Articles and website pages Index 7

2/13/04-

Want to Know If Your Marriage Will Succeed (or fail)!
Researchers have found a new mathematical model with 94% success predicting divorce success or failure

12/13/03-

Why Beautiful Women Make Men Stupid
Research has proven that beautiful women make men stupid.

12/05/03-

How Just a Few Alcoholic Drinks a Week Shrink Your Brain?
JUST a few alcoholic drinks a week may be enough to shrink the brain, according to US research. Middle-aged men and women who consume moderate amounts of alcohol on a regular basis tend to have lower concentrations of brain tissue than teetotallers or occasional drinkers, scientists have discovered.

10/10/03-

What Greensboro Needs To Do For Singles?
Mid-sized cities get hip to attract young professionals
"Be hip and they will come" is the motto of a new movement in second-tier cities that have lost their best and brightest to more urbane centers such as San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Atlanta, Washington and Boston. Wooing young people has never been high on cities' economic development agendas. Until now.

9/17/03-

How Your Sleeping Position Reveals Your Personality Traits?
Whether it's curled up in the fetal position, flat on the stomach or stretched out across the bed, the way people sleep reveals their personality, a British sleep expert said.

8/6/03-

Why Penis Is Designed To Keep Other Men's Semen Out? Really! LONDON (Reuter) - Size is usually more of an issue but the shape of the penis is also important because it evolved to dispel other men's semen, according to scientists in the United States. The coronal ridge could scoop out more than 90 percent of other men's semen with just one thrust, while a phallus with no coronal ridge only managed to remove 35 percent,.

6/1/03-

Why Do Couples, Friends and Lovers Become Emotionally Similar?
Laugh and the world laughs with you is especially true for couples, friends and roommates, the results of a new study suggest. Couples and roommates tend to have similar emotional reactions as time goes by. This so-called emotional convergence seems to be beneficial to friendships and romantic relationships, making them stronger and longer lasting.

5/3/03-

Are Older or Younger Women Getting More Sex and Enjoying It More?
It's surprising that there is little difference in sexual intercourse. But there is much more to a woman's sexual life than how much sex she gets. There's a big difference in how much petting and affection they get, depending on whether they cohabit or live alone.

3/15/03-

Why Men's Perspiration Put Women In Better Moods (Really!)
Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania said they found male perspiration had a surprisingly beneficial effect on women's moods. It helps reduce stress, induces relaxation and even affects the menstrual cycle

2/12/03-

Why Do Most People Kiss "Right" in Public Places
Kissing couples turn their heads more often to the right than to the left when zeroing in on their embrace, a researcher said.

9/26/02-

Hybrid Diesel Gets 70 mpg and Only Costs $1,000 More
A small electric motor can boost the performance of a diesel

10/16/02-

Campus Hypocrisy, NY Times Editorial by Thomas L. Freeman
Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.

10/10/02-

Why Older Women Want Sex Men Can't Deliver
A global survey of 27,780 adults aged 40 to 80 from 30 countries that found aging women become sexually dysfunctional at about half the rate of men.

10/8/02-

Why Is Jealousy Possibly Not Genetic or Gender Based?
Two new research papers question the evidence that jealousy evolved differently in men and in women. Dr. David DeSteno, a psychologist at Northeastern University, assert that the sex difference revealed in many studies of jealousy by evolutionary psychologists is spurious, an artifact of the particular method used in those studies.

9/30/02-

Myth Dispelled: Shoe Size, Penis Size Not Linked
Despite eons of speculation to the contrary, two British scientists have laid to rest the idea that a man's shoe size is in any way correlated to the size of his penis.

9/12/02-

What are good friends? Bad friends? Some Friends, Indeed, Do More Harm Than Good
Friends are supposed to be good for you. In recent years, scientific research has suggested that people who have strong friendships experience less stress, they recover more quickly from heart attacks and they are likely to live longer than the friendless. They are even less susceptible to the common cold, studies show

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From the February 13, 2004 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0213/p11s01-lifp.html

Want to Know If Your Marriage Will Succeed (or fail)!
Marriage: Addition or division?

Researchers have found a new mathematical model with 94% success predicting divorce success or failure

By Danna Harman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Valentine's Day is Saturday, and we are all thinking about true love and heart-shaped chocolate candy. Well, maybe not all of us. Some of us, actually, are considering the quantifiable aspects of divorce.

In America today, some 50 percent of marriages are predicted to end in divorce. And at the University of Washington in Seattle they say they can tell you exactly - well, almost exactly - which ones those will be.

A psychologist, a mathematician, and a pathologist have devised what they call a proven mathematical formula for detecting which relationships will go sour - thereby holding out hope that such couples can overcome their problems, and avoid divorce.

"We have been able to predict that divorce will happen before [it does]. That's old news," says John Gottman, emeritus professor of psychology. "But what we have now is a scientific model for understanding why we can predict it with such accuracy."

The work marks the first time a mathematic model is being used to understand such deep personal human interactions, adds James D. Murray, emeritus professor of applied mathematics. "It is totally objective. And our prediction of which couples would divorce within a four-year period was 94 percent accurate."

This is how it works: Couples face each other and discuss - each speaking in turn - a subject over which they have disagreed more than once in the past. They are wired to detect various physiological data, such as pulse rates, and they're also videotaped. A session lasts a mere 15 minutes.

The research team watches and analyzes the tapes and data, awarding plus or minus points depending on the type of interactions and according to a standard scoring system. Everything is then translated into equations and plotted on a graph, which the researchers have dubbed the "Dow-Jones Industrial Average for marital conversation."

Once this is done, different situations are simulated and analyzed from the equations and graphs, and predictions are made.

Over the past 16 years more than 700 couples (at different stages of their marriages) took part in the research.

But let's go back a moment. It all starts, say, with a chat about mothers-in-law - apparently one of the hot topics of contention among couples, along with money and sex, according to Dr. Murray. "The husband might say to his wife, 'Your mother really is a pain in the neck.' Well, that's a minus two points. A shrug, that's a no-no - so minus one. And rolled eyes - very negative; that's minus two."

If however, the husband were to say, "Your mother is a pain in the neck ... but she is sometimes funny," then, according to the researchers, you would take away two points and then give one back. If the husband cracked a smile, he would get another point.

At the end of all the additions and subtractions, a stable marriage is indicated by having five more positive points than negative ones. Otherwise, warns the team, the marriage is in trouble.

In trouble - but not doomed. The whole point of the model, says Dr. Gottman, is that it gives therapists new understanding with which they can help couples overcome patterns of interaction and prevent divorce.

