Originally posted on February 12, 2015. Did you watch all five seasons of “Breaking Bad” over a long weekend? Have you ever longed for the weekend so that you can watch episode after episode of your new favorite television show? Are you counting down until Netflix releases Season 3 of “House of Cards” later this month? You’re not alone. Binge-watching seems harmless—I’ve been known to veg out occasionally after a long week, watching hours of “The Wire”—but is it really? New research says maybe not. It turns out, loneliness and depression are linked to TV binge-watching. In a recent study, over 300 18-to-29-year-olds reported their loneliness, depression, self-regulation, and binge-watching behavior. The more depressed the survey participants were, the more they binge-watched. The depression-binge watching relationship was strongest among people who lacked self-control. Faced with the option of watching yet another episode, impulsive participants went along with the binge-watching program. These findings complement other research showing relationships between depression, loneliness, and self-regulation problems and general binging behavior. To escape from a lonely or depressed mood, people often engage in addictive behaviors. Most of us have fallen prey to the binge watching bug. It’s okay to enjoy an occasional marathon TV-watching session. But remember the science: If you’re feeling blue, try not to hide your sorrows in the “boob tube.” It’s not likely to help, and it just might make matters worse. ... View more

Originally posted on July 2, 2015. Not long ago, I enjoyed one of my favorite summer pastimes. With a close friend, I attended a Major League Baseball game. My team got clobbered, it rained, and I forgot to bring home the free Johnny Bench bobble head doll that I drove 90 minutes to get. But the trip was worth it because I witnessed something that borders on magic: kids dancing without a care in the world. Whether they dazzle 25,000 spectators on a giant screen or an impromptu dance party in the living room, kids know how to get down. They often lack skill, grace, and sensitivity. But none of that matters. Feelings are facts, and kids know the definition of dancing is fun.                   Mamigibbs/Getty Images Why does dancing lose its appeal? According to recent research, a better question is when does dancing become a downer? The decline of dance starts when we develop what is called a theory of mind, that pesky ability to infer another person’s mental states. A theory of mind lets the trick-or-treater know that the person underneath the mask isn’t really a goblin and what might make a parent buy a desired toy. A theory of mind also helps us think of how others judge our dancing. And that, my friends, is when dancing stops being so fun. The upside is that there’s never of shortage of young people who haven’t gotten wise to how goofy dancing makes them look. This weekend I’ll go back to watch my team play. The kids will dance, the adults will laugh, and we’ll all enjoy a relaxing evening. ... View more

Originally posted on September 24, 2015. This past weekend, I gave myself an odd birthday present. I entered an ultramarathon. If you’ve read my posts, you know I like to run. For my birthday, I wanted to run 100 miles as fast as I could. Luckily, I had a perfect opportunity. There was a 24 hour running race within driving distance of my house. There was a bigger purpose in my run. I could determine whether a recent test of my speed and endurance would replicate. Two weeks ago, I ran 100 miles in 22 hours and 10 minutes. Replication is important. It tells whether repeating the essence of an experiment will produce the same result. The more the same sequence of events produces a similar outcome, the more we can depend on it.  Psychology is embroiled in a current debate about replicability. All psychologists agree that replication is important. That is a requirement before you get your card when you join the psychologist club. The debate centers on the meaning of non-replication. A recent report found that 64 percent of the tested psychological effects did not replicate. Some have declared a war on current scientific practices, hoping to inch the non-replication rate down to a less newsworthy percentage. Others, such as Lisa Feldman Barrett, argue that non-replication is a part of science. It tells us just as much about why things do happen as to why they don’t. My birthday run had everything I needed to make a replication attempt. Nearly everything was identical to the last time I ran 100 miles. The course consisted of a flat, concrete loop that was nearly one mile long. I ate the same foods, drank the same amount of water, and got the same amount of sleep the night before. All signs pointed to an exact replication. Then the race started. The first 50 miles breezed by. I was over an hour faster than my previous run, but I felt pretty good. By mile 65, I was mentally fatigued. By mile 70, my body was exhausted. By the time I hit mile 75, I was done. Less than 16 hours had passed, but I was mentally and physically checked out. No replication. There are at least two ways I can deal with this non-replication. The first is to panic. Either the people who counted my laps at the previous race did something wrong, I reported something wrong, or something else is wrong. It is as if it never happened. The next time someone asks me my personal record, I can tell them. But I must tell them that I don’t trust it. “Probably just a one-off,” I might say. “Tried to replicate it two weeks later and came up short.” A second approach is to try to understand what contributed to the non-replication. Most things were the same. But some things were different, among them the wear and tear that long running has on the body and mind. Maybe I wasn’t fully recovered from the previous race. Maybe I ran too fast too soon. Or maybe I’m just not that fast. Either way, it tells us a different story about replication. Replication science is possible, but we will always have non-replications. And those non-replications aren’t badges of shame. They tell us as much about the complexity of human psychology as the truth about how certain situations make us think, feel, and act. It would be great if psychology’s non-replication rate dwindled to less than 5 percent. I doubt that will ever happen. Humans are squirrely animals. No matter how much we want to do the same thing twice, sometimes it doesn’t happen. ... View more

