--Original published at Miguel's College Blog

News Article: (1034 words)

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201801/why-smarter-men-make-better-partners

Scholarly Article:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886917305780

Article Rewrite: (327)

Finding the right partner can be a hit or miss situation. One of the common problems people have in relationships is knowing if their partner is “the one.” If there was a way to  see if your partner was going to be your potential “one,” would you trust it?

A recent study by Jaakko Aspara, Kristina Wittkowski, and Xueming Luo (2018) studied the role of intelligence in marriage behavior based on the statistical evidence from 120,290 males who took a cognitive test before entering the Finnish military. The results of the study suggests the partner who is smarter is going to be the best bet for a long term relationship.

The researchers claimed there was a positive correlation between high intelligence scores and marriage outcomes. The researchers took scores from the cognitive test and watched marriage statuses of the males who took the test from 2007 to 2011. Those who scored higher on the test statistically were more likely to get married, and stay married, in comparison to their peers who scored lower. An interesting variable the researchers added into their study was car possession and size and how that adds to marriage outcomes as well.

The intelligence test was taken from the Finnish Defense Forces, given before admittance to the military, and the marriage records were taken from public marriage registers from Finland’s Population Register Center. The test gathered verbal, numerical, and logical intelligence, with verbal intelligence being highlighted by the researchers as having a larger effect on marriage likelihood. They believed that a high verbal intelligence allowed for better communication skills and therefore, better probability for marriage.

The researchers took a biological stance in how intelligence affects marriage and how that can affect fitness of an individual. Fitness of an individual is how many offspring one individual can produce. The hypothesis at hand then is that by having high intelligence increases the chance of getting married, increasing the chance of the opportunity to reproduce, thus increasing one’s biological fitness.

Reflection:

Summarizing the research article was pretty easy to do because the news article had 1,034 words, which left me with more than enough room to substantially describe the findings of the article in depth enough. I did have to make sure that I did not go too in depth with the article because the original research article had much more statistical evidence and values to defend their results. Adding statistics and more numbers into the news article probably would have confused the reader and may turn the reader away from reading the entire article. What was difficult in this assignment was trying to include the most important parts of the research article for the rewrite now that I read the actual research article. There was a lot of extraneous information included in the research article that may be interesting to know but for the news article I had to figure out whether or not it was important for an overall understanding of the research. My perspective of journalists have evolved over the course because now I understand how difficult writing about research actually is. Journalists not only have to find the research, but they also have to thoroughly read the article and understand it. After that, they have to write an article that is precise enough to hit all the main points of the research, as well as being easy to understand for the reader. Reading the news article first gave me confidence in understanding the research article because the news article was easy to understand and gave me a general understanding of the research article. When I read the research article, the article was dense and filled with graphs and numbers that were confusing. It took me a couple of reads to actually understand the results that were given by the study. This assignment was really beneficial in that I now understand better how to digest news articles and check the actual research to completely understand what the research is telling me.

--Original published at Nadia's Blog

It is a common belief and misconception that as the cold weather approaches, depression worsens, most commonly known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Most people believe that the colder weather lowers an individual’s mood, slows their mind and become more prone to depression. This misconception was caused by a SAD study conducted in which the participants recruited believed that they had this diagnosis. This ultimately led to bias and skewed results. An improved study was conducted by Megan K. Traffanstedt, Sheila Mehta and Steven G. LoBello to determine if a seasonally related pattern of occurrence of major depression could be demonstrated in a population-based study.

The researchers conducted a cross-sectional U.S. survey of adults, from 18-99 years old. A total of 34,294 participants were randomly chosen from a population registry during all four seasons. The study was based on a larger population representative sample. The researchers ensured that depression measurement was consistent with DSM criteria, was population representative, the participants were unaware of the seasonal hypothesis and were aware of the effects of variables. The survey included the Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8), which was the current measure of depression, and was conducted in 36 different states. The data collected was interpreted using regression models to determine if depression was related to sunlight exposure. The study was sure to investigate the latitude, season and sunlight exposure in each participant, and took those factors into account.

