--Original published at Kaylyn's PSY105 Blog

The immense amount of sugar consumed in both the United Kingdom and United States has not only affected people’s physical health, but also their mental health. In the United Kingdom people are consuming two times the recommended amount of sugar. Another issue on the rise is depression, which may become the leading cause of disability by 2030 (Knüppel 1).  There was a study done in London which was aimed at seeing if there is a connection between high sugar intake and depression. The study was published in Scientific Reports, and consisted of non-industrial civil servants from the “Whitehall II Study”. Their initial sample size was 10,308 individuals, whose ages ranged from 35 to 55. Once separated by sexes, the 10,308 individuals consisted of 33.1% of them female, and 66.9% were male (Knüppel 2).

The study was done in eleven phases and they used multiple methods in order to collect data about sugar intake and mental health of the participants. At each phase, the participants had to go through different tests and screenings. Most of the data collected was based off of the people’s self-reports. The types of data collection tools used were questionnaires, diet diaries, and doctor examinations. They also required participants to report on their other habits; such as physical activity, smoking, amount of sleep, and alcohol intake. They also needed to account for diseases, and other physical issues, which may have been present in their participant pool. The researchers were able to account for some lurking variables that may have been present over the course of their study. The researchers needed to try and account for people who may have misreported their data. In order to adjust for this, they omitted data points that would be considered extremely far-fetched. The factors of this study included the amount of sugar consumed per day by the people in the study. In men, the top third of the study consisted of men who consumed above 67 grams of sugar per day, and the bottom third was men who consumed below 39.5 grams per day (Knüppel 3). The results of the study were different than they were expecting because they only found a connection between sugar intake and increased depression risks in males.

The results were that the correlation between sugar consumption and depression were only connected in men. They are unsure as to why the connection was only present in the male population and not the women. This is concerning to men because a man who eats a lot of sugar will be 23% more likely to experience common mental disorders(Knüppel 6). This shows that men need to be careful about the amount of sugar they eat in order to reduce the risk of depression.

Sugar is involved in many of our foods, even foods we would not consider to be high in sugar. Also, it is cheap and easy for people to get a huge soda which is full of sugar. For example, McDonald’s has a one dollar any size promotion on their sodas. This means you can get a small or large soda for the same price. Sugary foods can be found easily on the cheap side; however, there are healthier food and drink options which are often found accompanying a high price tag. This may explain why sugar consumption has increased, because sugar is cheap, and more people can afford sugary foods over vegetables or fruits. One way to help the sugar epidemic is to lower the price of healthier alternatives, and/ or tax sugary products to make them more expensive.

Reflection:

For my summary of the scholarly article I tried to incorporate answers to the five critical questions; however, I did not explicitly say what it answered. For how they operationalized their variables I took from the article the male and female top third and bottom third amounts. Next, when discussing how they selected participants, they chose them from the Whitehall II study which consists of non-industrial civil servants. How they assigned to groups was not available because there was no separation into groups besides sex. They also cannot make causal claims due to the lack of randomization that occurred in the study. I do believe that it was generalized to the right population because it talks about men a lot.

The author of my original pop culture article, Derek Beres, spoke about what is currently being done in politics to reduce the sugar consumption increase. He spoke of a tax being put in place in Britain and how we will not see something similar in the United States due to Donald Trump’s diet. Where he put information on what is being done, I chose to put suggestions on what can be done to help decrease sugar consumption (Beres 8). He also did not go into great detail about how the study was done, he mostly mentioned how many people were in it, and how long the study lasted. Derek Beres did not go into great detail about the study itself and mostly focused on the results. I chose to go into more detail about the study instead of just focusing on the results. I think it is important to show people how they came to the result and the facts behind the study.

Being put in a journalist’s shoes really gives one a new outlook on the career and how much they need to put into an article. The word restraint was very difficult for me because I like to go into detail rather than just getting major points. It is hard to fit a summary to a scientific paper into an around 700-word article, much less make it sound interesting. I was unable to fit in a lot of the scientific jargon; such as p-values and quantitative results. Not only would it make the article exceed my word limit, but the average people would not be able to understand it. Also, scientific words and ideas are not very glamourous or interesting and would make people click off. You really need to pick and choose the information you put into an article. Journalists need to make the science sound interesting so people will click on it and read it. People talk about “click-bait” titles; however, in order to get people to read it, you almost need to have “click-bait”. If you come across an article labeled, “Sugar study done in London shows that sugar is bad for your mental health”, people may roll their eyes because the idea that sugar is bad for you is not new. People are more likely to click on one that says something similar to, “New Study finds that Sugar is Detrimental to a Male’s Mental Health”. It gives a hint of fear and sounds interesting. When critiquing these articles for not having enough information essential to answering the 5 critical questions, it can now be seen how they may be unable to fit it all in. They also need to do research and read the scholarly article which is very difficult to read through and yet we do not often think about that when reading a pop culture article.