"What we are suggesting," says Murray, "is that couples who take this experiment then be told the prediction and realize they are going to have to both change their behavior and repair what is wrong."

Not everyone buys into this model. Bonnie Jacobson, a clinical psychologist and adjunct professor at New York University, says it is "absolutely impossible" to understand the workings of a relationship via a one-size-fits-all model.

"For mostly every couple I have seen, it's hard to see how they got together in the first place," she says. "So unless you really get to know the nuanced dynamics, you will never 'get it' or be able to help."

Christine Fasano was married for only 14 months before getting a divorce last year. She agrees the dynamics of a relationship are nuanced and complex - but also sees merit in the University of Washington study's basic assumption that if one looks starkly at interaction between a couple, it is possible to ascertain whether the relationship is headed toward demise.

"I'm not surprised the model works," she says. "It's actually not that profound. My basic observation of couples that are happily married is that they treat each other well. That is basically what they are saying, and that is hard to argue with."

So, any final advice for Valentine's Day from the divorce research team out in Washington?

"I would never give advice on matters of the heart," says Murray the mathematician, who, incidentally, has been married 45 years. "But I suppose the bottom line is, yes, communication. And being good to one another. That is nice to quantify."

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Why Beautiful Women Make Men Stupid

Canadian Press
Dec. 11, 2003 07:15 PM

HAMILTON - Research has proven that beautiful women make men stupid.

McMaster University researchers proved men can't think straight after just looking at photos of attractive women.

Psychology professors Margo Wilson and Martin Daly showed male students pictures of both attractive and non-attractive women.

Then they had the men roll dice.

When they threw double digits, the men would get a choice: take between $15 and $35 the next day, or take $50 to $75 after a wait of one week to eight months.

The men who had just viewed pictures of "hot" women were far more likely to take the lesser sum right away, says the study, printed recently in Biology Letters, a Royal Society journal.

The same test was done with female students.

There was no difference in the response of the women who had just seen pictures of "hot" men and the response of those who had seen pictures of average or non-attractive men.

The pictures were taken from a popular website which invites visitors to rate the attractiveness of people who have submitted pictures of themselves.

The psychologists' finding is that men stop thinking about consequences when testosterone takes over.

Wilson and Daly, who are married, work in the area of evolutionary psychology, focusing on brain design.

Their research has tended to focus on homicide risk patterns, and one of the factors involved is something called "discounting the future," said Wilson.

It's a variable that comes up not only in psychology and criminology, but economics as well.

If a person discounts the importance of the future, the consequences of criminal behaviour will not be as powerful a deterrent, said Wilson.

The men in the study who chose to take the money immediately were discounting the future because they subconsciously made a calculation of utility, she said.

The pictures of the attractive women subconsciously lit up courtship and mating responses in the brain. This became associated with an immediate need for money, still important in our culture as part of the courtship ritual.

"This study really is just showing scientifically what marketers already know," said Wilson. "That beautiful women in advertisements induce men to spend."

Women, on the other hand, associate courtship with possible long-term consequences like pregnancy and so are less likely to identify any utility in

Source: http://www.azcentral.com/php-bin/clicktrack/print.php?referer=http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1211beautiful-stupid-ON.html

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What Greensboro Needs To Do For Singles?
Mid-sized cities get hip to attract young professionals

"Be hip and they will come" is the motto of a new movement in second-tier cities that have lost their best and brightest to more urbane centers such as San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Atlanta, Washington and Boston. Wooing young people has never been high on cities' economic development agendas. Until now.

October 10, 2003

By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY

In the staid Bankers Club, young men and women mix it up with powerbrokers over beer, wine and hors d'oeuvres. Establishment luminaries work the room to welcome the twentysomethings to their inner sanctum.

It's the hippest crowd this sedate, wood-paneled room has ever seen. Even the older CEOs are loosening up. There's the head of consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, tieless, playing host. University and chamber presidents, the newspaper publisher, bankers and executives bounce from table to table for informal chats. (Related chart: Cities sport young, educated populations)

What's going on? Why would Cincinnati's powers-that-be court people half their age? For the same reason Pittsburgh, Richmond, Memphis, Tampa, Indianapolis, Baton Rouge, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Tallahassee, Fla., and Fresno, Calif., are launching Web sites, organizing summits, staging arts and music festivals and investing in glitzy promotions: to lure young professionals.

Cities spent decades dangling tax breaks and other financial sweeteners to attract big business. They poured billions of dollars into new stadiums, convention centers and aquariums. But their populations continued to shrink and to age. Two-thirds of the 50 largest metropolitan areas had fewer young adults in 2000 than in 1990, according to the Census. These cities now realize that they've done little to appeal to the labor force that will shape their economic future: educated 25- to 34-year-olds.

"They're going to go after young people the way cities went after IBM," says Carol Coletta, host of the public radio show Smart City and a Memphis consultant.

Coletta co-hosted the Memphis Manifesto, a summit that brought representatives from 40 cities to Tennessee's largest city last spring to cook up youthful strategies.

"Chambers of commerce have traditionally focused on older men who make decisions about where businesses will be located," she says. "City governments are focused on homeowners, mom 'n' pop with two kids who have to send their kids to schools. The revelation is this young group."

Cities are suddenly convinced that without them, their brain drain will continue. Employers will flock to hipper cities to attract this young labor force. Even worse, the dynamic businesses that young people create will start elsewhere.

"Bill Gates is pushing 50," says Joe Cortright, head of Impresa Inc., an economic consulting firm in Portland, Ore. "The next big companies that get started will probably not get started by baby boomers."

Choice demographic shrinks

"We built the stadiums. We built the hotels. We built the convention center. We still lost people. And the '90s were a phenomenal decade," says Bruce Katz, director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "There's an implicit recognition that the big-ticket items didn't quite do the trick."

In their hunger to find ways to revive their cities, urban leaders are embracing young professionals who have money to spend and time to spend it. Better yet, this generation does not strain public services such as public schools and health care because they're largely childless and healthy. Research shows that these people will play an important role in the economic future of cities because of:

Demographics. The nation's 78 million baby boomers are aging. The youngest are 39, an age when even boomers begin to settle down and start families. The oldest, who turn 57 this year, are starting to retire.

Filling their slots are just 40 million people ages 25 to 34. Cities are competing for this smaller pool of people who are deciding where to live and work. They are especially going after the 23 million college-educated young, a group 10% smaller than 10 years ago. Less than a quarter of Americans live in nuclear families, and about 25% are single.

Mobility. Young adults are twice as likely to move to other states as middle-age people. That's why cities are rushing to get them now, before they establish roots somewhere else.