Originally posted on April 3, 2014. My friend Ed Diener, the Jedi Master of happiness research, presented a wonderful keynote talk on “The Remarkable Progress of National Accounts of Subjective Well-Being” at the recent one-day “Happiness and Well-Being” conference.  He documented the social and health benefits of positive well-being, and celebrated the use of at least simple well-being measures by 41 nations as of 2013. In displaying the health accompaniments of positive emotions, Ed introduced me to a 2011 PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) study by Andrew Steptoe and Jane Wardle that I’d somehow missed.  Steptoe and Wardle followed 3,853 fifty-two to seventy-nine year olds in England for 60 months.  This figure displays the number surviving, among those with high, medium, and low positive affect—which was assessed by averaging four mood reports across a single day at the study’s beginning.  Those with a “blue” mood that day were twice as likely as the good mood folks to die in the ensuing five years!{cke_protected_1}{cke_protected_2} ... View more

Originally posted on April 30, 2014. Those of us with hearing loss cheered one of our own, Seattle Seahawks football player Derrick Coleman, as he became a national exemplar in the U.S. for living with hearing loss. We reveled in the Super Bowl Duracell ad chronicling his life story.  And we felt a warm glow when he gifted twin New Jersey 9-year-old sisters with Super Bowl tickets and handwritten encouraging words:  “Even though we have hearing aids, we can still accomplish our goals and dreams!” As 500,000+ Google links to “Deaf Seahawks fullback” testify, Coleman’s story inspires us.  The reports of Coleman’s “deafness” also raise an interesting question:  Who is deaf? By using a combination of hearing aids and the natural lip reading that we all do, Coleman, despite his profound hearing loss, reportedly hears his quarterback call plays amid the din of the Seahawks stadium.  And he converses, as when amiably answering questions at a Super Bowl press session. In doing so, he is akin to millions of others who live well with hearing loss. Without our hearing aids or cochlear implants, some of us among the world’s 360 million people with hearing loss become truly deaf—unable to hear normal conversation.  When I remove my hearing aids before showering in my college gym, the locker room banter goes nearly silent.  In bed at night without my aids, my wife’s voice from the adjacent pillow becomes indecipherable, unless she turns to speak into my ear. So, in his everyday functioning, is Derrick Coleman “deaf”? Am I deaf?  Are my friends in the hearing loss community deaf? Partly out of respect for my nonhearing, signing cousins in the Deaf Culture, my answer is no:  I am not Deaf.  Like Deaf people who fluently communicate with Sign, a genuine language, I am also not disabled or “hearing impaired” (which labels a person).  Rather I am a person with hearing loss.  The Hearing Loss Association of America—“the nation’s voice for people with hearing loss”—offers resources that assist “people with hearing loss and their families to learn how to adjust to living with hearing loss [and] to eradicate the stigma associated with hearing loss”—and thus to live as not-deaf. I asked the Association’s recently retired director, Brenda Battat, whose hearing was partially restored with a cochlear implant, if she considers herself deaf.  “No. From a life experience, functioning, and self-identity perspective I do not consider myself deaf.” Ditto my friend, musician Richard Einhorn, who has a substantial hearing loss and was recently featured in a news story that was headlined: "Hearing Loops Give Music Back to Composer Who Went Deaf in a Day." “The ‘deaf’ label is not accurate,” notes Einhorn, who uses various technologies to hear.  “With a good hearing aid and additional listening technology such as hearing loops, I can hear well enough in most situations to participate fully in conversations and enjoy live music, theater, and films.” Thanks to new hearing technologies, most of us with hearing loss can effectively function as not-deaf.  My state-of-the-art hearing aids amplify sound selectively, depending on my loss at different frequencies.  They offer directionality.  They compress sound (raising soft sound and lowering extremely loud sound).  Via a neck-worn Bluetooth streamer, they wirelessly transmit phone conversation and music from my smart phone to both my hearing aids. And thanks to my favorite hearing technology—the hearing loops that broadcast PA sound wirelessly to my in-the-ear speakers (aka hearing aids)—I hear! Ergo, while most natively Deaf people are served by Sign, the rest of us—the invisible majority with hearing loss—need hearing assistance.  We respect, but live outside of, the Deaf Culture.  We benefit from new hearing technologies.  Lumping all people with hearing loss together as “deaf” respects neither Deaf people nor those with hearing loss.  Here ye, hear ye! ... View more

