem to know much about human nature

I've never had a high opinion of behavioural scientists; they treat their discoveries of the most obvious human behaviours and characteristics as profound revelations. However, maybe I should treat behavioural scientists with more respect; they have fun conferences, and they come up with surprising discoveries such as those mentioned below.

Submitted for your approval is an excerpt from a report by Mike Pottenger, Sessional Lecturer, Department of Economics at University of Melbourne. Click on the link to see the full article, Why Can’t We Just Behave? Free Drinks and Behavioral Science, from The Conversation, June 4, 2014 (bold in original):

Something for Nothing and Making the Most of It

Last night there was a function where free drinks were served. Behavioural science has found that when something is free, people are likely to flock to it more than they otherwise might. So there’s reason to suspect that at least some attendees may have overindulged.

But that assumes the drinks really were free: attendees’ behaviour may have been driven by the assumption that they were effectively paying for the drinks (at least in part) through their registration fees.

In this case, behavioural science suggests that instead of regarding that past expense as a sunk cost and choosing their preferred number of drinks based on how many they actually feel like having, people may actually consume more drinks in an effort to get their money’s worth.

What About Self-Restraint? Or Self-Awareness?

Wouldn’t people’s knowledge that they needed to turn up bright and early this morning have meant they restrained themselves last night? As it turns out, behavioural science finds that a present bias means people are likely to have placed a higher value on having a good time last night than on being alert and attentive this morning.

Research also tells us that our capacity for self-restraint might be limited. So after spending a whole day paying attention to cognitively taxing talks and doing our best to avoid the chocolate cake at morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea, we might be less able to resist a tempting beverage (an effect known as ego-depletion).

You might think a group of people at a conference about behavioural science would know at least something about these behavioural phenomena and so could adjust their behaviour accordingly. But the research suggests it’s not easy to change your own behaviour even when you’re aware of your own biases (as is the case with gender bias). Many of the experts noted that yes, even they were subject to this dilemma. To make matters worse, self-serving bias means people are likely to routinely overestimate their ability to do so.

HT: The Epoch Times

Narcissists are attracted to positions of power--or is it the other way around?

I'm always struck by the number of politicians and people who run for political office--people who presume to be qualified to govern others--who can't govern themselves and have the nerve to run for office despite having huge skeletons in their closets (or sometimes in plain view). The recent examples of Newt Gingrich, John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, and Anthony Weiner come to mind. Then, of course, there are those who run for and hold office to meet the demands of their own egos (examples too numerous to mention). News with Views commentator Dave Daubenmire puts it succinctly: "America is governed by sociopaths." The situation is no better in Canada (which is one of the reasons I've largely given up voting), but of course, we can't figure this out ourselves--we need a psychology professor to tell us. As reported by Andrea Hill of Postmedia News, August 16, 2013:

OTTAWA — As Sen. Pamela Wallin‘s damning expense audit becomes public knowledge, many Canadians have taken to social media and the op-ed pages of their local papers to express disgust at what they call the senator’s “sense of entitlement.”

Wallin — who is accused of improperly claiming more than $120,000 in travel expenses — has staunchly denied she feels any such thing.

“I do not have some sense of entitlement,” she told the CBC in June. “I didn’t deliberately set out to abuse this system in any way.”

She insists Senate rules about what can be claimed are unclear and that the audit process was “fundamentally flawed and unfair.”

But behaviour experts say it’s not unusual for people in positions of power to feel entitled.

“People in the Senate, in the Canadian Senate, are there because they’re being rewarded for a lifetime of service to Canada,” said Del Paulhus, a psychology professor at University of British Columbia who studies narcissism. “It seems that’s why they’re there: because they deserve to be there and they deserve to get all the perks.”

Paulhus said Wallin “absolutely” displayed a sense of entitlement by charging taxpayers for travel not directly related to Senate duties and that her behaviour is not surprising. After all, he said, Canada’s upper house — which is filled with successful people who are often told how important they are — breeds a culture of entitlement.

But Paulhus said some people are more likely than others to believe they deserve to use public funds for their own purposes.

Feelings of entitlement often come hand-in-hand with big egos, Paulhus said, and people who make their careers as television broadcasters — as Wallin did — could be more likely to fit that description.

And just as broadcast work draws people with a distorted sense of what they are owed, so too does the Senate, said Christian Jordan, a psychology professor and narcissism expert at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont.

While he said there’s no reason to think the Senate as a whole has an inflated sense of entitlement, “there’s certainly evidence that narcissists are more likely to seek high-profile positions, be they celebrity positions or in politics, more than other people do.”

“And being in those positions leads people to feel a greater sense of entitlement and power as well,” he said.

Jordan said people with this attitude believe they deserve more than others and don’t feel bad about claiming what they believe to be rightfully theirs.