Young professionals have been leaving the cities that are now struggling to attract them. More than 7,200 people born between 1966 and 1975 left Cincinnati's Hamilton County in the 1990s, a 6% loss, according to an analysis of Census data by The Cincinnati Enquirer. Hamilton lost more than any other urban county in the Midwest.

Knowledge economy. In the technological age, the importance of the educated and creative to the economy is magnified. If they flock to only a handful of cities, other cities risk falling behind.

Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, struck a chord with his theory that thriving cities attract culturally and ethnically diverse people artists, gays, people who are physically fit and open-minded and anyone who thinks and creates for a living.

"I didn't invent this," says Florida, professor at the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "I've just become a spokesman."

The youth message is getting through in cities where women and younger people have broken through leadership ranks. Young professionals are finding that they can be a big fish in a small pond especially now that the old establishment is starting to take them seriously. Examples:

In Fresno, the heart of California's agricultural Central Valley, the talk is shifting from crops to arts because of Councilman Henry Perea, 26. Perea flew to Memphis and Tampa this year to attend "creative class" summits.

"Fresno has a reputation that I certainly would like to change," he says. "Out of 10 friends in college, I'm the only one who stayed."

In the year since he was elected, the city has passed a public art ordinance and is considering changing zoning to allow artists to live and work in the same buildings.

In Cincinnati, five of the nine city council members are younger than 40, and four are under 35. Nicholas Spencer, 25 and a native, is running for the council. He's the founder of Cincinnati Tomorrow, a non-profit group that wrote a plan to make the city cooler, including helping black musicians record their work. He wants to repeal a city ban on laws that forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Tampa was shaken up by new leadership this year. Pam Iorio, 44, was elected mayor. Deanne Roberts, 50, head of a Tampa ad agency, chairs the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce the second woman to hold the post.

The chamber launched Emerge Tampa to engage young people. The campaign is backed by an unexpected constituency: Mothers whose kids have moved away.

"These are successful women saying, 'I've made it. I'm happy with my career. But for me to have a really full life, I want my kids and grandkids back,' " Roberts says.

The mayor even created a new city position: manager of creative industries. A musician and former journalist, Paul Wilborn, was hired. Among his goals: Make Tampa a film center (The Punisher, starring John Travolta, is being filmed there); and review city regulations that discourage creative businesses from opening.

Don't call them Yuppies. That's too '80s. Too reminiscent of an obsession with upward mobility. They're simply YPs "young professionals." They care more about quality of life than the corporate rat race. They're not into climbing the ladder because many of the companies they want to work for don't have much of a ladder. They like start-ups, small consulting firms or research labs. They pick a city they like and then worry about finding a job.

Most don't live to work but work to live. They play in bands and sports leagues. They like to go out but not just with people from the office. They're more interested in parks and bike trails than fancy sports arenas.

They want fun neighborhoods, art galleries, coffeehouses, nightlife and diversity in everything from race and sexual orientation to music and hairstyles. They're more likely to work for a company that offers benefits to same-sex partners, even if they're not gay themselves. In short, they crave cities that are tolerant of all lifestyles.

Florida says participants in his focus groups "blanched at the very idea of a 9-to-5 schedule or a standard dress code."

Shaking off stodginess

Mark Twain is supposed to have said: "When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always 20 years behind the times."

It's a tough reputation to overcome. The pig sculptures that adorn downtown recall Cincinnati's golden era as a pork-processing center. Today, the city is more famous for its three-way chili, sports teams and Procter & Gamble.

Not bad, except for race riots in 2001, the arrest of a museum director for exhibiting photos by artist Robert Mapplethorpe, bigoted comments by former Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott and the gambling scandals of baseball hero Pete Rose. "Cincinnati has not defined its image," says lawyer Sean Rhiney, 32. "It let others do it."

YPs such as Rhiney want to be part of the city's makeover. He and Bill Donabedian, 36, who designs content for classes on the Web, play in bands. They hang out at Allyn's, an eclectic Cajun-Mexican food and music joint, to hear local bands.

They know Cincinnati's music is hot, but does anyone else?

They decided to showcase the city's musical heritage by organizing the MidPoint Music Festival last year. About 10,000 people showed up. The chamber of commerce, which recently launched YPCincy, and the city helped fund it this year; 25,000 came.

"Five years ago, the chamber would never have sponsored a music festival," Rhiney says. "It's a sizable leap of faith."

P&G and other businesses have joined the YP movement. Mayor Charlie Luken is making it a priority. Condos and townhouses are being built downtown. Give Back Cincinnati is tapping YP's spirit of volunteerism and has garnered the support of 275 companies. The arts community is reaching out with discounts to people under 30. The Contemporary Arts Center, designed by renowned architect Zaha Hadid, opened this year. Its provocative exhibits appeal more to hipsters than dowagers.

City changed her mind

As a young black woman who grew up in Boston, Najoh Tita-Reid was mortified when P&G offered her a job at its Cincinnati headquarters. She was 25.

"The reputation was that it was conservative, not diverse, not progressive and that if you were single, you'd be single forever," she says. She agreed to try it for two years. She's been here five.

Tita-Reid became a mentor and founded the Cincinnati Partnership to keep YPs of color in Cincinnati. Her fiancé moved from New York. His company, which recruits minority teachers, has gone national. They bought a house in a historic neighborhood.

"This generation is not consumed with money and power but quality of life," she says.

Experts caution that efforts to lure YP's will fail if they're too gimmicky. Vibrant neighborhoods like New York's Greenwich Village or San Francisco's North Beach were not marketed. They evolved naturally into bohemian enclaves.

"It's not enough to hold a music festival on the waterfront three times a year," says Brookings' Katz. Cities' long-term survival depend on the basics, he says: "Quality of our educational system, quality of life, tax rates, poverty."

Joff Moine, 30, found quality of life in Cincinnati. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, went to the University of Cincinnati and lived in Chicago for five years. He came back and founded the Cincinnati Sports Leagues for young professionals.

"We don't live next to the ocean, we don't live next to the mountains, but there is a good homegrown community of people," Moine says.

"I'm in love with the town."

Source: www.news.yahoo.com

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Why Do Couples, Friends and Lovers Become Emotionally Similar?

Laugh and the world laughs with you is especially true for couples, friends and roommates, the results of a new study suggest. Couples and roommates tend to have similar emotional reactions as time goes by. This so-called emotional convergence seems to be beneficial to friendships and romantic relationships, making them stronger and longer lasting.

Fri May 30, 2003 1:56 PM ET
By Dana Frisch, Reuter

NEW YORK - Laugh and the world laughs with you, the saying goes, and this is especially true for couples, friends and roommates, the results of a new study suggest.

