A new Brigham Young University study adds our social relationships to the “short list” of factors that predict a person’s odds of living or dying.
In the journal PLoS Medicine, BYU professors Julianne Holt-Lunstad and Timothy Smith report that social connections – friends, family, neighbors or colleagues – improve our odds of survival by 50 percent. Here is how low social interaction compares to more well-known risk factors:
Equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day
Equivalent to being an alcoholic
More harmful than not exercising
Twice as harmful as obesity
“The idea that a lack of social relationships is a risk factor for death is still not widely recognized by health organizations and the public,” write the PLoS Medicine editors in a summary of the BYU study and why it was done. [continue reading…]
Heterosexual women bear the brunt of narcissistic heterosexual men’s hostility, while heterosexual men, gay men and lesbian women provoke a softer reaction, according to psychologist Dr. Scott Keiller from Kent State University at Tuscarawas in the US. This is likely to be due to women’s unparalleled potential for gratifying, or frustrating, men’s narcissism. They are crucial players and even gatekeepers in men’s quests for sexual pleasure, patriarchal power and status. Dr. Keiller’s findings are published online in Springer’s journal Sex Roles. [continue reading…]
Breaking up really is hard to do, and a recent study conducted at Stony Brook University found evidence that it may be partly due to the areas of the brain that are active during this difficult time.
The team of researchers, which included Arthur Aron, Ph.D., professor of social and health psychology in the Department of Psychology at Stony Brook University, and former graduate students Greg Strong and Debra Mashek looked at subjects who had a recent break-up and found that the pain and anguish they were experiencing may be linked to activation of parts of the brain associated with motivation, reward and addiction cravings. The study was published in the July issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology. [continue reading…]
People who feel insecure about their attachments to others might be at higher risk for cardiovascular problems than those who feel secure in their relationships, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association.
“This is the first study to examine adult attachment and a range of specific health conditions,” said lead author Lachlan A. McWilliams, PhD, of Acadia University. He and a colleague examined data on 5,645 adults age 18 to 60 from the National Cormorbidity Survey Replication and found that people who felt insecure in relationships or avoided getting close to others might be at a higher risk of developing several chronic diseases. [continue reading…]