The latitude was classified as an individual living in the northern, middle or southern latitude and this aspect was tabulated at the time of the survey. The researchers were also able to acknowledge the duration of daylight for most U.S. areas. The amount of sunlight exposure ranged from 8 hours and 43 minutes to 15 hours and 37 minutes. A few analyses of the correlation between depression and sunlight were evaluated. The first being if depression is related to season, second being if latitude or season independently interacted with depression scores.

The study resulted that seasonal variables were not related to depression scores. The same results came from the effects of latitude. Most importantly the amount of sunlight exposure did not significantly alter depression scores. There was no association with depression scores and sunlight in the total sample or in the participants who had increased depression scores. Additionally there was not a correlation of sunlight exposure the day of the interview and the depression score.

This study conducted is able to be representative of the entire U.S. population and was properly executed to ensure no self-selection bias. The results of this study doubt that major depression with seasonal variation is an actual psychiatric disorder. It is evident to note that just because an individual is depressed in winter does not mean that their depression is caused by winter itself.

Reflection:

I found this assignment challenging because I quickly realized that the news article contained very little information to support what they were discussing. I am definitely an individual who believed what I read in news articles online; however my views have completely changed. I am now aware that the news article that I read did not contain any of the 5 important questions and did not provide the reader with any information that could verify their results. Overall both the news article and the scholarly article had the same results which allowed me to at least agree with the outcome of the news article. I did not have a lot of difficulty summarizes the research article because my original news article was 1,496 words, which gave me a ton of room to include the necessary aspects of the research for the reader to understand the study. Interestingly the difficult part was to not include too much detail that the reader would not be able to understand what I was trying to say. In the scholarly article much more information was given but not necessarily all of the information could be used in the new summary. The summary was challenging because I needed to prioritize and organize the information in a way that would make sense to the reader. I did have trouble deciding how in depth I should go or if I was being too vague. I now understand the difficulty of journalist who does not have full control of what to include in an article if they are under a word constraint. It is not their fault that they were not able to provide the reader with all the information necessary. Overall I found this assignment incredibly helpful and it now allows me to look at things in a different light.

https://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/19/health/your-brain-on-winter/index.html

(News Article)

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167702615615867

(Scholarly Article)

--Original published at Melissa's Blog

The 2015 study, “High School Students’ Use of Electronic Cigarettes to Vaporize Cannabis,” published by Meghan Morean in the journal Pediatrics, reports an influx in teens use of cannabis. Instead of smoking cannabis, today’s cunning youth are getting high by vaporizing cannabis in e-cigarettes.

Morean, an assistant professor of psychology at Oberlin College, and fellow researchers, surveyed 3,847 students from five Connecticut high schools, from varying socioeconomic standings. To determine if vaporizing cannabis was most prevalent in a particular population, the participants listed their demographic information: age, sex, socioeconomic status, and the name of their high school.

Morean reported an 89.9% variance between demographics and using e-cigarettes to vaporize cannabis (Morean, p. 613). This means the students’ age, sex, and high school were influential. Morean noted the student’ socioeconomic statuses were not statistically significant. It was necessary to include the high schools in the demographic information because their substance tolerance and rules, which Morean called “cannabis culture,” influenced the students’ likelihood to use cannabis and e-cigarettes (p. 614).

The survey asked students to state if they ever used cannabis, if yes, how often, and the devices/methods they used to get high, in the last 30 days. Morean labeled the students who never tried cannabis as “never users,” (e-cigarettes: 72.1%, cannabis: 70.8%); those who ever tried cannabis as “lifetime users,” (e-cigarettes: 27.9%, cannabis: 29.2%); and those who ever tried both as “lifetime dual e-cigarette and cannabis users,” (18.8%) (p. 613). These labels do not account for students who only tried cannabis and/or e-cigarettes once. Being classified as a “lifetime user or dual user” infers the students get high regularly, which is likely false. Thus, Morean’s data may not be representative of the population, all high school students. Next, the cannabis and/or e-cigarette users selected their preferred device/method: “e-cigarettes with hash oil,” “e-cigarettes with a wax plug,” “portable vaporizers with dried marijuana,” and “other” (p. 613).