It seems that couples and roommates tend to have similar emotional reactions as time goes by. So if your roommate or lover laughs out loud at movies or gets weepy over hurt puppies, you may too -- given time.

This so-called emotional convergence seems to be beneficial to friendships and romantic relationships, making them stronger and longer lasting.

Everyday experience suggests that people are capable of "catching" the mood of a spouse or friend, said lead author Dr. Cameron Anderson. But he told Reuters Health that he was surprised by the extent to which peoples' emotions converged in his study, which is reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"The romantic partners and roommates were virtually becoming the same emotional person over time," said Anderson, a visiting assistant professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

In the first part of the study, 60 heterosexual couples at the University of Wisconsin in Madison answered questions about their personality, their satisfaction with their relationship and the balance of power within it.

To test emotional convergence, partners discussed positive and negative situations -- such as a recent success or an ongoing worry. Then each partner privately reported his or her feelings regarding the issue.

Six months later, the 38 couples that were still together repeated the experiment. The couples maintained distinct personalities, but they were more closely attuned emotionally than they had been at the start of the study, the researchers found.

Although couples' emotions converged over time, similar emotions might have drawn them together in the first place. Couples that stayed together during the study were more emotionally similar than couples that broke up, the researchers point out.

Anderson's team also found that the partner who had less power in the relationship did most of the changing in terms of emotions.

In other experiments, which involved college students who lived together in dormitories, the researchers found that roommates tended to have more similar emotional responses toward the end of the school year. The researchers gauged emotion by having students watch film clips that tend to elicit laughs or tears.

Roommates whose emotions converged the most during the school year tended to become closer friends than roommates whose emotions did not become as similar, according to the report.

The study also found that the roommate who had a lower social status in the dormitory tended to change more than popular roommates.

Anderson said these results show that "people's emotional responses to events are not completely fixed and rigid."

According to the Illinois researcher, emotional similarity could be helpful in assembling the most productive corporate team, and might be an important consideration when searching for love or friendships.

SOURCE: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2003;84:1054-1068.

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Are Older or Younger Women Getting More Sex and Enjoying It More?

Fri, May 02, 2003 Reuter

By Alison McCook

It's surprising that there is little difference in sexual intercourse. But there is much more to a woman's sexual life than how much sex she gets. There's a big difference in how much petting and affection they get, depending on whether they cohabit or live alone.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuter Health) - Women in their late 20s and late 50s who do not live with a romantic partner have some surprising similarities and differences when it comes to their sex lives, a researcher said here this week.

Although women in both age groups appeared to have just as many dates, younger women reported more sex, sleeping next to a partner, kissing and affection.

However, the researchers found no statistically significant differences in how frequently the women reported masturbating, regardless of their age.

Among postmenopausal women, those who were not living with a romantic partner reported fewer instances of petting, affection and kissing, and, not surprisingly, of sleeping next to a partner compared to other women the same age who had a spouse or live-in partner.

And all postmenopausal women seemed to masturbate and have sex just as often as other women their age, regardless of whether or not they were living with a partner.

The study included 36 San Francisco women with an average age of 27 who were commuting to college, 32 highly-educated postmenopausal women living in Boston and 12 postmenopausal women of the same age living with a spouse or partner.

"What's surprising is that there is no difference in sexual intercourse (among postmenopausal women), whether they have a partner or not," study author Dr. Winnifred Cutler of the Athena Institute for Women's Wellness Research in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania, told Reuter Health.

But there is much more to a woman's sexual life than how much sex she gets, Cutler noted, and "there's a big difference in how much petting and affection they get," depending on whether they cohabit or live alone.

The small study may not necessarily be representative of all women. Those included in the results were participating in another study designed to study whether wearing perfume that contains pheromones -- substances secreted by animals that can influence behavior and attract the opposite sex -- renders them more sexually attractive, Cutler explained.

"These are people who want more romance ... and that's why they're in this study," she said.

The current findings, collected before the researchers tested the effect of pheromones, suggest that whether or not a woman's life is filled with the romance she seeks depends greatly on her age and how she lives, Cutler noted.

"Older women don't get as much romance when they want romance as young women do when they want romance," she said.

These findings are not just fodder for curiosity, she noted. Previous research suggests that affection increases endorphin levels in the body, which has numerous effects in the body, including strengthening the immune system.

"It's not trivial to have affection in your life," she said. "And a romantic partner is one way to have that affection."

"I imagine having a puppy dog is another way," she said.

Given the importance of affection in a woman's life, should doctors broach the subject with their female patients? Perhaps, Cutler said, but with tact.

"I think to a physician who's looking at the whole woman, her well-being is a part of the whole woman. And her romantic life is part of her well-being," she said.

"It's always a question of not being intrusive, but caring," Cutler added. "These are subtle issues."

Cutler and her colleagues presented their findings Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Cutler conducted the study with colleagues from Harvard University and San Francisco State University.

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Why Men's Perspiration Put Women In Better Moods (Really!)
Fri Mar 14, 2003 1:14 PM ET

Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania said they found male perspiration had a surprisingly beneficial effect on women's moods. It helps reduce stress, induces relaxation and even affects the menstrual cycle

PHILADELPHIA (Reuter) - Sweating it out over a big date this weekend? If you're a guy, that could be just the ticket, according to a human biology study released on Friday.

Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania said they found male perspiration had a surprisingly beneficial effect on women's moods. It helps reduce stress, induces relaxation and even affects the menstrual cycle.

"This suggests there may be much more going on in social settings like singles' bars than meets the eye," said Charles Wysocki, an adjunct professor of animal biology at Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine.

In a study to be published in the journal Biology of Reproduction, researchers collected samples from the underarms of men who refrained from using deodorant for four weeks. The extracts were then blended and applied to the upper lips of 18 women, aged 25 to 45.

The women rated their moods on a fixed scale for a period of six hours. The findings suggested something in the perspiration brightened their moods and helped them feel less tense. Blood analyzes also showed a rise in levels of the reproductive luteinizing hormone that typically surge before ovulation.

Wysocki, a study co-author, said the research could point to a "chemical communication" subtext between the sexes that enables men and women to coordinate their reproductive efforts subliminally.

There was no sign women were sexually aroused by male perspiration. In fact, the women never suspected they had men's sweat under their noses and believed they were helping to test alcohol, perfume or lemon floor wax.

"The study was done in quite a sterile environment. It's not strange that they were not thinking sexual thoughts," said Wysocki. "In a more sensual setting, exposure to these odors might facilitate the emergence of sexual mood or feelings."

