For the last 39 years Sacramento State psychology professor George Parrot has demanded that his students bring snacks to class and now it looks like that practice has come to an end.

Two weeks ago Professor Parrot walked out of class when his students failed to bring homemade snacks and that walkout led to complaints from several undergraduates. After the school’s administration spoke with the professor he agreed to drop the practice.

While it may seem that on the surface Parrot simply has a sweet tooth he argues that his snack requirement was a way to encourage participation from his pupils. According to Professor Parrot (I keep typing his name because it’s fun to say) the exercise in home economics was a way for students to get to know each other. The teacher also says students learned to form teams, set schedules and check up on each other through his baked goods routine.

According to the professor when he was in school classes were much smaller and undergrads actually got to know each other and formed closed ties, something he hoped his baking project would accomplish during a time when everything is a “commuter rat race” in which students drive to class then drive home with very little real world interaction.

If nothing else the Sacramento college professor hoped that the cakes would provide the fuel needed for students to sit through 3-hour lab sessions.

Do you think the professor overstepped his bounds by requiring baked good or should he be allowed to govern his class as he sees fit?

[Image via ShutterStock.com]

Professor Will No Longer Demand Snacks From Students is a post from: The Inquisitr

Does your wine have a hint of chocolate with just the most subtle hint of Jason Mraz? Or perhaps you prefer a more fruity wine with a touch of Soundgarden? A new study suggests that the music a person listens to changes the way their wine tastes.

Conducted in Scotland researchers found that red and white wine tasted different to drinkers when certain types of music were played.

For the study researchers used the following music:

The “subtle and refined” Tchaikovsky, “zingy and refreshing” Nouvelle Vague, “powerful and heavy” Orff, or “mellow and soft” Michael Brooke.

A fifth control group of drinkers drank in silence.

After drinking their wine subjects were asked to list descriptors about their drinks and according to researchers the taste test revealed that the type of music they were subject too directly influenced their wine tastes.

According to the Telegraph for example drinkers listening to Orff while drinking both the red and white wines called them “powerful and heavy” while listeners of music by Michael Brook said both wines were “mellow and soft.”

Subject scientists reveal:

“Taste of the wine reflected the emotional connotations of the background music played while they drank it.”

Are you surprised to learn that the music we listen to directly affects how wine tastes?

On a side note why can I never find free alcohol study’s to participate in.

Image via @ShutterStock

Music Changes The Way Wine Tastes [Study] is a post from: The Inquisitr

A new study in Social Psychology Quarterly sheds light on the role of family members in the treatment of those diagnosed with a mental illness. Researchers from Northern Illinois University measured the impact of the attitudes of relatives of patients during treatment and found that they can often provide critical support- but also, stigmatizing opinions can impede recovery:

“Negative attitudes of family members have the potential to affect the ways that mentally ill persons view themselves, adversely influencing the likelihood of recovery from the illness,” said lead researcher Dr. Fred Markowitz, an NIU professor of sociology.

The study centered on perhaps the most polarized archetypal figure in psychology- moms. 129 mothers of schizophrenic adult kids were included in the 18-month long study, and Markowitz says that their opinions were integral in the success of treatment. He explains:

“In short, what mom thinks matters,” Markowitz said. “It’s a chain of effects that unfolds.

“We found that when those with mental illness exhibited greater levels of initial symptoms, lower self-confidence and quality of life, their mothers tended to view them in more stigmatized terms—for example, seeing them as ‘incompetent,’ ‘unpredictable,’ and ‘unreliable,’” Markowitz continued.

He also noted:

“When mothers held these views, their sons and daughters with mental illness were more likely to come to see themselves in similar terms—what social psychologists call ‘the reflected appraisals process.’ Importantly, when the individuals with mental illness took on these stigmatizing views of themselves, their symptoms became somewhat greater and levels of self-confidence and quality of life lower.”

The study is part of new research, Markowitz says, into the affects of stigma in general on mental illness and recovery.