Works Cited

Beres, Derek. “New Study Finds Sugar Increases Risk of Depression in Men.” Big Think, Big Think, 5 Oct. 2018, bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/new-study-finds-sugar-increases-risk-of-depression-in-men.

Knüppel, Anika, et al. “Sugar Intake from Sweet Food and Beverages, Common Mental Disorder and Depression: Prospective Findings from the Whitehall II Study.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 27 July 2017, http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-05649-7.

--Original published at Marlee's Psych 105 Blog

Media Production

At the University of Binghamton and Community College of Broom, a study was conducted to answer a controversial question: Why are rapes both common and underreported in the college setting?  In the study, both male and female participants were randomly chosen to read a series of vignettes in which described a series of events that depicted a clear incident of rape. In the vignettes, there were multiple different situations in which the rape happened between either a man against a woman, a man against a man, woman against a man. After reading the situations the participants were asked how much blame could be associated with the victim or the attacker. Next, they were asked, that in the victims’ shoes, would they tell anyone if the rape happened and if they would report it to the authorities. Surprisingly individuals reported that they would not report the rape even if the incident was clearly sexual assault.
The participants answers varied due to two factors: gender role beliefs and sexual orientation. These factors along with the sex of the victim in the vignette seemed to determine how the participants placed the blame. The results of the study showed heterosexual participants placing more blame on the victims then on the attacker. In these cases, it was the traditional beliefs of masculinity and gender that made the participants decisions. It was also found that participants decided to report the rape off of the attacker’s actions rather than the victims.
The results showed of all groups participating, the male heterosexual showed the most victim blame, lowest attacker blame, and lowest rate of disclosure to the authorities. This response seemed to be driven by the masculine gender ideology. It was also found that female-on-male sexual assault caused a decreasing of blame placed on the attacker and more on the victim because a male should theoretically be able to defend themselves from a female.

Reflection

After reading through the pop culture and scholarly research article, I learned when you are reading psychological research it is very important to focus on the little things not just the overarching concepts. In my writing I tried to keep in mind the 5 Critical Questions that we were taught during class. I found this assignment to be the most challenging of the three because it was challenging trying to condense my research article which was 20 plus pages, into less than 600 words. Deciding what to incorporate and what to cut out was very hard because I felt that all parts of the research were important otherwise why were they written in the first place. When writing my summary, I wanted to make sure that is was generalized to the right population, so my readers could understand the research with ease. I decided to take out some of the p values because I felt that they weren’t necessary to the summary of the experiment.
In our pop culture assignments, we had to analyze how journalists were able to incorporate important information into their work, but actually having to do it first hand, I understand it is not an easy task. For the sense of journalism, the writers incorporated information which wasn’t scientifically significant, but that would grab the reader’s attention.

--Original published at Psychology 105

Article

Can marijuana be used to treat depression? It may be possible, according to researchers from the São Paulo Research Foundation in Brazil. In a recent study published by the group, they claimed cannabidiol (CBD), a compound found in Cannabis sativa, shows more rapid and longer lasting effects than commercial antidepressants. The researchers conducted five individual experiments to test their claims, and the results appear to be promising.

There were two main goals of the study that were explicitly described by the group. The first was to test if CBD can induce antidepressant effects that were immediate and sustained over time. The first of the five experiments focused on testing CBDs’ effects by subjecting groups of rodents to the forced swim test. Different species of rodents were bred to develop symptoms of depression, totaling 367 participants. The subjects were randomly assigned to treatment groups. One was treated with CBD and the other was injected with a placebo solution. The group operationalized the antidepressant effects of CBD by analyzing the amount of time spent swimming versus the amount of time spent immobile in the water. The subjects were submitted to the test 6 minutes after being treated to see the acute effects of the drug. They were then tested again after 7 days to see if it showed sustained effects as well. They were also subjected to the open field test 30 minutes and 7 days after treatment in order to eliminate the possibility that CBD simply causes an increase in locomotor function, rather than actual antidepressant-like effects. Another behavioral test was conducted in the fifth experiment, where the rodents were submitted to a series of electrical shocks. The subjects’ ability to avoid the shocks was characterized as the antidepressant effect in this experiment.

The second goal of the study was to see how CBD causes antidepressant affects, namely by identifying specific changes that occur from a neurological perspective. Experiments two through four of the study focused on analyzing specific neuronal effects of the drug rather than behavioral effects. The second experiment tested if CBD uses the same signaling pathway as other antidepressants. The researchers euthanized the subjects after completing the behavioral tests described above and injected the brain with a dye marker. Then they tried to see if the effects of CBD could be inhibited by blocking these pathways with receptor antagonists. In the third experiment, they dissected the subjects’ brains to analyze the levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and other synaptic proteins. In the fourth experiment, the researchers wanted to see if CBD impacted the number of dendritic spines found in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. By analyzing the effects of CBD on the brain, the researchers were able to compare them to the effects of commercial antidepressants and draw conclusions based on the results.

