Photo by Jaren Wilkey

A new study connects young adults’ use of video games to poorer relationships with friends and family – and the student co-author expresses disappointment at his own findings. Brigham Young University undergrad Alex Jensen and his faculty mentor, Laura Walker, publish their results Jan. 23 in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

The research is based on information collected from 813 college students around the country. As the amount of time playing video games went up, the quality of relationships with peers and parents went down. [continue reading…]

 

Bling, foreclosures, rising credit card debt, bank and auto bailouts, upside down mortgages and perhaps a mid-life crisis new Corvette, all symptoms of compulsive overspending.

University of Michigan researcher Daniel Kruger looks to evolution and mating for an explanation. He theorizes that men overspend to attract mates. It all boils down, as it has for hundreds of thousands of years, to making babies.

Hardwired to overspend 

Professor Daniel Kruger looks to evolution to explain why we overspend                                                       

A dose of the hormone Oxytocin reduces the stress hormone Cortisol in arguing couples. In addition, Oxytocin strengthens positive behaviour, as researchers at the University of Zurich have discovered. The study by the psychologist Beate Ditzen has appeared in the specialist magazine “Biological Psychiatry”.
Image: © Getty Images [continue reading…]