Morean determined the correlations between the above data. The results showed the most prominent cannabis users were lifetime dual users (26.5%), followed by lifetime cannabis users (18.4%), and lastly, lifetime e-cigarette users (18%) (p. 613). The most used devises were portable electronic vaporizers with dried cannabis (6.7%), then e-cigarettes with hash oil (4.5%), and lastly, e-cigarettes with wax (3%) (p. 613). The data proposes high schoolers are more likely to experiment with cannabis and e-cigarettes than adults; 5.4% of the students surveyed used e-cigarettes to vape cannabis, compared to only .2% of adults. The study’s overall findings indicate young male high school students, classified as lifetime dual users, are the most likely to use e-cigarettes to vaporize cannabis (p. 614).

Morean reminds parents to closely observe and monitor their children to protect them from the harms of cannabis. She adds, cannabis from e-cigarettes is odorless, thus, harder to notice, and cannabis oil used in e-cigarettes is stronger and more dangerous than dried cannabis.

One limitation to Morean’s research was the participating schools were all from Connecticut, a state that prohibits cannabis and those under 18 from using e-cigarettes. Another weakness was collecting data with a survey, which relies on integrity. Consequently, many self-report methods suffer from social desirability, lying to be praised or accepted, and malingering, purposely making yourself look bad. Another disadvantage to using surveys is the lack of treatments or control groups. Additionally, the study’s sample size of 3,847 students is too small to represent all high school students. Thus, Morean’s study fails to generalize to the intended population.

Morean study would have been more relevant and significant if she surveyed more diverse students. She failed to account for demographics such as race, religion, and culture. Morean attempted to incorporate race, however, she had to remove it because the sample was 85.9% Caucasian (p. 612). Lastly, Morean did not include how many students were from each school. This is problematic because more students could have been from schools with liberal tolerances toward cannabis and e-cigarettes, than from stringent schools.

Reflection

In my summary, I included essential information the news article left out. The news article did not mention the considerable influence of the students’ demographic information. I referenced the demographic portion of the survey because Morean found it significant. Specifically, Morean emphasized that the high schools’ drug tolerances influenced whether students’ used cannabis and e-cigarettes. Further, I was surprised the news article authors ignored the study’s finding, young males, labeled as lifetime dual users, were most likely to use e-cigarettes to vaporized cannabis. This result shows a correlation between age and gender.

The news article failed to include Connecticut’s legislation against cannabis and those under 18 from using e-cigarettes. I found this important because if high schools in a strict state show an increase in the use of cannabis and e-cigarettes, liberal states are likely to have even higher statistics. I also decided to explain Morean’s labels on the survey: “never users, lifetime users, and lifetime dual users,” because they are not representative. The term “lifetime users” presumes the student smokes or vapes very often, when some students may have only tried it once.

The news article excludes the limitations of Morean’s study. The limitations were noteworthy because they suggest Morean’s study can not be generalized to the population, all high school students. Additionally, unlike the news article, I included statistics from the study to strengthen my summary and add credibility. Lastly, I think mentioning my questions shows the study has flaws and needs supplementary research. Likewise, I answered the five critical questions in my summary to show the study was not a true experiment. Morean’s study is not representative of all high school students because it was survey-based and there was a small sample size.

The past three assignments made me realize the complexity of psychological journalism. The pop culture article critique exposed me to an interpretation of a scholarly journal. After examining and critiquing the journal article I was faced with the task of writing my own summary. When I read the news article I assumed it was simple and easy to describe the journal article, however, the media production project proved me wrong. I was dumbfounded by how precise, yet, thorough news articles must be. Condensing a 4-5 page journal article into a 1-2 page summary takes more time and effort than I initially assumed. This assignment was helpful because I learned how to comprehend and analyze scholarly articles. Also, now I know to read the journal article because although the news article is supposed to be concise, authors can leave out essential information.