Funded by the National Institutes of Health, researchers said the study could lead to new fertility therapies and treatments for premenstrual syndrome if the active agent in male perspiration could be isolated.

Pheromones in male perspiration reduce women's tension, alter hormone response

PHILADELPHIA -- Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia have found that exposure to male perspiration has marked psychological and physiological effects on women: It can brighten women's moods, reducing tension and increasing relaxation, and also has a direct effect on the release of luteinizing hormone, which affects the length and timing of the menstrual cycle.

The results will be published in June in the journal Biology of Reproduction and currently appear on the journal's Web site.

"It has long been recognized that female pheromones can affect the menstrual cycles of other women," said George Preti, a member of the Monell Center and adjunct professor of dermatology in Penn's School of Medicine. "These findings are the first to document mood and neuroendocrine effects of male pheromones on females."

In a study led by Preti and colleague Charles J. Wysocki, extracts from the underarms of male volunteers were applied to the upper lip of 18 women ages 25 to 45. During the six hours of exposure to the compound, the women were asked to rate their mood using a fixed scale.

"Much to our surprise, the women reported feeling less tense and more relaxed during exposure to the male extract," said Wysocki, a member of the Monell Center and adjunct professor of animal biology in Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine. "This suggests that there may be much more going on in social settings like singles bars than meets the eye."

After the women's exposure to the underarm extract, further testing revealed a shift in blood levels of luteinizing hormone. Levels of this reproductive hormone, produced in pulses by the pituitary gland, typically surge right before ovulation but also experience hundreds of smaller peaks throughout the menstrual cycle.

Preti and Wysocki found that application of male underarm secretions hastened onset of these smaller pulses. Duration to the next pulse of luteinizing hormone was shortened by an average 20 percent, from 59 to 47 minutes.

Preti and Wysocki are now looking at the several dozen individual compounds that make up male perspiration to determine which may be responsible for the effects they observed. They also plan to study whether female pheromones can affect men's moods or physiological functions.

"This may open the door to pharmacological approaches to manage onset of ovulation or the effects of premenstrual syndrome or even natural products to aid relaxation," Wysocki said. "By determining how pheromones impact mood and endocrine response, we might be able to build a better male odor: molecules that more effectively manipulate the effects we observed."

The underarm extracts used in the study came from men who bathed with fragrance-free soap and refrained from deodorant use for four weeks. The extracts were blended to avoid reactions to individual men's odors. None of the women involved in the study discerned that male sweat had been applied right under their noses; some believed they were involved in a study of alcohol, perfume or even lemon floor wax.

Half the women received three applications of the male secretions during a six-hour period, followed three controlled exposures to ethanol, used as a control substance, over a six-hour period. For the other half, the regimen was reversed. The women did not report feeling any more or less energetic, sensuous, tired, calm, sexy, anxious, fatigued or active after exposure to male perspiration.

Preti and Wysocki are joined in the Biology of Reproduction paper by co-authors Kurt T. Barnhart and Steven J. Sondheimer of Penn's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and James J. Leyden of Penn's Department of Dermatology. Their work is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

Source: http://www.scienceblog.com/community/article1235.html

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Wed, Feb 12, 2003

Most Do Most People Kiss "Right" in Public Places

Kissing couples turn their heads more often to the right than to the left when zeroing in on their embrace, a researcher said.

By Alison McCook

NEW YORK (Reuter Health) - Kissing couples turn their heads more often to the right than to the left when zeroing in on their embrace, a researcher said Wednesday.

After observing 124 couples kiss in airports, train stations, beaches and parks across the world, Dr. Onur Gunturkun found that 65% tilted their heads to the right while locking lips.

This preference for one side over the other during kisses could be linked to what side of the body people use to perform other activities, Gunturkun told Reuter Health.

For instance, previous research has shown that people more often prefer to use their right foot when kicking, their right eye when peeping through a keyhole and their right ear when listening to a far-off conversation.

In fact, Gunturkun said that people prefer their right foot, eye and ear in the same proportion--roughly two to one--as they did the side of the face while kissing, indicating that preferences in these behavior patterns are linked.

Moreover, during the first weeks of life, babies turn their heads to the right more often than to the left, suggesting that all other asymmetries in body movement stem from this early preference, he added.

The researcher, from Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Germany, reported his findings in the February 13th Nature.

During the study, Gunturkun observed couples in their teens to their seventies in public places in the United States, Germany and Turkey. To be included in his analysis, all couples had to kiss on the lips, be facing each other and show an obvious tilt in their heads during the embrace.

In an interview, Gunturkun explained that researchers have demonstrated that babies tend to turn their heads more often to the right than the left during their final days in the womb, and also in the first months after being born.

People also tend to be right-handed more often than left-handed, he noted, but prefer the right hand over the left at a ratio of eight to one--very different from the ratio seen in the other right-left preferences. Plus, given that head-turning preferences occur so soon in an infant's life, this earliest preference likely influences all others, he added.

"Since head-turning comes first in development, it's more likely that a head-turning bias produces other asymmetries," Gunturkun said.

This early tendency to turn the head to the right may result from the fact that the upper spinal cord tends to shift to the right when the fetus begins to develop a heart and a coiling in the intestine, the researcher noted.

"This might be the fundament of the later seen preference to turn to the right," Gunturkun suggested.

SOURCE: Nature 2003;421:711.

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Hybrid Diesel Gets 70 mpg and Only Costs $1,000 More

Sep 26th 2002
From The Economist print edition

A small electric motor can boost the performance of a diesel

BETWEEN the fuel cells that will power the cars of the future and today's petrol and diesel engines lie hybrid internal-combustion/electric vehicles. No one now believes that battery-driven electric cars will take over: the batteries are too heavy and run down too quickly. But cars that get their electricity from an internal-combustion engine acting as a generator are a reality. Two such hybrid vehicles, the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight, are already selling in America and Japan. However, they cost about $3,500 more than normal models, and weigh more than conventionally powered cars.

The trouble is that having two propulsion systems doubles the engine weight. In addition, there is a need for extra equipment to control the way that the two systems interact, and such control electronics are notoriously heavy. Ricardo, an engine consultancy based in southern England, has just unveiled a hybrid car which addresses these problems. Working with Valeo, a leading French car-parts maker, it has started with a conventional two-litre diesel-powered Opel Astra and converted it to hybrid propulsion.