Overall, the researchers’ claims were supported by the results of the various experiments. Cannabidiol appears to demonstrate specific antidepressant-like effects. Subjects injected with CBD had increased performances in the forced swim test and electrical shock test with no significant impact on their locomotor function. Also, they showed similar neurological pathways to commercial drugs as well as a significant increase in BNDF, synaptic proteins, and dendritic spines. From the results of these behavioral and neurological tests, it appears CBD could be used an effective treatment for depression. The study notes, however, that much more research is needed in order make serious causal claims that could be applied to human subjects.

Reflection

The original study is very detailed, but it contains a lot of information that readers do not need to know to understand its premise and conclusion. I tried to outline the most important aspects of the study. Although I did try to keep in mind the five critical research questions while I was writing, this was difficult since each experiment conducted in the study had its own unique variables.  Overall though, my main goal was to summarize the basic methodology used in each experiment and give an overview of the results. Then I related this back to the original hypothesis and goals that the authors of the study described in the abstract. I tried to omit as much jargon as I could. I also decided to leave out specific values for the results because this could easily be very confusing for the reader and would have also made the article extremely lengthy.

The pop culture article I read and the article that I wrote are similar in format. We both describe the sample population of the study and detail the methodology and results. I, however, tried to give a more basic overview of each of the experiments, while the pop culture piece gave a lengthy summary of only one of the tests. I think a crucial point we both included is that the results currently have limited applications. Given that the experiments were conducted on rodents, the findings cannot yet be generalized to human populations. This ensures that the reader is not misled about the conclusions of the study.

While writing my article, it was difficult to decide what to include from the study without having to go into extensive detail. I can see how journalists would have a hard time doing this, as well as making the article a piece that people browsing the Internet would want to click on and read. Obviously, scholarly research is going to be very in-depth. I think that pop culture articles provide a way for the public to learn about psychological research in a way that is more user friendly. It is important for authors to be truthful though, rather than generalizing the information found in studies and portraying it in an inaccurate fashion.

Citations

Amanda J. Sales, Manoela V. Fogaça, Ariandra G. Sartim, Vitor S. Pereira, Gregers Wegener, Francisco S. Guimarães, Sâmia R. L. Joca. Cannabidiol Induces Rapid and Sustained Antidepressant-Like Effects Through Increased BDNF Signaling and Synaptogenesis in the Prefrontal Cortex. Molecular Neurobiology, 2018; DOI: 10.1007/s12035-018-1143-4

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo. “In test with rats, cannabidiol showed sustained effects against depression for seven days.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 30 August 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180830113004.htm>

--Original published at HarrysCollegeBlog

With the Video Games becoming more and more popular, many teens across the globe rave about video games, and during play become so emotionally invested in it. Despite it being a virtual game, something about it makes my friends and I invest our time and energy better put towards other things, into this video game. This isn’t only because we play video games competitively either, many others who casually play video games also have this urge. Video games must have some sort of Emotional effect to have us be so fascinated by it. 

Upon thinking of video games and their effects on the human one thing comes to mind: Social Opportunities. Social opportunities are evolved reactions with emotions to engage in adaptive behaviors. These are things such as happiness when presented with success, and sadness when faced with failure etc.

This can be shown in a recent study performed by Guitar, A, E., Glass, D. J., Geher, G., &  Suvak, M. K. (2018) testing Nesse and Ellsworth’s (2009) model of emotions for situations that arise in video games. The study was performed in a video game called “Second life” and participants were to be competing with other players to complete a given task. The interactive video game was chosen because of how it can put players in situations without risking their lives, while still mimicking the life-like danger it could potentially hold. to further enhance the experience, the players were given rewards for completing it. 

The study itself measured 4 things from the participants in terms of social opportunity: Physical opportunities, physical threats, Social opportunities, and social threats. the variables in the study were controlled, but no participant in the study knew about this. They were asked to give feedback on their emotions, and the results of the study found that Video Games are very very good at evoking emotions from social opportunity. when presented with opportunities they had pride for themselves, when faced with threats they became hostile, and when faced with failure, they found not only sadness, but also pride and content. This was most likely due to the lack of death, thus lowering the shame and fear it would have caused.

Video games in general, are a way to simulate the real world without any real danger to the player. The way we interact with it would suggest its able to evoke emotions almost as well as in the real world. Its competitive nature is very appealing, and overall lack of real death allows for a much safer, friendlier environment.

