One of our local treasures: the Madonna Inn of San Luis Obispo, California
“Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that differs between the sexes in terms of age at onset, symptomatology, response to medication, and structural brain abnormalities. Now, a new study from the Université de Montréal shows that there is gender difference between men and women’s mental ability — with women performing better than men.”
“We all know alcohol impairs a person’s reasoning abilities. But in a study presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in August, researchers reported that booze also diminishes how smart others perceive us to be. In a series of six experiments, the investigators consistently found that participants rated people in pictures, videos and face-to-face encounters as less intelligent when they held or drank alcoholic beverages than when they drank nonalcoholic beverages or nothing at all. The “imbibing idiot bias,” as the researchers call it, persisted even when participants drank fake alcoholic beverages that did not interfere with their cognitive functioning. Most strikingly, in mock interviews volunteers judged job candidates as less intelligent when they ordered an alcoholic drink—even when the person interviewing them had done so first.”
5 Comments
kxtran89 · November 29, 2010 at 1:19 pm
In the article “People Judge Alcohol Drinkers as Less Intelligent”, I believe that the correlation between drinking and someone acting “foolish/dumb” under the influence of alcohol is very well defined in our society. The “imbibing idiot bias” occurs fairly often; I, myself have been bias towards others who were under the influence. However, one cannot judge a person solely on their alcohol preferences. When a person is under the influence, their cognitive system functions much more differently then when they aren’t drinking. Therefore, we cannot make the assumption that the person is “less intelligent” than any other person, just because they partake in drinking alcoholic beverages.
hdrain · November 29, 2010 at 9:50 pm
The article regarding sex differences in people with schizophrenia really took me by surprise. Like the article mentioned, my guess was that men would have increased spatial orientation than women. What is the contributing factor to this difference in testosterone levels with men? If the testosterone levels in women are higher with psychological disorders, it seems as if the levels in men should also increase- particularly if the disease is at similar stages for similar patients. With these blog posts I end up having more questions!
Maria · November 30, 2010 at 10:41 am
The article “Does Sex Matter? It May When Evaluating Mental Status” was extremely interesting especially because we just covered schizophrenia in class. I don’t understand why there appears to be a correlation with higher testosterone levels in women with schizophrenia, but not in men with schizophrenia. If women with schizophrenia have higher testosterone levels, then shouldn’t men? And if men have higher testosterone levels, then shouldn’t they have a better advantage in mentally rotating a 3D object?
johnson · November 30, 2010 at 12:52 pm
In the article about sex differences in the brain I found their study result intriguing. I wouldn’t have thought schizophrenic women would do better, since in class we learned that schizophrenic people usually do worse than the average population in the Remote Associations Test, I would’ve guessed that the results would be similar to that test.
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