“It’s a route to get really what they are entitled to or what they deserve to have, and so they don’t really think about the repercussions of what that means for other people or for the public generally,” he said...

...But saying these politicians felt a sense of entitlement when they helped themselves to the public coffers doesn’t tell the whole story, said Frank Farley, a psychology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and past-president of the American Psychological Association.

“It may be an ingredient in the recipe, but the driving force in the recipe is this deeply rooted risk tolerance quality that is demanded in the political life,” Farley said.

He said people who end up in politics are hardwired to take risks. After all, “if you’re a shrinking violet, to use that old phrase, you’re not going to make it to the top.”

Farley said a politician’s job involves speaking in public, engaging in public debate and suffering “the slings and arrows of criticism.” You need to be a risk taker to survive the day-to-day responsibilities of the job, Farley said, but there’s a “destructive side” to that behaviour, which can lead to actions like inappropriately claiming expenses...

As Thomas Sowell says, politicians who talk about being in "public service" are likely to end up thinking that the voters owe them something.

Not getting enough sleep may hurt your performance in school (zzz...)

It's tough to do well in school when you're falling asleep in class because you didn't get enough sleep last night--but of course, we're not smart enough to figure this out without a study to tell us so. As reported by Dr. Veronica Hackethal of Reuters, August 16, 2013:

Children who have trouble sleeping tend to do worse in school than their peers who get a good night's sleep, a new study suggests.

Researchers in Brazil looked at children age seven to 10 who attended Sao Paulo public schools. They found kids with symptoms of sleep disorders or sleep breathing disorders earned lower grades than those without problems sleeping, on average...

...Poor sleep among children has been tied to obesity, which over the long term increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes. And poor school performance has been linked to early dropout rates - so the new findings may have implications beyond getting a good night's sleep, researchers said...

...However, the new study can't say definitively that sleep problems were to blame for poor grades, researchers said.

"This study doesn't prove that a sleep disturbance causes decreased academic performance," Bazil said, "but it shows an association. Basically every category of sleep disturbance the authors looked at correlated with decreased academic performance."

The researchers relied on parents' reports of their children's sleep, rather than bringing kids into a sleep lab overnight, for example...

Go here to see an abstract of the original study.

Children can get fat watching TV in their bedrooms

I am shocked--shocked!--to find that children who have TV sets in their bedrooms are more likely to watch television than those who don't. As reported by QMI Agency, December 11, 2012:

Children with TVs in their bedrooms are more likely to be at risk of obesity, a new study has found.

Researchers looked at 369 children aged 5 to 18 in Baton Rouge, La., noting their waist circumference, blood pressure, cholesterol, fat mass and stomach fat. The data showed that not only were those with TVs in their bedrooms more likely to watch more TV, they also had more fat mass and a higher waist circumference compared to those without a bedroom TV.

Study participants with a TV in the bedroom and those who watched more than two hours of television a day had up to 2.5 times the odds of having the highest levels of fat mass.

"A bedroom TV may create additional disruptions to healthy habits, above and beyond regular TV viewing," study co-author Amanda Staiano said.

The study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Go here to see the abstract of the original article.

Ice cream melts and beer gets warm in hot weather

And now for something completely different: An item about a major discovery by a reporter rather than by a scientist. The Edmonton Journal is a giant advertising flyer masquerading as a newspaper that's heading in the same direction as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Tucson Citizen; it will likely fold as a print newspaper and exist as an online-only collection of blogs. An example of the kind of story that frequently gets put on the front page is this ice cream "scoop" by Manisha Krishnan, published on July 11, 2012:

EDMONTON - With temperatures soaring Tuesday to 31 C in Edmonton, concerns about heat stroke and power shortages were top of mind for many.

But the Journal set out to address a couple of other important issues. Specifically, ­what type of ice cream can beat the heat? And how long does it take before a beer sitting in the sun becomes undrinkable?

Armed with samples, a thermometer and cameras, we captured the results of two experiments.

Here is what we discovered:


Experiment 1: Battle of the cones

Objective: Find out how long it takes for ice cream to melt in the sun.

Hypothesis: Treats that are frozen solid, such as Creamsicles, last the longest.

Results: Ice cream is usually great but the sweet, sticky remnants of it running down an enclosed fist is not...

...Experiment 2: Beer blues

Objective: Determine how long it takes for beer to become undrinkably warm.

Hypothesis: Around 15 minutes. Having said that, there are some people who might never find beer undrinkable.

Results: Drinking a cold beer is one of the most enjoyable activities to indulge in on a scorcher. But at what point do those rays start to ruin a delicious drink?

We settled down with a pint of Mill Street Organic Ale on a sunny patio at The Pourhouse Bier Bistro to find out. It was 31 C at 4:15 p.m.