Works Cited

Fox, Maggie, and Erika, Edwards. “High School Kids Use e-Cigarettes to Smoke Cannabis.” MSNBC, NBCUniversal News Group, 7 Sept. 2015, www.msnbc.com/msnbc/high-school-kids-use-e-cigarettes-smoke-cannabis-study

Morean, Meghan, et al. “High School Students’ Use of Electronic Cigarettes to Vaporize Cannabis.” Pediatrics, vol. 136, no. 4, October 2015, pp. 611-616,        www.pediatrics.org/cgi/doi/10.1542/peds.2015-1727

--Original published at Manda's College Blog

News Article [736 Words]
https://psychcentral.com/lib/eating-too-quickly-may-encourage-weight-gain/

Scholarly Article
https://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a2002

Article Rewrite [261 words]:

As society moves forward, convenience develops. Convenience has been created to make a person’s life so much simpler such as in how we eat and what we eat. Fast food, take away, delivery, microwavable foods, etc. are inexpensive and easy to take on the go. Could the types of food we eat be a contributor to the speed of how we eat? Are there addictive ingredients or preservatives that cause us to feel full much less? The professor’s study created a randomly assigned group of Japanese men and women varying of ages 30-69 years old. A large percentage of the participants were considered to be obese which is a BMI of 25. According to National Institutes of Health, being clinically obese is 30 and above. Though it’s not certain how long the study went on for, they were given questionnaires to record how fast they ate a meal and how full they feel after they were done. The study relied on straight up honesty from the participants, though they would also have a family member or friend re-confirm if the answers were truthful. After looking over the speed, fullness and taking into consideration of ones intake of alcohol, cigarettes and exercise, the study concluded that eating too fast does contribute to weight gain. Which can lead to other issues such as diabetes, high cholesterol, cancer, the list of medical risks because of obesity are endless. Though the study doesn’t state why people eat fast, it’s assumed that an unhealthy upbringing can influence the risk of obesity, where they tend to overeat and eat fast. It’s suggested that parents need to take part in their children’s eating habits, taking bites and teaching them to enjoy and savor the taste until they are full.

Reflection

I found myself asking questions when I was done reading the article about the study. The article had a great start telling us about the participants in the study and how they were assigned. They gave out the specifics of the type of Japanese men and women that were selected, but as the article went on it was quite vague of what the research and data consisted of let alone a final determination. Yes, it was presumed that eating too fast does cause weight gain, but where is the data supporting that? As the article went on, I felt that a complete 180 jump happened when the author of this article began discussing healthy eating among preschools. Again, I was asking myself if they were part of the study, an addition to the study, and were they even Japanese. I honestly believe that this news article definitely should not be considered for informational and research purposes. Out of the five critical questions, they answered the ones about the participants and it’s variables but that is it. Reading the scholarly article compared to the news article was as if it was a whole new study. I personally never even thought about looking for research articles over ones you find on google about the study; from now on I will be looking at the scholarly articles for the key information much more than the news articles.

--Original published at KatiesPerspectives

News Article:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111109093729.htm

Scholarly Article:

http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(11)00912-7/fulltext

Word count article: 297

Word count reflection: 250

Article Rewrite:

A study was done to test and prove that telomere in depression and the general population are associated with a hypocortisolemic state. The study proved the correlation between people with depression and having telomeres with shorter length. Telomeres are the outermost part of linear chromosomes, that have lines of short nucleotide strings. This study showed that there was also a significant relation between the hypocortisolemic state of stress, which leads to depression which leads to having a short telomere length. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis plays a big part in the neuroendocrine response to stress. This HPA axis is commonly found to be dysregulated in people with depression. While there are outside factors that contribute to stress and the HPA response to stress, the depressive state itself acts as a stress generator and does not help the person with depression. A group of patients in a psychiatric care center in northern Sweden who all meet the criteria of major depressive disorder were evaluated in this study. Eighty-one participants and 253 control subjects were all involved in this experiment and all of them were questioned and had their telomeres evaluated. The first article mentions the correlation between short telomeres and depression, but does not mention which causes which, but whether or not they are systematic, but it is confirmed that they are very much correlated. Results showed that telomeres were indeed shorter in evaluated patients than those in the control group. It is also important to note that telomeres shorten with age and stress/depression can accelerate this shortening process. Telomere length was also associated with stress measured with the Perceived Stress Questionnaire. This research has been done multiple researchers and has been evaluated by many professionals, and the results are generally the same despite few aspects that may vary.