The Astra produced 100 horsepower, but Ricardo was able to get the same output by fitting a lighter 1.2 litre turbo-diesel, that had state-of-the-art technology such as “common-rail” fuel injection, variable valve geometry and a turbo-charger. That improved efficiency. But there was one disadvantage—a lack of torque (pulling power) at low engine revs. Which is where the electric drive comes in. In an arrangement that it calls “mild hybridisation”, Ricardo has rigged up an electric motor that delivers extra power (6kW at 42 volts) if the engine is turning over at less than 2,000 revolutions per minute. This allows the car to accelerate as rapidly as the original, but its fuel consumption is 20% less.

The Ricardo/Valeo prototype uses a number of tricks to reduce weight. The principal one is that the diesel engine's flywheel is wrapped with wiring, allowing it to double up as the core of the electric motor. In addition, the choice of a 42-volt output means that all the car's requirements for ancillary power—for the cooling fan, air conditioning, lights and so on—can be provided by this generator. There is therefore no need for the diesel to have its own alternator-driven electrical system, a significant weight saving.

Fuel consumption is a thrifty four litres per 100km (70 miles per gallon) and emissions of carbon dioxide (CO{-2}) are claimed to be between 30% and 35% lower than the pure diesel version—a useful consideration given that European car producers are committed to a 25% reduction in CO{-2} emissions across their car fleets by 2004.

Indeed, Europe is seen as the main market for the Ricardo/Valeo concept. The demonstration vehicle has been shown to the bosses of all the leading car companies. For them, the principal attraction of such a system is that the mild hybrid should cost only about $1,000 more to make than a conventional vehicle.

The motor industry more or less agrees that hybrids are the next big thing. The only question is how to get the best out of them without adding too much weight or complexity. The Ricardo/Valeo idea of a miniaturised diesel engine is an ingenious step forward. Even in America, where nobody cares much about CO{-2} emissions, hybrids are viewed as a way of reducing the huge thirst of big sport utility vehicles. The idea being considered by manufacturers there is to have an electric motor driving two wheels and a petrol engine driving the other two. If the systems can be made to work in harmony, there could be great savings just down the road.

Source: http://www.economist.com/science/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=1352884

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October 16, 2002

Campus Hypocrisy

Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The Washington Post recently reported that students and faculty at a growing number of universities are pressuring their schools "into selling their holdings in companies that do business with Israel, prompting a counter-campaign among Jewish groups that consider the effort part of a creeping tide of anti-Semitism on campus." Here's what I would say to both sides on this issue:

Memo to professors and students leading the divestiture campaign: Your campaign for divestiture from Israel is deeply dishonest and hypocritical, and any university that goes along with it does not deserve the title of institution of higher learning.

You are dishonest because to single out Israel as the only party to blame for the current impasse is to perpetrate a lie. Historians can debate whether the Camp David and Clinton peace proposals for a Palestinian state were for 85, 90, or 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza. But what is not debatable is what the proper Palestinian response should have been. It should have been to tell Israel and America that their peace proposals were the first fair offer they had ever put forth, and although they still fell short of what Palestinians feel is a just two-state solution, Palestinians were now prepared to work with Israel and America to achieve that end. The proper response was not a Palestinian intifada and 100 suicide bombers, which are what brought Ariel Sharon to power.

It is shameful that at a time when some Palestinians are writing that they made a historic mistake in not nurturing the Clinton peace offer, pro-Palestinian professors and students in America and Europe pretend that the only reason the occupation persists is because of Israeli obstinacy. This approach will never gain the Palestinians a state, and those who dabble in it are simply prolonging Palestinian misery.

You are also hypocrites. How is it that Egypt imprisons the leading democracy advocate in the Arab world, after a phony trial, and not a single student group in America calls for divestiture from Egypt? (I'm not calling for it, but the silence is telling.) How is it that Syria occupies Lebanon for 25 years, chokes the life out of its democracy, and not a single student group calls for divestiture from Syria? How is it that Saudi Arabia denies its women the most basic human rights, and bans any other religion from being practiced publicly on its soil, and not a single student group calls for divestiture from Saudi Arabia?

Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction — out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East — is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.

Memo to Israel's supporters: Just because there are anti-Semites who blame Israel for everything that is wrong does not mean that whatever Israel does is right, or in its self-interest, or just. The settlement policy Israel has been pursuing is going to lead to the demise of the Jewish state. No, settlements are not the reason for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but to think they do not exacerbate it, and are not locking Israel into a permanent occupation, is also dishonest.

If the settlers get their way, Israel will de facto or de jure annex the West Bank and Gaza. And if current Palestinian birth rates continue, by around the year 2010 there will be more Palestinians than Jews living in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza combined. When that happens, the demand of the college anti-Israel movements will change.

They won't bother anymore with divestiture. They will simply demand: "One Man, One Vote. Since Israel has de facto annexed the territories, and there is now just one political entity between Jordan and the Mediterranean, we want majority rule." If you think it is hard to defend Israel on campus today, imagine doing it in 2010, when the colonial settlers have so locked Israel into the territories it can rule them only by apartheid-like policies.

This is not a call for unilateral Israeli withdrawal. This is a call for everyone who wants Israel to remain a Jewish state — and not become a binational state — to urge President Bush to renew the U.S. push for a two-state solution. If you think the Bush team is doing Israel a favor with its diplomacy of benign neglect, if you think the only campaign Jews need to be involved in today is with hypocrites on U.S. college campuses — and not with extremists in their own camp — you too are telling yourselves a very big and dangerous lie.

Source: Campus Hypocrisy

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October 8, 2002

Why Is Jealousy Possibly Not Genetic or Gender Based?

Two new research papers question the evidence that jealousy evolved differently in men and in women. Dr. David DeSteno, a psychologist at Northeastern University, assert that the sex difference revealed in many studies of jealousy by evolutionary psychologists is spurious, an artifact of the particular method used in those studies.

By ERICA GOODE

Jealousy, according to evolutionary psychologists, evolved a million or so years ago on the African plain, where life was no picnic.

Out there on the savanna, a man had to constantly guard against cuckoldry, lest he squander his resources, unwittingly feeding that hard-earned leg of mastodon to some other guy's progeny.

Women had other things to worry about, like keeping the meat coming in. Sure, it bothered them if their men indulged in a little hanky-panky by the watering hole. But the real threat was if a man became emotionally attached to another woman: who would bring home the mastodon then?

At least, that's the theory advanced by evolutionary psychologists, who in the last decade have ushered Darwinian theory into new and provocative areas, including the relationship between the sexes. As a result of such differing survival pressures long ago, they maintain, the brains of modern men and women are programmed to respond differently to the infidelity of a romantic partner. Men become more jealous over sexual infidelity, a strategy that worked pretty well in the Stone Age, promoting reproductive success. Women are more distressed by emotional betrayal, which could leave them without resources.

