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Written and researched by Bob Murray, PhD
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Teens' Self-esteem Linked To First Sex
May 20, 2002
The study indicated that self-esteem seemed to play a different role for each gender. While girls with higher self-esteem were less likely to have sex early, the researchers found, the opposite was true for boys.
Previous research has examined the various negative consequences of early sexual intercourse in adolescents, but few studies have aimed to identify the role self-esteem plays when young people choose to begin having sex.
In the current study, lead investigator Dr Gregory D Zimet of Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis and colleagues evaluated 188 seventh graders between the ages of 12 and 14. The study participants had identified themselves as virgins in a questionnaire that also measured various aspects of their self-esteem.
Nearly 2 years later, the same teens, now aged 14 to 16 and in ninth grade, were surveyed again with the same questionnaire.
"Self-esteem functioned differently for boys and girls in terms of its relationship with the initiation of sexual intercourse," Zimet told Reuters Health in an interview.
"Seventh-grade girls with high self-esteem were less likely to subsequently initiate intercourse, whereas seventh-grade boys with high self-esteem were more likely to initiate intercourse," he said.
"In a sense," he said, "the different findings from boys and girls may reflect the larger society's differential attitudes about sexuality based on gender. Given that sexual behavior among girls has often been characterized by society as more socially deviant, it may be that high self-esteem in girls acts as a protective factor by helping them to resist peer pressure to become sexually involved before they are ready," Zimet noted.
"Also, girls with low self-esteem may initiate a sexual relationship in order to feel better about themselves, by providing themselves with the comfort derived from intimacy and/or a sense of maturity," he suggested.
"In contrast, given that sexual behavior among boys has often been characterized as more acceptable, early sexual initiation for boys may be seen as a badge of honor," Zimet pointed out.
Also, those boys who have higher self-esteem may be more socially confident and more likely to find willing partners than boys with low self-esteem, he explained.
The results of this study, according to Zimet, suggest that sex education programs should consider the complex, gender-specific nature of self-esteem and "not assume that 'one-size-fits-all.'"
He added, "Clearly, it makes little sense to try to lower the self-esteem of young adolescent boys. However, the findings do suggest that helping girls to feel more self-confidence and self-respect may help them to delay initiation of sexual intercourse."
This study was reported in Pediatrics 2002;109:581-584.
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Internet Leads to Bad Relationships, Loneliness and Depression
May 20, 2002
Research published in American Psychologist has found that the traditional bonds with friends and family are being weakened by the increasing reliance on the Internet for communication. The new research examined the social and psychological impact of the Internet on 169 people in 73 households in Pittsburgh during their first 1 to 2 years on-line.
They found that the greater use of the Internet was associated with declines in participants' communication with family members in the household, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their depression and loneliness.
They argue that the Internet has vastly reduced cost of communication, via chat rooms etc, with geographically distant acquaintances and strangers; as a result, a smaller proportion of people's total social contacts might be with family and close friends. Other applications on the Internet, particularly the World Wide Web, provide asocial entertainment that could compete with social contact as a way for people to spend their time.
The researchers point out that it has been known for some time that there has been "a broad decline in civic engagement and social participation in the United States over the past 35 years. Citizens vote less, go to church less, discuss government with their neighbors less, are members of fewer voluntary organizations, have fewer dinner parties, and generally get together less for civic and social purposes."
Alarmingly the new study finds that "Within a diverse sample during their first year or two on-line, participants' Internet use led to their having, on balance, less social engagement and poorer psychological wellbeing."
Whether social uses of the Internet have positive or negative effects may depend on how the Internet shapes the balance of strong and weak network ties that people maintain. Strong ties are relationships associated with frequent contact, deep feelings of affection and obligation, and application to a broad content domain, whereas weak ties are relationships with superficial and easily broken bonds, infrequent contact, and narrow focus.
"Strong social ties" the researchers argue "are the relationships that generally buffer people from life's stresses and that lead to better social and psychological outcomes. People receive most of their social support from people with whom they are in most frequent contact, and bigger favors come from those with stronger ties."
Generally, strong personal ties are supported by physical proximity. The Internet potentially reduces the importance of physical proximity in creating and maintaining networks of strong social ties. Unlike face-to-face interaction or even the telephone, the Internet offers opportunities for social interaction that do not depend on the distance between parties. People often use the Internet to keep up with those whom they have preexisting relationships But they also develop new relationships on-line. Most of these new relationships are weak.
MUDs, listservs, newsgroups, and chat rooms put people in contact with a pool of new groups, but these on-line "mixers" are typically organized around specific topics, activities, or demographics and rarely revolve around local community and close family and friends.