The plan was to record temperature increases every few minutes and ask tester Jorge Lima, 19, to share his thoughts on the taste of the beverage.

The beer came out of the tap at 4 C. Eight minutes later it was up by 11 C.

“It’s still drinkable. It’s not at the temperature you’d want it to be,” Lima said.

By 4:40 p.m., the beer had reached about 20 C.

“It’s getting to the point where it’s not enjoyable any more. You’re just finishing it because you already spent the money,” said Lima, adding that the beer smelled a lot stronger and had a metallic after-taste.

Kids who watch a lot of TV tend to eat a lot of junk food

As reported by Genevra Pittman of Reuters, May 10, 2012:

Children and teens who watch a lot of television are less likely to get their fruits and vegetables and more likely to snack on candy or drink soda every day, according to a survey of close to 13,000 U.S. students.

The link to poor eating habits remained even after the researchers, whose findings appeared in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, took into account how much exercise kids typically got as well as how often they snacked while in front of the television.

Though the findings weren't particularly surprising, researchers couldn't tell which came first, the extra TV or poor eating habits. Thus, the study alone can't prove that watching too much TV causes children to make poor diet choices.

But it does jibe with past research showing that when children have their TV time cut back, they tend to eat less and may lose weight, the researchers aid.

"It certainly is consistent with the idea that TV is maybe adversely affecting dietary intake and food choices," said Leah Lipsky, who worked on the new study at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver national Institute of Child Health and Human Development, along with colleague Ronald Iannotti.

Previous studies have also suggested that young people who spend more time in front of the television are more likely to be overweight or obese. One explanation is that advertisements promoting fast food and sweets during kids' programming may be driving youth towards unhealthy foods, experts have said.

The survey looked at a nationally-representative group of 12,642 private and public school students who watched an average of two and a half hours of TV each day.

The researchers found that for every extra hour of daily TV watching reported by children from roughly age 10 to 16, they were five percent less likely to eat vegetables every day and eight percent less likely to get daily fruit.

Each extra average hour of TV also meant kids were 18 percent more likely to say they ate candy each day, 24 percent more likely to drink soda at least daily and 14 percent more likely to go to fast food restaurants once a week or more.

That was after taking into account survey participants' age, gender, race and how well-off their families were.

"The effect of television is extending beyond just when they're snacking and watching television," Iannotti told Reuters health. That means it's important both for parents to limit TV time - and thus exposure to food-related commercials - and to make sure healthy snacks are available when children are watching TV or otherwise engaged in "screen time" in front of a computer, he added.

University students are surprised to discover that tourists buy souvenirs to remind them of places they've been

The word "souvenir" is a French word, a reflexive verb (se souvenir de) meaning "to remember." Apparently, University of Alberta human ecology students were unaware of this. As reported by Marta Gold in the Edmonton Journal, April 8, 2012:

EDMONTON - Nothing says “souvenir” like an I-‘heart’-NY T-shirt or a tiny replica of the Eiffel Tower.

Whether you think of them as tacky trinkets or treasured mementos, they indisputably make us think of faraway places and vacation experiences.

A new exhibit at the University of Alberta explores these ideas and the holiday souvenirs that inspire them in a show called “Greetings From ….”

Compiled by fourth-year human ecology students, the keepsakes were gathered from the department’s clothing-and-textiles collection as well as from students and staff.

The items range from the simple and iconic — tourist T-shirts and models of international landmarks — to the handmade and intricate, such as a mask from Venice and a wall hanging from Egypt.

Some are created from indigenous materials by local craftspeople, such as the African coasters carved out of tree bark, while others are cheap imports hawked to tourists, such as the dashboard hula girl from Hawaii.

But interestingly, the cost or quality of the memento has little bearing on its value to the owner, says Megan Strickfaden, the U of A professor who taught the students in a class on material culture in the home and the community.

“It’s really more about the connection they make with those objects.”

That was among the discoveries students made through the project, which required each of them to write a proposal and then vote on a favourite for the class project.

The theme they chose was submitted by student Holly Postma-Strand, who suggested focusing on travel souvenirs – “the kinds of objects people collect, why they collect those objects and how they are important to individuals,” Strickfaden says.

Souvenirs are particularly interesting because of the “dual conversation” they create, she says.

They’re made or imported to represent a particular city or country, but they have a whole other meaning and significance to the visitors who then buy them — usually, as a reminder of their holiday.

Even though the small Eiffel Tower was likely produced in China and has little connection to anything truly Parisien, to the person who buys it, it represents their actual experience, Strickfaden says.

“No matter what the artifact is, whether it’s inexpensive or expensive, whether it’s handmade or mass produced, it’s still an authentic representation for the person who purchased it, because it represents that moment in time, that experience that that individual had, visiting that culture.”

That came as a surprise to some of the 23 students in the class, she adds.