Originally posted on June 5, 2014. An amazingly comprehensive new Lancet study, with nearly 150 authors, tracks overweight and obesity rates across 188 countries from 1980 to 2013.  Some highlights: Worldwide, the proportion of overweight adults (BMI ≥ 25) increased from 29 to 37 percent among men and 30 to 38 percent among women. Over the last 33 years, no country has reduced its obesity rate. In 2010, “overweight and obesity were estimated to cause 3.4 million deaths.” National variations are huge, with the percentage overweight ranging 85 percent among adults in Tonga to 3 percent in Timor-Leste. The study is amazing not only in its global comprehensiveness, across time, but also in its public, interactive data archive available from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. As a screen shot example, I compared the U.S. increase in the overweight percentage (upper dark line) with the global increase (lower dark line).  All other countries are in light blue. ... View more

Originally posted on June 17, 2014 Is religion toxic to human flourishing . . . or is it supportive of human happiness, health, and helpfulness? Let’s make this empirical: Is religious engagement associated with humans living well, or with misery, ill-health, premature death, crime, divorce, teen pregnancy, and the like? The answer differs dramatically by whether we compare places (such as more versus less religious countries or states) or individuals. For starters, I manually harvested data from a Gallup World Poll, and found a striking negative correlation across 152 countries between national religiosity and national well-being: Then I harvested General Social Survey data from the U.S. and found—as many other researchers in many other countries have found (though especially in more religious countries) a positive correlation between religiosity and happiness across individuals. For additional striking examples of the religious engagement paradox—associating religious engagement with life expectancy, smoking, arrest rate, teen pregnancy, and more (across states versus across individuals)—see here. Princeton economist Angus Deaton and psychologist Arthur Stone have recently been struck by the same paradox. They ask (here), “Why might there be this sharp contradiction between religious people being happy and healthy, and religious places being anything but?” Before answering that question—and wondering whether the more important story is told at the aggregate or individual level—consider a parallel paradox, which we might call “the politics of wealth paradox.” Question: Are rich Americans more likely to vote Republican or Democrat? When we compare states (thanks to Chance News) we can see that low income predicts Republican preferences. Folks in wealthy states are more likely to vote Democratic!  So, being rich inclines one to liberalism? Not so fast: comparing individuals, we see the opposite (and more expected) result—high income folks vote more Republican. These are the sorts of findings that excite behavioral science sleuths. Surely there must be some confounding variables. With religiosity, one such variable is income—which is lower in highly religious countries and states. Controlling for status factors such as income (as Louis Tay did for our article with Ed Diener) and the negative correlation between religiosity and well-being disappears, and even reverses to slightly positive. Likewise, low income states differ from high income states in many ways, including social values that also predict voting. Ergo, my hunch is that, in both the religious and political realms, the most important story is found at the level of the individual. Nevertheless, there are practical uses for these data. If you’re wanting to make religious engagement look bad, use the aggregate, macro-level data. If you want to make religious engagement look good, use the individual data. ... View more