Sources:

Geher, Glenn. “Video Games and Emotional States.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 3 Sept, 2018,https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/20189/video-games-and-emotional-states

Guitar, A, E., Glass, D. J., Geher, G., &  Suvak, M. K. (2018). Situation-specific emotional states: Testing Nesse and Ellsworth’s (2009) model of emotions for situations that arise in goal pursuit using virtual-world software. Current Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-9830-x

Reflection:

The writing process of summarizing the paper I found to be challenging. The original text has a lot of detail going into it, and I had to summarize much of what was in the Scholarly article, such as much of the explanation done before the actual study to give context on what was going on. some of this context was information about the brain, social patterns, common practices, etc. Much of the beginning was committed to explaining Darwin’s thoughts and theories about the subject, such as his notion that emotions hold the potential of accurately describing out minds.

Evolutionary Emotions was another theory of his that was important to the article, which explained how the human mindset evolved over time due to our environment and how we adapted to it. This was cut out mostly due to the length and how much material there was to cover.

Another section was dedicated to an in depth analysis of the results, going over the layout of the graphs and information, to explaining what each variable and factor meant, and how they got the information as well. They also had some reflections, going back saying how the information was not recorded live, but was done afterwards, with participants reflecting back on them. They acknowledged the limitations their study had, and much of this was cut out due to lack of time on my own part. The experience was overall a good one, and it has given myself more pride in Video Gaming.

--Original published at Zachs College Blog

The reasons why people tend to stay in unhappy relationships

By: Zach Petiet

The decisions to end a relationship with someone you love can have a serious impact on yourself but even your partner. Research has focused on two sole reasons on why people tend to allow themselves to stay in unfulfilling relationships. The first reason is that people feel that they’ve already invested a great deal of time, energy, emotion which would all go to waste if it were to end. The second reason is the individual believes that the idea of a relationship with someone different would be less appealing than their current relationship. Researchers have also identified these reason as both self-focused as they are looking out for themselves. Although, Researchers began to take a deeper look into whether or not people tend to stay in relationships for the sake of their partner. studies on decision-making shows that people are naturally motivated to consider their partners needs.

In this research article, they argued whether or not the stay/leave decision are based of of the individual’s dependence on the relationship but also also on the partners dependence on the relationship. Many individuals have a prosocial decision making process which means both individuals benefit. There is a strong assumption which states that people’s actions are usually always guided by self-interested motivation. Also, research has shown that people have inherent inclinations to consider the interests and need of others. The interdependence theory is a theory that can be described as how people make choices that involve other people. This theory proposes that all people have the choice in whether or not to maximize the outcomes of the situation that will benefit them. The statement that says people make relationship choices with their partners feelings in mind goes very well with the idea of the interdependence theory. Each persons needs, goals, and motivations need to be considered in accordance to their partner’s rather than a more secluded approach. For this to be achieved, an individual must move away from a focus more on self-interest to a focus on the more prosocial concerns. As a relationship continue to grow, you will see this transformation process progress. The interdependence theory also states that transformation of motivation occurs when an individual adopts new rules for how to control interactions with people. This rule includes taking broad considerations instead of the direct and the instantaneous impact of the interaction on self benefit. Lastly, the interdependence theory states that people do act out of the concern for their partner’s needs as long as they adopt a prosocial rule that includes their partner’s wants and needs.

The statement that people care about their partner’s feelings and needs goes very well with interdependence and decision-making theory and has been supported by much research. Although, no research has tested whether or not prosocial concern has any influence on relationship stay/leave decisions. It is very important for someone to prioritize their partner’s needs because by doing that it allows this individual to continue to enjoy the enjoyment of the relationship and not have to worry about losing the relationship as a whole. Much of the research on stay/leave decisions has been helped by the investment model. The investment model states that many people choose to stay in a relationship when they feel dependent on their partner to satisfy their needs. The investment model has three specific categories which includes satisfaction, investment, and quality of alternatives. One additional hypothesis states that people are usually motivated to remain in a highly committed relationship for the sake of their partner, rather than for themselves.

In this research article, they provided two research studies that were set up to test the hypothesis which stated that people take their partner’s needs into mind when they are thinking about ending the relationship. The tests were two potential break up studies in which they picked people currently in a relationship by measuring self and partner-focused motivations for keeping the relationship. After they picked their participants they tracked their relationship status over the next two months. Researchers predicted that when a person’s self-interest for the relationship is low, their prosocial concerns for the sake of their partner will take over.

In study one, it was comprised of a two part study of the participants selected in romantic relationships. In part one, participants took a survey questioning their current relationship status, demographics, and personalty. In part two of the study, participants responded emails sent by the researchers which questioned if they were still in a relationship or not. If their relationship had ended, the participant had to indicate who ended it. This method allowed the researchers to gain knowledge on how an individuals perception of their relationship predicted their break-up decision. The main goal of study one was to test that the more dependent someone believed their partner was on the relationship the less likely they would break up. As a result of the study, researchers were able to conclude that people were less likely to break-up over the 10 week study if they believed their partner was very committed to the relationship or if they know their partner would be destroyed if they broke up.