“I think for the students, they went in being biased, thinking that if something’s made in China it can’t actually represent (another) culture. But, in fact, it can for the individual who’s purchased it.”

The items in the exhibit include 10 from the U of A collection and another 20 or so from students and staff. They include musical instruments from China, a boomerang and didgeridoo from Australia, a doll from Mexico and a kimono from Japan.

Each is accompanied by the story of its origin from the student or staff member who bought it.

“The personal stories are often very quirky, because people acquire things for interesting reasons,” Strickfaden says. “They make connections with those objects after they return home, as well.”

She submitted several of her own souvenirs, including a cookbook she received in Belgium, where she used to live. When she left, friends gave it to her, explaining cookbooks are usually given to teens when they leave home. “They wanted to give it to me because they wanted me to remember Belgium as a home for years to come.”

The kimono was given to her in Japan by the mother of a student she had helped take care of by teaching her in Canada, Strickfaden explains.

Robyn Stobbs, one of the students who helped choose the items from the university’s collection, says working on a project with the entire class and putting an exhibition together was a great experience.

Her own contribution, a small clay flute she picked up in China, was clearly made for tourists — it even came with English and Chinese instructions. “Yet it still has a great deal of meaning to me,” she says.

One of her favourite pieces in the exhibit is a set of beautiful nesting dolls from Russia, she says.

The exhibit runs until May 21 in the main lobby of the U of A’s Human Ecology Building at the corner of 116th Street and 90th Avenue.

It’s open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. weekdays, Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. Admission is free.

May 17, 2012 update: I just visited this exhibit, and there's really not much to it. Some of the items are more interesting than others; many of the items are the sort that might strike tourists as exotic, while the natives probably regard them as trinkets of the sort that you can find in any souvenir shop.

Stupid young males tend to be oblivious to their surroundings while listening to headphones

As reported by Joan Delaney in The Epoch Times, February 20, 2012 (updated February 25, 2012):

The deaths of two headphone-wearing high school students who were struck by trains in separate incidents just hours apart last week brought home the dangers of being oblivious to surrounding sounds when walking near train tracks.

On Feb. 13 around 3:00 p.m., 16-year-old Jacob Hicks was hit by a train at a level crossing in Oshawa, Ont., while texting and listening to music on headphones. He died later in hospital.

The automated lights and bells at the crossing were active at the time, but police said the music Hicks was listening to was likely so loud it drowned out the warnings, according to media reports.

The same afternoon, 19-year-old Daniel McPherson was walking along the tracks in Leduc, south of Edmonton, when he was struck and killed by a freight train. He was also wearing headphones.

McPherson appeared not to hear the train’s squealing brakes and whistle as the driver tried desperately to alert him.

If a recent U.S. study is anything to go by, the tragic incidents demonstrate a growing problem, particularly among young people.

According to research from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, the number of injuries and deaths in headphone-related collisions in the U.S. has increased dramatically in recent years—and the victims are mostly young males.

Between 2004 and 2011, the researchers reviewed 116 accidents in which injured pedestrians were documented to be using headphones.

Seventy percent of the 116 accidents resulted in the death of the pedestrian. More than two-thirds of victims were male (68 percent) and under the age of 30.

Fifty-five percent of the moving vehicles involved in the accidents were trains, and 29 percent of the vehicles reported sounding some type of warning horn prior to the collision.

The researchers came to the conclusion that the increased incidence of accidents over the years closely corresponds to the rising popularity of auditory technologies with headphones.

“Everybody is aware of the risk of cellphones and texting in automobiles, but I see more and more teens distracted with the latest devices and headphones in their ears,” said lead author Dr. Richard Lichenstein, associate professor of paediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

“Unfortunately, as we make more and more enticing devices, the risk of injury from distraction and blocking out other sounds increases.”
Distraction, Sensory Deprivation

The researchers noted two likely phenomena associated with the injuries and deaths: distraction and sensory deprivation.

The distraction caused by the use of electronic devices has been dubbed “inattentional blindness,” in which an individual fails to notice a fully visible but unexpected object because his attention is otherwise engaged.

In cases of headphone-wearing pedestrians being struck by trains or vehicles, the distraction is intensified by sensory deprivation—the pedestrian’s ability to hear warning signals is hampered by the sounds produced by the electronic device and headphones.

The Sherlockian powers of observation and deduction on the part of the researchers are positively dazzling, especially when they attribute the accidents to "distraction and sensory deprivation." For those who may not have the scientific expertise to figure this out, it means that the stupid yutes have the volume turned up too loud, and they're not paying enough attention to their surroundings to notice oncoming trains.

These tragedies can be easily avoided by doing three things:
1/ Turn down the volume;
2/ Look up and around and show some awareness of your surroundings;
3/ Remember that railroad tracks are there for the movement of trains, and aren't intended as paths for pedestrians.