Originally posted on December 23, 2014. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drawing from its own continuing household interviews, offers new data​ on who in the U.S. is most likely to suffer depression, and how often.   Some noteworthy findings: Overall rate of depression: Some 3 percent of people age 12 and over were experiencing “severe depressive symptoms.” More people—7.6 percent—were experiencing “moderate or severe” symptoms, with people age 40 to 59 at greatest risk. Many more—78 percent—“had no depressive symptoms.” Gender and depression. Women experience nearly double (1.7 times) men’s rate of depression. Poverty and depression. People living below the poverty line are 2½ times more likely to be experiencing depression. (Does poverty increase depression? Does depression increases poverty? Or—mindful of both the stress of poverty and the CDC-documented impact of depression on work and home life—is it both?) Depression and treatment.  Only 35 percent of people with severe symptoms reported contact with a mental health professional in the prior year. ... View more

Originally posted on February 4, 2015. Friday my focus was hearing research and care—at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, where I sit on the Advisory Council (assessing federal support for hearing research and hearing health).  Days later, I was cheering on my ill-fated hometown Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl. Alas, there is some dissonance between those two worlds, especially for fans of the team that prides itself on having the loudest outdoor sports stadium, thanks to its “12th Man” crowd noise—which has hit a record 137.6 decibels . . . much louder than a jackhammer, notes hearing blogger, Katherine Bouton. With three hours of game sound rising near that intensity, many fans surely experience temporary tinnitus—ringing in the ears—afterwards...which is nature’s warning us that we have been baaad to our ears.  Hair cells have been likened to carpet fibers. Leave furniture on them for a long time and they may never rebound. A rule of thumb: if we cannot talk over a prolonged noise, it is potentially harmful. With repeated exposure to toxic sound, people are at increased risk for cochlear hair cell damage and hearing loss, and for constant tinnitus and hyperacusis (extreme sensitivity to loud noise). Men are especially vulnerable to hearing loss, perhaps partly due to greater noise exposure from power tools, loud music, gunfire, and sporting events (some researchers have implicated noise is men’s greater hearing loss).  But some men know the risks, as 2010 Super Bowl-winning quarterback Drew Brees illustrated, when lifting his son Baylen, with ear muffs during the post-game celebration. For more on sports and noise, visit here. ... View more

Originally posted on March 17, 2015. One of the pleasures of writing psychological science is learning something new nearly every day, from the continual stream of information that flows across my desk or up my screen.  Some quick examples from the last few days: Nudging nutrition. Joseph Redden, Traci Mann, and their University of Minnesota colleagues report a simple intervention that increases schoolchildren’s veggie eating.  In a paper to appear in PLOS One, they report—from observations of 755 children in a school cafeteria—that, for example, offering carrots first in the serving line (in isolation from other foods to come) quadrupled their consumption. For more on healthy eating nudges, see Mann’s forthcoming book, Secrets from the Eating Lab​. Hugging prevents colds.  In new research by Sheldon Cohen and his team, social support, indexed partly by the frequency of experienced hugs, predicted fewer and milder infections among 404 healthy people exposed to a cold virus.  A hug a day keeps sickness away? Finger digit ratio predicts national differences in gender inequality?  It’s not news that nations vary in female political representation, workforce participation, and education.  It was news to me that they reportedly also vary in 2D:4D—that’s the ratio of the index (2D) and ring finger (4D) lengths.  Nations that purportedly show relatively high female fetal testosterone exposure (supposedly manifest as low 2D:4D) and relatively low male fetal testosterone exposure (high 2D:4D) have higher rates of female parliamentary and workforce participation. Hmmm. How effective is repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) for treating depression?  A few well-publicized studies suggested it was effective. But a new meta-analysis of all the available studies indicates this treatment actually provides only “minimal clinical improvement.” And this is why teachers and authors need to consider all of the available research, and not just isolated studies. It’s not all in our genes: Exercise really is healthy. Finnish researchers studied 10 identical male twins—one of whom regularly exercised, the other not. Despite having similar diets, the sedentary twins had more body fat, more insulin resistance, less stamina, and less brain gray matter. The moral to us all:  join the movement movement. ... View more