Study two was a replication of study one which confirmed the results in study one as well as addressed several limitations in study one. They also looked to further their knowledge on the procedure through which prosocial concern affects the stay/leave decision. Researchers targeted people who were currently contemplating their commitment to their partner. Researchers also wanted to further examine three additional explanations for why people would be reluctant to break up with their very relationship dependent partner. These explanations included an individuals guiltiness, partner retaliation, and negative judgements from friends/family. Study two was a 2 month long study of people who were contemplating a break-up. Participants were first asked to complete a screening questionnaire to determine their eligibility to further the testing. The participants then took Time one and two surveys where people were eliminated and the study shrunk if the participant didn’t further meet the criteria. As a result of this study, researchers found that people were less likely to break-up with their partner over two months if they believed their partner was very committed to the relationship and if they believed staying in the relationship was in the best interest for their partner.

In conclusion, this present research further shows that people most likely always take their partner’s feelings into consideration even when deciding on potentially ending the relationship. Even when an individual is not satisfied with the relationship as a whole, realizing their partner’s needs pushes them away from breaking-up. Although, further researcher is needed for researchers to determine the positives and negatives of staying in an unsatisfying relationship just for the sake of their partner.

Reflection:

After researching and taking a deeper look into psychological research provided for the public, I’ve noticed that for psychologist to make conclusions on certain research results, it takes many studies and factors to finally be able to reach their conclusions. Also, these psychological research studies provided for the public have to provide all facts and factors that went into their research studies to provide a honest description of what they did and why they did it. Psychological researchers provide information by including the details of the studies performed and provide graphs and general conclusions on the information they generalized on. Ive learned a great deal of information on my research topic as the author of the article provide immense amounts of information on the topic and their research methods and finding. Overall, I feel that the accuracy in journalism can be hit or miss. I personally feel that many journalisms take a stance and write about what they believe or feel about a certain situation. Many times you will see a journalist focus more on one side of a study or situation instead of analyzing and provided information for all parts of a study. In journalism, accuracy is a very important factor for their pieces of work which proves that what they are writing about is credible. If the article is not completely accurate, they will lose credibility for it as a whole. Although there is subjective and objective errors with accuracy and its a hard topic to define, accuracy is the most important piece to writing a strong, beneficial piece of work.

--Original published at Gracie's Blog

Summary

The idea that depression is the worst in the winter season is a controversial concept discussed and tested by researchers. Several different surveys and questionnaires were provided for people to take and compare their symptoms of depression throughout the seasons. The well known hypothesis was that the lack of sunlight exposure is a big factor that increases depression symptoms, but is depression really affected by the winter season? Back in 1984 the idea of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) came about and the first studies were facilitated. Patterns of experiencing seasonal affective disorder occurs when symptoms are more apparent in the fall and winter, but subside or decrease in the spring and summer.
The majority of the research about the seasonal affective disorder was found due to the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire. This questionnaire asks participants questions pertaining to their mood from a year or more ago. There were problems with this study though as the whole questionnaire was not supporting the definition of depression according to DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) which made the results hard to analyze, and as talked about before, the way someone felt a year ago may be hard to track. Another study done by Kerr and colleagues in 2013 found in a course of several years, when participants rated their depression, that there was no significant relationship between light exposure and depression. The fault of this study was the participants were all from the U.S. Midwest and Northwest. Eventually a more accurate depression questionnaire was designed called the Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8). The studies show that latitude, sunlight exposure, and seasons do not affect depression.
The media article contradicts the common thought that winter affects depression, but CNN gives a study supporting that seasonal affective disorder is a myth. A total of 34,294 adults from the United States were asked questions during a study at Auburn University of Montgomery regarding their depression symptoms two weeks prior to when the questionnaire was taken. The large number of 34,294 was split and each group took the questionnaire during one of the four different seasons so the results showed how depressed people felt during the various seasons. The results from this study showed that there were no signs of seasons affecting depression, nor does sunlight exposure or geographical latitude play a role in depression. The media states that other studies finding that depression is worse in the winter chose participants who were experiencing mood changes in the winter to help support their theory of seasonal affective disorder.

