Here I am at San Luis Obispo's Farmer's Market each Saturday!
Here are a few stories that I have found interesting and I hope you will, too!
“We found every additional hour of TV exposure among toddlers corresponded to a future decrease in classroom engagement and success at math, increased victimization by classmates, have a more sedentary lifestyle, higher consumption of junk food and, ultimately, higher body mass index,”
In 2009, Dilip V. Jeste, MD, and Thomas W. Meeks, MD, both professors in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego and researchers at the Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging, published a paper proposing that sagacity might have a neurobiological basis.
In other words, that wisdom is wired.
“Our studies show that washing also reduces the influence of past behaviors and decisions that have no moral implications whatsoever.”
5 Comments
EspieW-PSY340 · May 8, 2010 at 4:13 pm
I read the article and found it interesting, but what can we do with this information? What about the people who compulsively clean? Do they have a guilty conscience that forces them to constantly clean? I watched a show once where they presented people with compulsive behavior disorders, and this one woman washed so much that she would make herself bleed. Did something tragically happen to her to force her into that compulsive disorder? Does she have a guilty conscience? I wash my hands many times during the day because I hate it when my hands feel like they may be dirty. It never crossed my mind that clean hands could mean more than just cleanliness.
kjchin · May 9, 2010 at 6:17 pm
In the Toddlers and TV article, I am wondering if watching TV at a young age leads to a higher BMI, because of the known fact that while sitting in front of a TV increases your portion size, because you are just sitting there with something like a bag of chips and before you know it, it’s all gone? I can see that watching TV at a young age will affect future academics, but I’m not really understanding the higher BMI correlation with watching TV at a young age.
patric · May 11, 2010 at 4:55 am
Dear Laura,
With regard to the article by Jeste and Meeks (2009) on wisdom I was wondering if there are nowadays pragmatic steps one could actually pursue to empirically show & improve wise behavior. Research by Baltes, Sternberg or Richard Hawley Trowbridge’s dissertation on wisdom bring us psychological insights on factors that influence wise behaviour, but no actual guide on how to become wise.
Please tell me your opinion.
Regards,
P.
Laura Freberg · May 11, 2010 at 11:19 am
Hi, Patric! You might be interested in the work of the Arete Institute at the University of Chicago, which is the brainchild of John Cacioppo. John is bringing together large teams to tackle the “big problems.” Here is the link to their wisdom work:
http://wisdomresearch.org/
I would be interested in your opinion of this, if you have time.
Best,
Laura
Laura Freberg · May 11, 2010 at 11:26 am
Espie, I think that more work needs to be done on the handwashing issue–obviously, this is a complex bit of work that is not likely to be resolved with one study. I don’t think the researchers are suggesting that people stop washing 🙂
Kim, you’re right about the trickiness in interpreting correlations like TV watching and BMI. All we can say is that they covary, but not why. There might be many differences between families that allow toddlers to watch TV and those that don’t, including income, education, and so on.
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