It is an appealing argument in a society where men are considered to be from Mars and women from Venus, and one that has gained substantial purchase among evolutionary scientists and in popular literature. It is also supported by a variety of studies finding evidence for such a sex difference, many of them carried out by Dr. David M. Buss, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas, and his colleagues.

"Men and women may be equally jealous, but the events that trigger jealousy differ," Dr. Buss wrote in "The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Hate."

Other scholars have not been so convinced. They have argued that it is more likely that differences between men and women that evolutionary psychologists attribute to natural selection — like the tendency of men to be polygamous and women, monogamous — are the product of cultures, not evolution. Jealousy is probably no exception.

So the nature-nurture debate has continued over the years.

But two new research papers take a different tack. They do not dispute that evolution plays a role in shaping human behavior. But they question the evidence assembled by Dr. Buss and others for the notion that jealousy evolved differently in men and in women.

In one paper, to appear in the November issue of The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers led by Dr. David DeSteno, a psychologist at Northeastern University, assert that the sex difference revealed in many studies of jealousy by evolutionary psychologists is spurious, an artifact of the particular method used in those studies.

They suggest that, rather than representing a hard-wired psychological mechanism for promoting reproduction, jealousy could have evolved in each sex for some more general purpose — for example, protecting social bonds in a very social species.

"I'm very sympathetic to the evolutionary view," Dr. DeSteno said. "I think it's ridiculous to assume that the human mind was not subject to the evolutionary chisel. But I think there can be numerous evolutionary arguments for how specific social behaviors develop."

Dr. DeSteno and his colleagues — Monica Y. Bartlett and Julia Braverman of Northeastern and Dr. Peter Salovey of Yale — say the problem with many of the studies conducted by Dr. Buss and other investigators is that they all use the same technique: the subjects are asked to call to mind a serious committed relationship that they had, that they now have or that they would like to have.

They are then presented with two forms of infidelity — one sexual, one emotional — and asked which they would find most distressing. (Dr. Buss calls this method "Sophie's Choice," referring to the book and movie in which the title character must choose which of her children will be killed. Other psychologists call it "forced choice.")

Using this method, virtually every study has found a difference between the sexes, with women being more likely to pick emotional infidelity as the most upsetting choice.

But Dr. DeSteno and his colleagues conducted their own studies, adding other ways of measuring jealousy, for instance, asking the 111 subjects, undergraduates at Northeastern, to rate on a seven-point scale how upset they would be about each form of infidelity in turn, rather than having them choose between the two forms presented together.

When such other methods were used, the researchers found, the gap between men and women disappeared; both sexes said they were more disturbed by sexual infidelity.

They then investigated further, to determine the reason for the discrepancy between the techniques.

"It's very strange from an evolutionary perspective why the sex difference would only occur" in the forced-choice situation and not in others, Dr. DeSteno said.

One possibility, the researchers reasoned, was that instead of eliciting an automatic, preprogrammed response to infidelity — the kind one would expect from a mechanism designed by evolution — the forced-choice method sent the subjects into a more complex intellectual decision-making process, in which they weighed the trade-offs between the two unpleasant alternatives.

To test this hypothesis, the researchers conducted another study, in which half the subjects filled out a questionnaire asking, among other things, whether they would be more upset if a romantic partner "had passionate sex with someone else" or "formed a deep emotional bond to someone else." The other subjects were given the same task, but they were asked to simultaneously remember a string of numbers while answering the questions — a twist the researchers hoped would eliminate the possibility of complicated reasoning, forcing an automatic response.

The researchers found that among the subjects who completed the questionnaire free from distraction, the usual sex difference appeared, with more women choosing emotional infidelity. But among the subjects who had to remember the numbers, there was no sex difference; women, as well as men, identified sexual infidelity as the most upsetting.

"The fact that women's responses on the forced-choice measure mirrored those of men argues forcefully against the existence of innate sex differences," the researchers wrote.

Dr. Buss, however, said he failed to find the new research convincing. Dr. DeSteno and his colleagues, Dr. Buss said, had distorted the claims of evolutionary psychology.

"These authors take a kind of rigid, robotic, stereotypic and false depiction of the evolutionary hypothesis and then show that those robotic depictions are wrong," Dr. Buss said. "I could develop any number of contexts in which you could make the sex differences in jealousy disappear; the fact that you could create a laboratory experiment in which you do so is, in my view, a meaningless and trivial demonstration."

Besides, he added, a smaller study, published this year, found sex differences even when methods other than forced-choice were used to determine preferences. Dr. Todd Shackelford, an associate professor of psychology at Florida Atlantic University and a former student of Dr. Buss, also had objections.

"I guess, to state it plainly, I think the paper is in large part ludicrous," he said. "It's clear to me that they have an agenda they're pushing."

Yet in an extensive critique, to be published next year in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review, Dr. Christine R. Harris, a psychologist and research scientist at the University of California at San Diego, says Dr. DeSteno and his colleagues have identified only one of many serious flaws in the case for evolved sex differences in jealousy.

"The evidence supporting this theory is far less conclusive than is often maintained," Dr. Harris said.

For example, she pointed out that the forced-choice studies of jealousy have found differences between American and European men as large as those between American men and women. And in some Asian cultures, the disparity is even larger: only 25 percent of Chinese men, for example, chose sexual infidelity as more distressing in one study; 75 percent picked emotional infidelity.

Such findings, Dr. Harris wrote, seem "quite problematic" to a theory that posits an evolutionarily evolved mechanism operative in most, if not all, humans, while the results are compatible with the idea that culture influences the jealous responses of men and women.

Another difficulty, she continued, is that some studies examining real instances of unfaithfulness — as opposed to the imagined infidelity of college students and other laboratory subjects — found very different patterns of results.

In one study, involving adults living in sexually open marriages, for example, more women than men reported being bothered by the thought of their mate's engaging in sexual intercourse with another person, Dr. Harris said. Another study found that both men and women dwelled more on the sexual side of a mate's infidelity than the emotional aspects.

Dr. Harris also takes on the finding, reported in the 1980's by evolutionary psychologists like Dr. Martin Daly and Dr. Margo Wilson at McMasters University in Ontario, that men are far more likely than women to kill their spouses out of sexual jealousy. Men, Dr. Harris pointed out, are more likely to be the perpetrators in all forms of violent crime. When the proportion of homicides involving jealousy is considered, rather than the absolute number of such acts, women are just as likely to kill out of jealousy as men are.

Perhaps predictably, such arguments are unlikely to put an end to the continuing debate over evolution's role in shaping jealous passion.