Media Article: file:///C:/Users/Gracie/AppData/Local/Packages/Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe/TempState/Downloads/For%20Gracie%20(2).pdf
Scholarly Article:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167702615615867

Reflection
While deciding what all to include in my summary of the research article I looked at the information pertaining to the studies done in order to find whether or not seasons play a role in depression. The well known myth is the during the winter season, depression is worse than during the warm and sunny seasons. I made sure to include how the main three studies done to support that seasons, light exposure, and geographical latitude do not worsen symptoms of depression like people may think. Throughout the research article there was a lot of insignificant information listed, which did not have a lot of meaning. I chose to write about the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire first because that was one of the first questionnaire developed and used to find that seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is not real. The Seasonal Pattern Assessment, Kerr’s study, and the Patient Health Questionnaire-8 all were the main studies that first gave results showing that there were no signs of SAD. Throughout the research article, I found that the information was hard to transfer into my own words due to the amount of studies mentioned. I was not sure how specific I should be when explaining each study’s results. When discussing the media article, summarizing the main concepts were easier because the language used was simple to understand and the article overall did include an abundant amount of unnecessary information. When writing the pop culture article critique, I found that finding information to critique was a bit easier because the results were not as specific and not a whole lot of information was present. The scholarly article was more complicated overall when writing a critique because the language was advanced and a lot more information was present, and I did not know what all of the information meant. Overall, I have a lot of respect for journalists because they have to translate information into their own words and understand the context. Along with comprehending the text, journalists have to make their work interesting in order be successful and to keep people reading their work.

--Original published at Isabella's Psychology Blog

Narcissism is an epidemic in America, at least according to the older generations of Americans. According to the research article “The Narcissism Epidemic Is Dead;  Long Live the Narcissism Epidemic” by Wetzel, this narcissism epidemic is not only nonexistent but it probably never happened at all.

Variables used in the research was narcissism and the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) survey. Narcissism was a dependent variable defined by high scores on the NPI survey. The NPI survey is a dependent variable since the participants had to answer their own survey.

Research participants were undergraduates between the ages of 18 to 24 years old from the years 1992 to 2015. The three colleges participants can from where the University of California Berkeley, the University of Illinois and the University of California Davis. Throughout the years the research was being performed researchers put extra emphasis on each of these three colleges.

Research participants were selected from three non-randomly selected universities, so the study is only generalizable to students from these three universities. Research participants were placed in groups based on ethnicity and gender. Each category of people was analyzed and compared to the results of all of the NPI tests. Group assignment was done by ethnicity and gender there was no random assignment in grouping participants. Random assignment is a defining feature of an experiment. Causal claims can only be made through true experiments. Research without random assignment cannot make causal claims.

The results of the research were a decline in narcissism. Results of the study are only generalizable to the undergraduate students from the University of California Berkeley, the University of Illinois and the University of California Davis. This group of people is very small compared to the general population of young people in America. The researchers were wrong to generalize their results to the wrong population. Also since the research was not a true experiment so no causational clauses can be made either. This study alone cannot disprove the narcissism epidemic it can be used to help other research disprove the existence of the narcissism epidemic.

Reflection:

My summary had the small word limit of 367 words making it hard to include all the research information into the word limit. The most important information needed in the article was, an introduction, five critical question answers, and research results were included. An introduction and conclusion were included since both are essential to writing since they hook the reader in and closes the article. Answering the five critical questions shows that the writer understands the research article.

Another thing I did was tell the reader how to interpret the research article. I did this because my word limit was so short I could not be able to include enough information to allow the reader to form their own opinion about the research article. After writing the introduction and about the five critical questions I did not have enough words to explain the research without inserting my own opinions. I was able to include a few sentences about how I reached my opinion on the research article.

To reduce my word count, I also combined the results my opinions on the research, and the conclusion in the last paragraph of the article. The reason for this was that the results supported my opinion on the research. The conclusion was included in the last paragraph since I did not have enough words left for another paragraph. Also, the result of an experiment and an opinion on the research are both topics usually at the end of an article so adding the conclusion to the paragraph read naturally.

In my rough draft, I was extremely harsh for my conclusion of the article. At one point I even included the statement “the research does not matter.” I did this because I disliked the pop culture article “The Myth of the American Narcissist” by Laura Entis over exaggerated research results, so I want to be realistic while writing my article. Instead of being realistic I went into the territory of being hostile. Later I changed my article’s wording so that it was not hostile but critical. This critical writing approach is very different from Laura Entis’ article which over exaggerated the results of the research.

The main differences from the Laura Entis article and my own were our approaches on the five critical questions. While writing my article, my main objective was to answer the five critical questions. Answering the five critical questions took up half of my summary. Laura Entis’ article was made up of a short introduction and a three-question interview with one of the researchers of the study. Though Entis did not answer all of the five critical questions (Entis).

For the critical question of optimizing variables of the experiment both me and Entis had the same answer. Entis did not include any mention of the critical question of how participants were selected. Then Entis did not answer the question of how participants were assigned into groups. In my article, I answered the critical questions of how the participants were selected and how participants were assigned to groups. More critical questions I answered clearly but Entis did not as if the research allowed for causal claims and if the researches generalized the results correctly. Entis did not answer these questions directly but gave enough evidence for a reader knowledgeable about causal claims and generalization can figure out the answers for themselves (Entis).

From the pop culture, scholarly, and media production assignments I learned about journalism and strategies for reading research papers. When reading a research paper look out for the answers of the five critical questions. By finding the answers to the five critical questions, a reader is able to understand how the research was performed and judge if the conclusion the researchers came up with was correct or not.

