Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Anxiety, Depression High Among Young Heavy Metal Fans

April 16, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
rage-against-machine

How would you characterize adolescents who listen to heavy metal music? Angry? Perhaps prone to violence? Newly published research suggests “anxious” and “depressed” are more accurate adjectives. An analysis of 551 college students found “significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression among listeners of heavy metal/hard rock music, as compared with non-listeners.” Furthermore, their underlying level of anger was not significantly different from their peers who prefer other musical genres. The study, conducted by psychologists Gavin Ryan Shafron of Columbia ... Read More

For Children, TV Commercials Are a Catalyst to Materialism

April 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
tv-kid-commercial

Concerned that your kids are becoming overly materialistic? Suspicious that their acquisitiveness has something to do with the steady stream of television commercials they see on a daily basis? Newly published research suggests your fears are well-grounded. A study of 8- to 11-year-olds from the Netherlands finds exposure to television advertising has “a positive causal effect on materialism.” Researchers led by Suzanna Opree of the University of Amsterdam identify an insidious equation: Ads exacerbate kids’ desire for material things, and this desire gradually leads them to equate ... Read More

Across Cultures, Music Therapy Promotes Sounder Sleep

April 11, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
counting-sheep

Music does more than soothe the savage beast. It also provides relief for the irritated insomniac. That’s the conclusion of a just-published meta-analysis by Chinese researchers, who examined 10 studies conducted on three continents. Across the globe, they report, sweet sounds induce sound slumber. “Music appears to be effective in treating acute and chronic sleep disorders,” writes the research team, led by Chun-Fang Wang of the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery at Pingjin Hospital in Tianjin. “It is low-cost and safe, and could be used to improve sleep quality in various ... Read More

Could Sober Eyewitnesses Be Less Reliable Than Intoxicated Ones?

April 8, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
drunk-eyewitness

Members of the jury: Surely you can’t believe that witness who says he saw my client fleeing the scene of the crime. After all, he admits he was intoxicated! A recently published study from Sweden suggests that defense-attorney argument may be less valid than it sounds. A research team led by University of Gothenburg psychologist Angelica Hagsand had 123 people watch a film depicting a staged kidnapping. One-third had just consumed a strong drink of Absolut vodka and pulp-free orange juice. Another third had consumed a weaker version of the same concoction, while the remainder stayed ... Read More

Help Others to Help Yourself: High School Students Benefit From Volunteer Work

April 5, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
volunteer-teens

Let’s perform a little parental thought experiment. Your daughter (or son) is in her senior year of high school, headed for the exit, when she’s told she must perform 30 hours of community service before graduation. How does the scene play out? A bit of drama, perhaps some eye rolling and door slamming. After you threaten to revoke her car privileges, she signs up to volunteer at the local elementary school. Once a week, she spends an hour reading to youngsters, helping out with homework, leading playground games, and organizing arts and crafts. In the end, she survives. Maybe she even has ... Read More

Hey, Come Try This Organic Corn Dog

April 4, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
USDA-organic-seal_fe

We're fickle about what we eat. Whether our proscriptions are religious (no alcohol, no pork), dietary (no gluten, no dairy), ideological (no cages, no cruelty), environmental (no pesticides, no GMOs) or simply faddish (no carbs, no sugar), we know just what we want when we walk into Price Chopper. Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean we know what we’re eating. New research from Cornell suggests that a “health halo” exists around organic products, including chips, cookies, and yogurt, which leads consumers to consistently underestimate their caloric content and overestimate ... Read More

‘Let’s Work Together’ Message Can Be Counterproductive

April 4, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: LEXAARTS/SHUTTERSTOCK)

When it comes to climate change, we’re all in this dilemma together, and forcefully addressing it will require collaboration and cooperation. A stirring sentiment, but if you’re looking to spur white Americans to action, it’s actually counterproductive. That’s the conclusion of a Stanford University research team, which found invoking the idea of interdependence undermined the motivation of European-American students to take a course in environmental sustainability. The researchers, led by MarYam Hamedani of Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, argue ... Read More

Spreading Racism via Facebook

March 29, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: AMAZE646/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Is Facebook a particularly powerful medium to spread racist messages? That’s the disturbing implication of a newly published study. “Frequent users are particularly disposed to be influenced by negative racial messages,” psychologists Shannon Rauch and Kimberley Schanz write in the journal Computers in Human Behavior. They argue these heavy users log onto the site in search of social inclusion rather than information—and as such, they’re prone to express agreement with the material they see without thinking about it too deeply. This combination of “a need to connect and an ... Read More

Pitfalls of the Teen Dating Scene

March 28, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: JULIA ZAKHAROVA/SHUTTERSTOCK)

As someone who didn’t have, ahem, a wealth of opportunity to explore the high school dating scene, my interactions with female classmates came primarily in the form of AOL instant messages and orchestra bus trips. By senior year, I’d received the “let’s just be friends” talk so often that I knew it by heart. Was it any coincidence that I didn’t touch a drop of alcohol till my freshman year of college, and underlined my English texts with colored pencils and a ruler? According to a six-year longitudinal study that looks at teenagers’ dating patterns, partying habits, and study ... Read More

Mindfulness Training Boosts Test Scores

March 27, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO COLLAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK)

Studies reporting the benefits of mindfulness training keep rolling in—not quite with the regularity of those distracting thoughts that keep popping up in your head, but at a good clip nonetheless. The latest, from a team at the University of California, Santa Barbara, reports even a short, two-week course in focusing the mind can lead to immediate, tangible results: higher scores on tests measuring reasoning and comprehension. “Our results suggest that cultivating mindfulness is an effective and efficient technique for improving cognitive function, with wide-reaching ... Read More