Read moreBut, did you know sperm comprises only about 3 percent of semen? The rest is seminal fluid: mostly water, plus about 50 compounds: sugar, immunosuppressants and oddly, two female sex hormones, and many mood-elevating compounds: endorphins, estrone, prolactin, oxytocin, thyrotropin-releasing hormone, and serotonin.
Read moreIt turns out that having higher levels of long-term self-regulation – that’s basically the ability to plan for the future, prioritize, and generally monitor yourself and your actions as they relate to your long-term goals – was associated with waiting longer to have sex, having fewer lifetime sexual partners, using condoms, and having low levels of sexual risk. Meanwhile, those who scored higher on short-term self-regulation – i.e.,
Read more“The basic idea is that we are highly motivated to maintain a positive image of ourselves – an image of self-integrity, morality, and adequacy,” Schumann said in an email. And this, she reasons, is why apologizing can suck so very much: Having to admit that our words or actions hurt someone else threatens the image of our ideal self. So it makes sense that so many apologies are so bad. We get defensive, so we justify our behaviour, all to protect our egos.
Read moreSo the debate boils down to this: Which approach can overcome the weakness of human nature? Can the abstinence crowd find a way to keep people chaste? Can the contraception crowd find a way to make people stick to their birth control? Can either side deliver the bottom line: fewer abortions?
A study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine (and outlined in Slate by Darshak Sanghavi and Amanda Marcotte) strikes a major blow for the contraception camp.
Read moreAll of us are attracted to a certain type that stops us dead in our tracks, be it a physical type, an emotional type, or a personality type. Let’s say that there is a “spectrum of attraction,” from 1 to 10; the people at the far end aren’t physically or romantically attracted to us at all, but those at the upper end are icons-they’re compellingly attractive, leaving us weak in the knees and triggering both our longing and our insecurity.
Read more“Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes,” writes author and prominent business-world thinker Daniel Pink. “Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.”
A lovely thought. But new research suggests it isn’t always true.
A paper just published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin provides evidence that feelings of empathy toward a distressed person can inspire aggressive behaviour.
Read moreBut although I got treatment, I quit at around the age when, according to large epidemiological studies, most people who have diagnosable addiction problems do so-without treatment. The early to mid-20s is also the period when the prefrontal cortex-the part of the brain responsible for good judgment and self-restraint-finally reaches maturity.
According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, addiction is “a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry.”
Read moreThe three most common date rape drugs are:
Rohypnol (roh-HIP-nol). Rohypnol is the trade name for flunitrazepam (FLOO-neye-TRAZ-uh-pam). Abuse of two similar drugs appears to have replaced Rohypnol abuse in some parts of the United States. These are: clonazepam (marketed as Klonopin in the U.S.and Rivotril in Mexico) and alprazolam (marketed as Xanax).
GHB, which is short for gamma hydroxybutyric (GAM-muh heye-DROX-ee-BYOO-tur-ihk) acid.
Ketamine (KEET-uh-meen)
Read moreBut researchers have recently found that, if you just want an overall view of narcissism, you can replace that 40-question inventory with one question: “How narcissistic are you?”
The key insight is that people who are narcissists aren’t embarrassed by it, so they don’t hold back on saying so. People who are not narcissistic would feel ashamed to be seen as such, so they rate themselves low on the scale.
“People who are narcissists are almost proud of the fact.
Read moreNothing quite like the Grant Study has ever been attempted; as Vaillant puts it, this research represents “one of the first vantage points the world has ever had on which to stand and look prospectively at a man’s life from eighteen to ninety.” The mountains of data collected over more than seven decades have become a rich trove for examining what factors present in a man’s younger years best predict whether he will be successful and happy into old age.