In journalism, the writer needs to understand the research paper they are citing and write something not only accurately relays the information from the research paper but is also interesting to the reader. Also, journalists have word limit too. So this means even if they want to the journalist could not include all the information from the research paper without the article being extremely dense and similar to the abstract of the research paper. So in order to write something interesting within their word limit, a large amount of research cannot be included in the article. By writing these articles, I gained a higher respect for journalists. Journalists summarize research papers into short articles the general public can easily read.

Another topic I learned about from the previous assignments was writing in general. In the writing manuals, I learned many tips which I incorporate in my writing in other classes as well. One of the tips I use the most often is avoiding to use the word that. Also, I write more simple now to avoid making grammar mistakes by trying to overcomplicate sentences.

Overall I learned not only about narcissism but about how research articles become pop culture articles and strategies on how to read research articles. By doing these assignments, it made me look at and experience all the parts a pop culture article is made of.

Work Cited

Entis, Laura. “The Myth of the American Narcissist.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 10 May 2018, http://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201803/the-myth-the-american-narcissist.

Wetzel, Eunike, et al. “The Narcissism Epidemic Is Dead; Long Live the Narcissism Epidemic.” Psychological Science, vol. 28, no. 12, Dec. 2017, pp. 1833–1847, doi:10.1177/0956797617724208.

--Original published at Carly's College Blog

Most refugees and asylum-seekers are unable or unwilling to participate in research studies, especially lengthy demanding ones. This makes their population difficult to study, and makes the data found by researchers at the University of Birmingham significant. This limitation will, however, require further research to develop any type of immediate medical strategies. They studied how post-traumatic stress disorder affects the ability to suppress and recall memories, and if that control could prevent the development of ptsd all together. PTSD is a disorder characterized by intrusive, recurrent, and traumatic memories.

They studied a group of 24 refugees. They were not randomly selected but were chosen based on their demographics and background of trauma. All participants showed symptoms of clinical depression as well. The participants came from European, African, and Asian countries. The researchers assigned the participants into 2 groups, the control and ptsd. They were not randomly assigned, and the number of participants is unequal due to applied double-blind. The ptsd group consisted of 9 males and 2 females. They fulfilled the criteria in the DSM IV for post-traumatic stress disorder. The control group consisted of 10 males and 3 females. These participants were interviewed and had extremely similar “trauma loads.” This is the term used to describe the number of traumatic events and the diversity of an individual’s lifetime experience.

The participants were given a think/no think test after their initial evaluations. It was a three-phase procedure consisting of a training period, the think/no think portion, and was followed by a recognition test. Between both groups, the ptsd patients had difficulty retrieving an episodic memory whether it was intentional or not. The researchers found the more severe an individual’s symptoms were, the more difficulty the individual experienced during memory retrieval.

All while the procedure had taken place, the participants were being monitored by magnetoencephalography, also called MEG. MEGs are used to map neural networks and changes in magnetic fields,  for this study it focused on gamma power. The MEG in this study found that when the participants with ptsd were trying to suppress a memory, their levels of gamma activity increased causing them to fail. This contrasts with the control group, who had lowered their gamma levels and suppressed the memory successfully.

Not only did the participants with ptsd fail to suppress memories, they also showed difficulties trying to retrieve a desired memory. This data presents using memory suppression as a therapy technique is unwise because it does not show reduction of an intrusive thought or memory and could potentially make symptoms worse.

University of Birmingham. “Severely traumatized refugees may not necessarily develop PTSD.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 4 September 2018.

Link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180904114747.htm

Waldhauser, G., Martin, D., Ruf-Lueschner, M., Muller-Bamouh, V., Schauer M.,      Axmacher, N., . . . Hanslmayr, S. (2018). The neural dynamics of deficient memory control in heavily traumatized refugees. Scientific Reports, 8, 1-12.

Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-31400-x

Reflection:

By playing the role of the reporter and not the reader, it was easier to understand the pressure that reporters experience. I chose to summarize the main points of the study, because going too into detail would most-likely confuse readers or lose their interest. The first thing I chose to leave out were the images and graphs, there were too many, and I honestly did not understand them myself. The content was much easier to understand. I also left out the in-depth descriptions of the participants, procedure and data analysis because it was more concise to accurately summarize it. This was due to word limitations. I can more clearly understand now how some articles can appear misleading due to what the editor chooses to include or leave out. I answered the first three critical questions but left out four and five. This was because I found it harder to “report” them as part of the study without making it sound like an accusation. Trying to include it not allowing for causal claims and saying that it cannot be generalized seemed out of place with the rest of my content.
I think my article compares equally with the original news article. I included the same facts and information as the original but feel as though I elaborated more. I also included a more in-depth description of the actual procedure, along with a more descriptive paragraph surrounding the role the MEG played in the study. The original news article only answered the first three critical questions as well.
Throughout the series of projects on psychology in the media, I was able to look through the eyes of the reporter and understand how they choose their content and meet word limitations. I felt like I learned the most doing this, media production part, because it most resembles the job of the reporter

