The storyline is common, and not just in Hollywood  romance films. A new study found that men tend to overestimate how attractive they are to women, while women [...]]]> It’s a classic tale of unrequited love: Boy meets Girl. Boy likes Girl. Girl is not really that into Boy. Totally failing to take the hint, Boy pursues Girl anyway.

The storyline is common, and not just in Hollywood  romance films. A new study found that men tend to overestimate how attractive they are to women, while women most often underestimate how much men want them.

While the outcome of these scenarios can go either way, researchers suspect that  there may be deeply rooted reasons why signals get crossed when men and women  check each other out. The findings may offer insight for women who are sick of  unwanted advances and advice for men who are repeatedly confused by women’s  reactions to their solicitations.

“Throughout history, men have had to make this decision,” said Carin Perilloux,  a psychologist at Williams  College in Williamstown, Mass. “Is this individual sexually interested in me or not?”

If our male ancestors erred on the side of going for it, she and colleagues have hypothesized, they would’ve ended up with more chances to spread their genes,  even if it meant that they had to deal with some extra rejections along the way. And that repeated reinforcement of overconfident behavior might have been enough to shape the way men tend to act today.

“For men, missing out on a mating opportunity is a huge cost,” Perilloux said.  “Women could have sex with 1,000 men in a year and still have only one or maybe two offspring. Mating opportunities aren’t as directly related to reproductive success for women.”

Plenty of previous studies have confirmed the stereotype: Men tend to have an overinflated sense of how sexually appealing they are to women. It’s not that  they think every woman they meet wants to go to bed with them, Perilloux said. Rather, men are more likely to walk away form an interaction with a woman thinking that she’s into him, while the woman thinks, “Well, that was a nice friendly conversation.”

To better understand how that kind of bias plays out and why, Perilloux and  colleagues put about 200 college students into a speed-dating sort of situation.  Told that they were participating in a study about first impressions, each  student interacted with five students of the opposite sex. After three minutes of innocuous conversation, participants rated their partners  on all sorts of measures, including how interesting they seemed and how interested they seemed to be on a scale from one to seven.

As expected, men tended to think that women were a full point more interested in them than women actually were, the researchers report in paper to be published  in Psychological Science. Women, on the other hand, guessed that men were a full  point less interested than they actually were. Some men were more off in their misperceptions than others, and the study turned up some clues that could explain why. Compared to men who said they generally valued long-term relationships, for example, men who said they were on the prowl for casual sex were more likely to assume that women wanted them much more than was true.

There was also a relatively big gap between perception and reality in men who women ranked low on a scale of attractiveness. Hotter guys, on the other hand,  had a more realistic sense of how women saw them — possibly because they didn’t  need to be overconfident to score a hook-up. Men were most likely to misread signals from the most attractive women, and for  those women, they illustrated the biggest difference between perception and  reality. One possible explanation is that the prettiest women usually get the most attention from men, allowing them to be choosier, said Peter Todd, a  cognitive psychologist at Indiana University in Bloomington.

“The research in this area is important because it provides insight into some of  the sources of potentially harmful misunderstandings regarding sexual intent  between men and women,” Todd said. “This paper in particular gives more support  for the idea that men over-perceive the sexual interest of women, and it indicates which men paired with which women are most likely to show this over-perception.”

Many women like the attention they get from men, even if they don’t feel the  same way in return. But others get tired of having to constantly fend off men who think a benign interaction carries sexual overtones. And for those women, Perilloux said, the new research suggests that it might be worth toning down flirtatious tendencies in certain situations, including simple  gestures like smiling, making eye contact and touching men on the arm.

To avoid unexpected rejections, overconfident men could work on exercising  caution and waiting for more direct signs from women before making a move.

Fox News

Researchers looked into the psychology [...]]]> People who take vitamin supplements may be more likely to take risks with their health, according to a surprising new study from Taiwan. Its authors conclude that taking vitamins may give an “illusory sense of invulnerability” that leads the pill-poppers to exercise less and to eat more than they should.

Researchers looked into the psychology of vitamin supplementation after noticing an “asymmetrical” relationship between public health and the use of vitamins.

“After reviewing the literature of the prevalence of dietary supplement use, it seemed to show that use of dietary supplements is increasing, but it does not appear to be correlated with improved public health,” study author Wen-Bin Chiou of Taiwan’s Sun Yat-Sen University said in a written statement.

So a group of researchers led by Chiou set up a pair of experiments in which identical placebos were given to a group of volunteers, some of whom were told that they had been given vitamin supplements and others told they had been given
placebos.

In the first experiment, the volunteers who believed they had taken vitamins expressed less interest in exercise and a greater desire to engage in so-called “hedonic” activities – for example, digging in to a buffet than having an organic meal. In the second experiment, the volunteers who thought they had been given vitamins walked less to benefit their health than those who thought they were taking a placebo.

As Chiou explained the findings in in the statement, “People who rely on dietary supplement use for health protection may pay a hidden price, the curse of licensed self-indulgence.”