Reflection:

Considering the fact that I only had 297 words to work with, I found it extremely difficult to get all the information I wanted in my article rewrite. One might think it’s easier writing less words, but I found myself going back and rewriting sentences over and over again in order to condense my word count. In order to meet the word count, I was forced to leave out some very important information that was put in place to support the research. Although I was able to get everything in that helps to summarize the findings of this study, there were a lot of details that I had to leave out that would have made my research sound more valid and believable because it helps support much of the research. When I was looking for a news article to read about, I wasn’t necessarily looking for a short one, but if I found one brief enough to get the point across, then that would be a plus (or so I thought.) In the end, having more words to work with would have been beneficial to me and throughout this semester I have learned much about research articles and their validity. I have learned that some are more reliable than others and most of the time, extra words and that little bit of extra information is exactly what an article needs to be more reliable. The original article shows just how much I’ve grown since the start of the semester.

--Original published at Caleb C's College Blog

Study done by Researchers at University of British Columbia Discover that Smelling Your Partner’s Scent Could Decrease Your Stress Levels

Research conducted through the University of British Columbia has found that women who are exposed to stranger’s scents compared to their partner’s scent display differences in stress levels. The study was conducted to research how stress levels very in women when exposed to unfamiliar scents. In the study, 96 heterosexual women were randomly assigned to smell one of three scents (their partner’s, a stranger’s, or neutral) and then were exposed to an acute stressor to then evaluate their body’s response to the smell when matched with stress. The main aspects measured in the experiment were cortisol levels, as well as perceived stress. Cortisol is the stress hormone released in the body and perceived stress was defined in the study as “indicated anxiety, physical discomfort, desire to leave the situation, tension, and feelings of control.” Perceived stress was overall reduced in those exposed to their partner’s scent, and cortisol levels were increased in those women who were exposed to a stranger’s scent. The study found, based on these results, that olfactory cues in social interactions revealed that scents impact reactions to stress.

The researchers continue emphasize in the discussion how a “stranger danger” effect was occurring with the elevated cortisol levels and a “partner comfort” effect was observed with the perceived stress. Both of these effects were limited to either aspect. Some criticisms within the research point towards how the men, where the shirts the women had to smell came from, were told to not eat or do anything for 24 hours which would alter their natural smell. This had to be done to control “scents,” though naturally people do things such as use scented lotions or body washes which contribute to their overall scent. This could explain why only 63% of women correctly identified their partner’s scent when exposed to it.

Reflection

This was extremely hard to summarize the research due to all the information and important aspects within the study which are necessary to the study. Though, because I was only limited to about 300 words, I was forced to leave some aspects out in order to properly summarize the research. I believe it was most important to emphasize the main idea of the study as well as what the researchers found within the results. Though, I had to sacrifice some of the details of the experimental setup as well as not hit all of the 5 critical questions. While writing this, I developed more respect for journalists because they have to boil down studies in order to get the most important information out while at the same time appealing to the reader and not boring them. I found the entertaining part the most difficult because I feel like I need to add facts about the research to prove my credibility but at the same time I feel as if I just copied information over and did not make it sound very interesting. This makes me feel bad about how harsh I was when criticizing the article initially because it seemed like they left out a lot of necessary information, though they did give the main message the study found accurately as well as composing it in a way which was appealing to read. I believe the author of the article left out important aspects of the article to make it an easy read while emphasizing the main idea, while I decided to more focus on including as much facts about the study within my 300 word limit and just discussing the main idea towards the beginning. Though, I also had to sacrifice “wrapping up” my article because I could not decide what information to take out without feeling like it was incomplete. Overall, I gained much more respect for journalists through this process because I discovered first hand how hard it can be to summarize main ideas of a complicated article while at the same time not making it a boring read.

Article: https://health.usnews.com/wellness/health-buzz/articles/2018-01-05/smelling-your-partners-shirt-could-decrease-your-stress-levels-study-says

Study: Hofer, M. K., Collins, H. K., Whillans, A. V., & Chen, F. S. (2018). Supplemental Material for Olfactory Cues From Romantic Partners and Strangers Influence Women’s Responses to Stress. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. doi:10.1037/pspa0000110.supp