Mental Illness Recovery Often Influenced By Family Attitudes is a post from: The Inquisitr

Fussy babies may be less likely to shake off their “fussiness” as they age, according to a study in the April 20th issue of Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Excessive crying, sleeping or feeding difficulties could be markers of a propensity to develop Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or “externalizing problems” such as tantrums or aggressive behavior. According to the study, the higher instances of regulatory problems were, the more likely children were to present with the behavioral issues later on. The studies authors highlighted early intervention to address the issues in infants and children:

“Our findings highlight the need for prospective follow-up studies of regulatory disturbed infants and require reliable assessments of crying, sleeping or feeding problems… The evidence from this systematic review suggests that those with persisting regulatory problems in families with other problems may require early interventions to minimize or prevent the long-term consequences of infant regulatory problems.”

Between 1987 and 2006, the study measured more than 16,000 children, 1,935 of whom had regulatory problems.

[Image]

Baby fussiness linked to ADHD, behavioral problems is a post from: The Inquisitr

A new study has suggested that gamers are more likely to be depressed. In other news, I’m beginning to suspect researchers at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Georgia have had cameras in my bedroom the last few months. Participants in the project reported:

“lower extraversion, consistent with research on adolescents that linked video-game playing to a sedentary lifestyle and overweight status, and to mental-health concerns.”

Rather than gamers being more susceptible to depression, researchers think the illness comes first, and argue that videogames act as an escape route for depressed individuals. Games, they suggest, become a form of self-medication, helping players forget about problems in the real world. As one researcher told MSNBC:

“Habitual use of video games as a coping response may [provide] a genesis for obsessive-compulsive video-game playing, if not video-game addiction.”

The study concludes by offering a profile of the typical gamer:

“The average gamer is 35, overweight, and more likely to be depressed.”

Ha, well that’s wrong. ‘Cause I’m 29. IN YOUR FACE, SCIENCE.

[Via Yahoo! Games]

Depression more likely if you’re a gamer is a post from: The Inquisitr

Not only are they closed-minded but they are also grumpy, or so says Yair Amichai-Hamburger of the Sammy Ofer School of Communication in Israel.

Along with a team of psychologists Yair surveyed 69 Israeli contributors to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, and compared them to a sample of 70 students that were matched age-wise and amount of Internet usage. As expected the Wikipedians were more comfortable online but much to everyone’s surprise they scored low on agreeableness and openness. This was based on the results from a questionnaire that looked at five traits: openness to experience and ideas, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

Amichai-Hamburger speculates that rather than contributing altruistically, Wikipedians take part because they struggle to express themselves in real-world social situations. "They are compensating," he suggests. "It is their way to have a voice in this world."

This is consistent with previous research on online communication, says Scott Caplan of the University of Delaware in Newark, who suspects that heavy users of sites such as Digg and Twitter may have similar characteristics. "People who prefer online social behaviour tend to have higher levels of social anxiety and lower social skills," he says.

Source: The New Scientist – Psychologist finds Wikipedians grumpy and closed-minded

Let the countdown to edited Wikipedia pages begin 5 … 4 … 3 … 2

Psychologist: Wikipedians are close-minded is a post from: The Inquisitr

A week or so ago I wrote about a new service built on top of Twitter called TweetPsych, which aimed to provide you with some psychological markers based on your Twitter account. It did this using some fancy linguistic algorithms and some homebrewed frameworks of some sort.

Well between then and now the author of the service Dan Zerralla has been hard at work adding some new ways to use the TweetPsych service. Now in addition to the original psychological evaluation of your place in the Twittersphere you can also do the following

Find your perfect psychological match on Twitter – as well as the typical profile information TweetPsych now will show you 5 Twitter users that is believed to match, or share, your psychological characteristics. This selection isn’t done topically so your results should differ from other suggested Twitter follower sites.

Create a psychological profile of your Twitter content – when you use this option TweetPsych will take the created psychological profile and compare it against the database of user profiles and return a list of 50 of the closest matches. As Dan says in the post about this option: “The goal is to help you find users that may be mentally aligned with the psycho-graphic profile of the web page you provided.”

I don’t know about you but this whole idea of being psychologically profiled by anything let alone Twitter is really bothersome, and worrisome. I realize that it is being done by more people than just Dan Zarrella but that doesn’t mean I – or you – have to like it.

Turning Twitter into a psychological Match.com is a post from: The Inquisitr