Originally posted on April 14, 2015. As most introductory psychology students learn, negative emotions often affect health. And persistent anger can lash out at one’s own heart. Might negative emotions, such as anger, also be risk factors for entire communities? In an amazing study in the February Psychological Science, Johannes Eichstaedt and thirteen collaborators ascertained heart disease rates for each of 1,347 U.S. counties. They also obtained from Twitter 148 million county-identified tweets from these 1,347 counties. Their finding: a county’s preponderance of negative emotion words (such as “angry,” “hate,” and various curse words) predicted its heart disease deaths “significantly better than did a model that combined 10 common demographic, socioeconomic, and health risk factors, including smoking, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.” A preponderance of positive emotion words (such as “great,” “fantastic,” and “enjoyed”) predicted low heart disease rates. Given that the median Twitter user is age 31, and the median heart disease victim is much older, why should Twitter language so successfully predict a county’s heart disease-related deaths? Younger adults’ tweets “may disclose characteristics of their community,” surmise the researchers, providing “a window” into a community’s social and economic environment. An anger-laden community tends to be, for all, a less healthy community, while happier makes for healthier. www.loopflorida.org.​ Steve Debenport/E+/Getty Images ... View more

Originally posted on May 28, 2015. Some studies put a smile on my face, as happened when reading a new meta-analysis of tea drinking’s association with lower risk of depression. As a tea-drinking happy person, I was pleased that eleven studies of 22,817 people reveal that regular tea drinking predicts a 31 percent decreased depression risk.  There is also a dose-response relationship:  the more tea people drink, the less their depression risk. The analysis was done by researchers in China (where I enjoyed tea at every meal in a recent visit to Beijing).  And with the exception of two Finnish studies, all the research was conducted in tea-drinking Asia (China, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore). Although the finding is correlational, the Hauzhong University researchers did find the association for both green and other teas, and also when controlling for diet, exercise, alcohol, and smoking.  Thus, they conclude, “tea consumption may act as an independent protective factor for depression.  Given that tea is widely consumed, has few documented adverse effects, and is relatively inexpensive, its potential in treating and preventing depression should be recognized.” Time for my afternoon cuppa... ... View more

Originally posted on June 30, 2015. From the daily information stream that flows across my desk or up my computer screen, here is a recent new flashes: How marital support gets under the skin. A mountain of research shows that good marriages predict better health and longer life. But why? In a longitudinal study, Richard Slatcher and colleagues found that the perceived responsiveness of one’s partner predicted healthier stress hormone levels ten years later. “Our findings demonstrate that positive aspects of marriage—not only partner responsiveness but also provision of emotional support—may help shape the HPA axis in beneficial ways, potentially leading to long-term changes in cortisol production.” (The HPA axis is the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal network that controls our reactions to stress.) ... View more

Originally posted on July 7, 2015. From the daily information stream that flows across my desk or up my computer screen, here is a recent news flash: Global data on mental illness. New global disease data published this week by The Lancet​ indicate the worldwide prevalence of schizophrenia (24 million people), anxiety disorders (266 million), major depressive disorder (253 million), and bipolar disorder (49 million). Major depressive disorder now trails only low back pain as a source of “years lived with disability.” ... View more

Originally posted on July 14, 2015. From the daily information stream that flows across my desk or up my computer screen, here is a recent news flash: Global hearing loss. As an advocate for people with hearing loss (see here), I also noted the global prevalence of hearing loss: 1.23 billion people. Of course, the number depends on the definition. This global survey defined hearing loss as >20 decibels loss. In the U.S., the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders reports that “approximately 17 percent (36 million) of American adults report some degree of hearing loss.” According to a 2011 report based on audiometric testing of Americans 12 and older in the National Health and Nutritional Examination Surveys (NHANES), 30 million Americans have at least a 25 decibel hearing loss in both ears and 48 million in one or both ears. ... View more