Dr. Shackelford waved away Dr. Harris's critique and the criticisms made by other researchers as misguided forays intended "to cater to the muddled masses of mainstream psychology."

Dr. Buss, for his part, offered the verbal equivalent of a shrug.

"People have always been resistant to evolution," he said. "We're in the midst of a scientific revolution in the field of psychology."

"It took 400 years for the Catholic church to forgive Galileo," he added. "Will it take longer for this? I don't know, but it's going to happen."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/08/health/psychology/

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September 10, 2002

What are good friends? Bad friends? Some Friends, Indeed, Do More Harm Than Good

By MARY DUENWALD, NY Times

Friends are supposed to be good for you. In recent years, scientific research has suggested that people who have strong friendships experience less stress, they recover more quickly from heart attacks and they are likely to live longer than the friendless. They are even less susceptible to the common cold, studies show.

But not all friends have such a salutary effect. Some lie, insult and betray. Some are overly needy. Some give too much advice. Psychologists and sociologists are now calling attention to the negative health effects of bad friends.

"Friendship is often very painful," said Dr. Harriet Lerner, a psychologist and the author of "The Dance of Connection." "In a close, enduring friendship, jealousy, envy, anger and the entire range of difficult emotions will rear their heads. One has to decide whether the best thing is to consider it a phase in a long friendship or say this is bad for my health and I'm disbanding it."

Another book, "When Friendship Hurts," by Dr. Jan Yager, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut at Stamford, advises deliberately leaving bad friends by the wayside. "There's this myth that friendships should last a lifetime," Dr. Yager said. "But sometimes it's better that they end."

That social scientists would wait until now to spotlight the dangers of bad friends is understandable, considering that they have only recently paid close attention to friendship at all. Marriage and family relationships — between siblings or parents and children — have been seen as more important.

Of course, troubled friendships are far less likely to lead to depression or suicide than troubled marriages are. And children are seldom seriously affected when friendships go bad.

As a popular author of relationship advice books, Dr. Lerner said, "Never once have I had anyone write and say my best friend hits me."

Dr. Beverley Fehr, a professor of psychology at the University of Winnipeg, noted that sociological changes, like a 50 percent divorce rate, have added weight to the role of friends in emotional and physical health.

"Now that a marital relationship can't be counted on for stability the way it was in the past, and because people are less likely to be living with or near extended family members, people are shifting their focus to friendships as a way of building community and finding intimacy," said Dr. Fehr, the author of "Friendship Processes."

Until the past couple of years, the research on friendship focused on its health benefits. "Now we're starting to look at it as a more full relationship," said Dr. Suzanna Rose, a professor of psychology at Florida International University in Miami. "Like marriage, friendship also has negative characteristics."

The research is in its infancy. Psychologists have not yet measured the ill effects of bad friendship, Dr. Fehr said. So far they have only, through surveys and interviews, figured out that it is a significant problem. The early research, Dr. Fehr added, is showing that betrayal by a friend can be more devastating than experts had thought.

How can a friend be bad? Most obviously, Dr. Rose said, by drawing a person into criminal or otherwise ill-advised pursuit. "When you think of people who were friends at Enron," she added, "you can see how friendship can support antisocial behavior."

Betrayal also makes for a bad friendship. "When friends split up," said Dr. Keith E. Davis, a professor of psychology at the University of South Carolina, "it is often in cases where one has shared personal information or secrets that the other one wanted to be kept confidential."

Another form of betrayal, Dr. Yager said, is when a friend suddenly turns cold, without ever explaining why. "It's more than just pulling away," she said. "The silent treatment is actually malicious."

At least as devastating is an affair with the friend's romantic partner, as recently happened to one of Dr. Lerner's patients. "I would not encourage her to hang in there and work this one out," Dr. Lerner said.

A third type of bad friendship involves someone who insults the other person, Dr. Yager said. One of the 180 people who responded to Dr. Yager's most recent survey on friendship described how, when she was 11, her best friend called her "a derogatory name." The woman, now 32, was so devastated that she feels she has been unable to be fully open with people ever since, Dr. Yager said.

Emotional abuse may be less noticeable than verbal abuse, but it is "more insidious," Dr. Yager said. "Some people constantly set up their friends," she explained. "They'll have a party, not invite the friend, but make sure he or she finds out."

Risk takers, betrayers and abusers are the most extreme kinds of bad friends, Dr. Yager said, but they are not the only ones. She identifies 21 different varieties. Occupying the second tier of badness are the liar, the person who is overly dependent, the friend who never listens, the person who meddles too much in a friend's life, the competitor and the loner, who prefers not to spend time with friends.

Most common is the promise breaker. "This includes everyone from the person who says let's have a cup of coffee but something always comes up at the last minute to someone who promises to be there for you when you need them, but then isn't," Dr. Yager said.

Some friendships go bad, as some romantic relationships do, when one of the people gradually or suddenly finds reasons to dislike the other one.

"With couples, it can take 18 to 24 months for someone to discover there's something important they don't like about the other person," said Dr. Rose of Florida International. "One might find, for example, that in subtle ways the other person is a racist. In friendships, which are less intense, it may take even more time for one person to meet the other's dislike criteria."

Whether a friendship is worth saving, Dr. Lerner said, "depends on how large the injury is."

"Sometimes the mature thing is to lighten up and let something go," she added. "It's also an act of maturity sometimes to accept another person's limitations."

Acceptance should come easier among friends than among spouses, Dr. Lerner said, because people have more than one friend and do not need a full range of emotional support from each one.

But if the friendship has deteriorated to the point where one friend truly dislikes the other one or finds that the friendship is causing undue stress, the healthy response is to pull away, Dr. Yager said, to stop sharing the personal or intimate details of life, and start being too busy to get together, ever.

"It takes two people to start and maintain a friendship, but only one to end it," Dr. Yager said.

Friendship, because it is voluntary and unregulated, is far easier to dissolve than marriage. But it is also comparatively fragile, experts say. Ideally, the loss of a bad friendship should leave a person with more time and appreciation for good ones, Dr. Lerner said.

"It is wise to pay attention to your friendships and have them in order while you're healthy and your life and work are going well," she said. "Because when a crisis hits, when someone you love dies, or you lose your job and your health insurance, when the universe gives you a crash course in vulnerability, you will discover how crucial and life-preserving good friendship is."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/10/health/psychology/

Index

Want to Know If Your Marriage Will Succeed (or fail)! Marriage: Addition or division?

October 16, 2002

Campus Hypocrisy

October 8, 2002

September 10, 2002

Want to Know If Your Marriage Will Succeed (or fail)!
Marriage: Addition or division?