One thing’s for sure, vitamins and other dietary supplements are popular. Between 2003 and 2006, approximately 40 percent of men and women in the U.S. reported taking a multivitamin supplement. During the same time period, more than half of all adults reported using some form of dietary supplement.

The finding came as no surprise to researchers on this side of the Pacific. “We live in a society that is very oriented towards taking medication,” Dr. Andrew Leuchter, director of the UCLA’s Laboratory of Brain, Behavior, and Pharmacology, told msnbc.com. “People feel like they can take a pill and it will almost immunize them from any unhealthy lifestyle choices.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.

David W. Freeman, CBS News

According to a study that is based on the wise [...]]]> As the old saying goes, “It is better to give than to receive.” Most people would shrug off this proverb and keep to themselves thinking that it would be better, but there is scientific proof that people like it better when they give than receive.

According to a study that is based on the wise saying, University of California, Los Angeles, scientists revealed that giving support to people’s loved ones’ not only benefits the recipient, but also the giver.

Naomi Eisenberger, UCLA assistant professor of psychology and the senior author of the study, along with Tristen Inagaki, studied 20 young couples in good relationships. While the women underwent brain scans during the experiment, their boyfriends received electric shocks.

At times, the women could show their support to their partners getting electrocuted by holding their arm or by holding a squeeze-ball. Through this experiment, life scientists discovered that the women who gave support to their boyfriends had increased activity in the reward-related regions of the brain. In addition, the more reward-related brain activity that the women had, the more they felt connected to their boyfriend while providing support.

Through this experiment, life scientists discovered that the women who gave support to their boyfriends had increased activity in the reward-related regions of the brain. In addition, the more reward-related brain activity that the women had, the more they felt connected to their boyfriend while providing support.

These findings also suggest that support-giving may have stress-reducing effects for the person who provides the support. Inagaki also pointed out that giving support to loved ones increases their likelihood of survival. Another study back in March 2008 conducted by Michael Norton, professor at Harvard Business School, also supported the proverb, making it clear that giving is better than receiving.

In Norton’s study, 632 Americans were questioned as to how much they earned and how they spent their hard-earned cash, as well as rating their own happiness on how they spent it, James Randerson of The Guardian reported. The researchers found that regardless of the income level of those who were questioned, those who spent their money on others reported greater happiness than those who spent more on themselves.

In another study done in October 2006, Jordan Grafman, chief of the Cognitive Neuroscience Section the National Institute of Neurological Disorder and Stroke, also proved that there is joy in giving, Science Central reported. Asking 19 healthy volunteers to play a computer game that gave out cash rewards, it also asks the player if they want the money given to them to be donated to charities. With the participants getting their brain scanned as they played, parts of their brain lit up when they received cash rewards. But the researchers noticed that when the players donated their winnings to charities, parts of their brain related to rewards showed more activity than that when they just got money.

Lord Jorrel Polintan, International Business Times

Following on from their 2007 UNICEF report that compared child wellbeing in developed nations, the results of which ranked child wellbeing in the UK as lowest, [...]]]> New research by Ipsos MORI for UNICEF UK has shown that children in the UK feel trapped in a ‘materialistic culture’ and don’t spend enough time with their families.

Following on from their 2007 UNICEF report that compared child wellbeing in developed nations, the results of which ranked child wellbeing in the UK as lowest, UNICEF’s latest report investigated the factors that affect child wellbeing. It analysed 250 children’s experiences and compared families in Britain and families in Sweden and Spain, where child wellbeing was ranked more highly in 2007. It found that children in all three countries believed their happiness was greatly influenced by the amount of time they spent with their families and took part in activities, particularly outdoors, rather than whether they owned certain clothes or gadgets.

Yet British parents told researchers that they felt under pressure from society to purchase material goods for their families. Parents in low-income homes prevalently expressed such concerns, emphasising the relationship between British consumer culture, perceptions of status and social inequality. In addition, although parents in the UK said that they were committed to their children, they felt as if they lost out on time spent with their family because of work pressures, then tried to make up for this by purchasing gadgets and clothes for their children. In contrast, Spanish and Swedish parents said that they felt under less pressure to buy material goods, placed a greater priority on protecting time spent with their families, and provided greater access to activities outside of the home for their children.

‘Right now politicians are grappling with the aftermath of the riots and what they say about our society, culture and families,’ said UNICEF UK Executive Director, David Bull. ‘The research findings provide important insights, and it is vital that those in power listen to what children and their families are saying about life in the UK.’

To improve child wellbeing in the UK, UNICEF is recommending that the Government encourages businesses to provide a living wage so that parents don’t have to take on several jobs to support their living costs and can spend more time with their families. UNICEF also advises that the Government asks local authorities to assess the effects of public spending cuts, protects funding for facilities and leisure activities for children, and supports a ban on advertisements promoting material goods during television programmes aimed at under-12s.

The UNICEF report in full can be read at http://www.unicef.org.uk/documents/publications/ipsos_unicef_childwellbeingreport.pdf

Therapy Today, UNICEF Article