--Original published at David's Blog

Research Summary 

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD is a childhood neuropsychiatric disorder, which is now affecting 10 percent more of the population in the United States. The disorder can preset into early adulthood. A new study came out looking at kids in a time frame of 20 years 1997 to 2016 showing a drastic increase in the percent of children with ADHD. The percent in 1997 to 1998 was around 6.1% later in 2015 to 2016 it rose to about 10.2%. The study is telling scientist that they may need to do more research in the area of childhood ADHD to help find the cause of this increase of children with ADHD. The prominence of ADHD differs all over the world; the study talks about how most of the European countries have a significantly less prominence of ADHD but America has one of the highest showings of ADHD in the world. The statistics of the study was done with in-person interviews and they would select one child if there was one by a computer-generated program. The interviewers would ask an adult such as a parent questions about their child since they know the most about there health. The questions that the parents were asked were “Has a doctor or health professional ever told you that [the sample child] had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or attention-deficit disorder (ADD)?” and “Does [the sample child] currently have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or attention-deficit disorder (ADD)?” The children that were included in the study were in the age range of four to seventeen. It was then found in the studies that the average age of kids who had ADHD were between 10.6 and 10.9 years old.

Reflection 

When writing the summary for the research that was done of children with ADHD in America there were certain things I chose to leave out of the summary. I was given a cap of how ever long the original article was written. This obviously limited the length in which I could write my own article. One thing I left out of my summary was the specific precent of kids with ADHD in different ethnicities. I didn’t find it too important to include that in the article since the main thing was how much ADHD has grown in America.

When looking at the original article that was put out by CNN there are some clear differences. One of the differences was how CNN talked about how they believe the new affordable care might contribute to the rise of ADHD. They also talked about how there is a rise of ADHD in minority groups, which they believe that is also connected to the new affordable health care. These are defiantly important things to include in a news article but I believed I should have left it out of mine to save space.

It was a nice and interesting experience trying to put myself in the shoes of a journalist while I wrote my own article summary. I have already though taken an entire journalist class in my college career since its required for my communication major. So I had some background in what all went into journalism. But the projects helped me get a glimpse at what goes in to writing about psychology specifically which is definitely different from what I wrote before. I’m glad I was able to be apart of the projects to earn more about psychology journalism.

--Original published at AlyssaM

Newspaper Article Link: here

Scholarly Article Link: here

Researchers conducted a study at a University for first year students to see the connections between friends on a neuro level. The researchers began the study by sending out a survey to the entire class of students that were entering a certain field in the graduate program. The survey asked the students about who they hangout with outside of class, or share meal times with, and various situations along those lines. For this, they received complete participation.

The researchers then asked the students if they would like to take part in the neuroimaging part of the study to further their research. The students were told if they agreed to take part, they would get paid for it. A total of 42 students volunteered. The researchers set up controls for the second part of the study to prevent other keys that could alter the results, including handiness.

The students each were hooked up to an fMRI device to measure their brainwaves in response to various videos. The videos clips the researchers showed the students were the same for each and most likely ones the students never seen before.

The researchers noticed similar brain wave activity in closer friends rather than distant friends. They were able to see there was a connection between the two, but they are not yet sure why or what causes the phenomenon. They will not make conclusions making casual claims because they do not have enough data to display that knowledge. However, they are able to predict who are close friends based off of the brain wave activity that takes place during observing the various video clips.

Researchers are fascinated by such a relation and plan to explore it further in the future.

Writing my own research summery was not that bad, as both articles provided plenty of details as to the experiment that had occurred. I did not find writing it challenging because I did write for my high school newspaper for four years. I also worked for Reading Eagle: Voices (a local newspapers student section) for a year and a half. Now I write for the Etownian. As a result of all my newspaper experiences, I know how to shorten and keep it straight to the point without getting to lengthy. Every newspaper I partook in had different requirements for different style articles, so I learned how to stay concise over the years. I didn’t have to sacrifice anything, but I did because some information would have been too complicated for anyone with limited knowledge on psychology. I also left out names and extreme details like so because I find too many names or numbers to keep track of gets confusing. In journalism, it is more important to get the facts and highlight the most key details, rather than every single thing that occurred. It also was a lot of the information I found when reading the articles that dragged out made the point of the article get lost. Even with my background in journalism, I still learned more about it through reading the articles, in particular the scholarly. Before this, I never seen an article as sophisticated as that one is with so many unfamiliar terms. Also I was surprised how often they went and repeated a detail in various sections. This taught me, not all journalism has to be simple and it can be directed towards a more educated population in regards to a specific topic.