Before participants in the study gained access to the Internet and again (depending on sample) approximately 12 to 24 months later, they completed questionnaires assessing their social involvement and psychological wellbeing. The researchers used four measures of social involvement: family communication, size of local social network, size of distant social network, and social support. To measure family communication, they asked participants to list all the members of their household and to estimate the number of minutes they spent each day communicating with each member.
The researchers followed the use that their subjects put the Internet to. In particular they noted the number of emails they sent and received, whether the ones they received were addressed to them personally or were merely because they were on a mailing list, the chat groups and news groups that they belonged to.
They found little different between whites and African Americans or between male and female Internet use. However introverts tended to use the web more than extroverts. Unsurprisingly, teenagers tended to use the Internet more than adults. The most important finding, however was that greater use of the Internet was associated with subsequent declines in family communication. This was true of all households.
Local connections declined in favor of distant ones, also across the board. However this was less true for blacks than whites and more true for teens than adults. Overall, also people reported feeling more lonely as Internet use increased. However there were some differences. People from richer households increased loneliness more than did those from poorer households, men increased loneliness more than did women, and minorities increased loneliness more than did Whites.
They also found that there was an increase in depression as a result of increased web use. The relationship was so strong that the researchers felt it was safe to say that Internet use is a causal factor for depression. Even social uses of the Internet were associated with negative outcomes. For example, greater use of electronic mail was associated with increases in depression.
The fundamental reason for this, the researchers postulate, lie in the declining strength of relationships. There is a paradox that the Internet is a social technology used for communication with individuals and groups, but it is associated with declines in social involvement and the psychological wellbeing that goes with social involvement. Perhaps, by using the Internet, people are substituting poorer quality social relationships for better relationships, that is, substituting weak ties for strong ones.
Read more in American Psychologist
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The Web May Attract Compulsive Gamblers
March 25, 2002
A new study warns that the explosive growth of the Internet will lead to more on-line betting opportunities -- and thus increase the risk of more people suffering from the health and emotional difficulties associated with compulsive gambling. These can include substance abuse, circulatory disease, depression and risky sexual behaviours.
Psychologists Dr George Ladd and Dr Nancy Petry, of the University of Connecticut Health Center, US, surveyed the gambling behaviors of 389 people. They found nearly 11% were problem gamblers and over 15% met the criteria for pathological gamblers.
The most common forms of gambling reported by the participants were lottery (89%), slot machines (82%) and scratch tickets (79%). Next came card-playing forms of gambling (71%), sports betting (57%), bingo (56%) and animal betting (53%).
Internet gambling was reported by just over 8%, or 31 of the participants. Fourteen of those people reported gambling on the Internet at least weekly. Although Internet gambling was the least common gambling activity of the study's participants, the study found that a majority of those with Internet gambling experience had the most serious problems with addiction.
Only 22% of the participants without any Internet gambling experience had problems, compared with 74% of those who used the web. Internet gamblers were also more likely to be unmarried and younger. They also tended to have lower education and income levels.
Writing in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, the researchers said: "The availability of Internet gambling may draw individuals who seek out isolated and anonymous contexts for their gambling behaviours. Accessibility and use of Internet gambling opportunities are likely to increase with the explosive growth of the Internet."
Paul Bellringer, director of GamCare, an organisation in the UK dealing with the social impact of gambling, agreed: "We recognize that Internet gambling has the potential to push up the prevalence of problem gambling. It is relatively easily to get logged on to a hard gambling activity which is repeated time and time again and to get totally absorbed by it."
Mr Bellringer said that, in common with other forms of gambling, young people were potentially most at risk. It is estimated that people under the age of 25 are up to three times more likely to become problem gamblers.
Mr. Bellringer said: "Problem gamblers cease to be doing it for entertainment value or, despite what they might think, to win something. They simply want the gambling activity to last for as long as possible because it makes them feel powerful, they get a buzz from it or it helps them to escape."
GamCare is negotiating with Internet gaming companies to include the following:
- natural pauses between betting sessions
- customer limits on spending
- socially responsible messages about the dangers of gambling
- a helpline number
Read more from GamCare
Read more in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors
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Hong Kong Finds Little Joy in Sex
March 11, 2002
Hong Kong's adults are suffering an increasing deterioration in their sex lives, according to a survey. More than 50% of people asked by the Chinese University of Hong Kong said they had experienced persistent sexual problems in the last year. Problems included erectile dysfunction; chronic lack of sex drive; premature or complete absence of orgasm, and plain ignorance about sexual issues.
Dr Joseph Lau, who conducted the survey, said Hong Kong's struggling economy and pressures of work were making the difficulties worse. "Stress is a problem. Work stress, family stress, financial stress or long working hours are all significant predictors of these problems," he told the BBC's World Today program.
"Except for problems involving anxiety, men are more likely to suffer from sexual problems," he said. According to Dr Lau, Hong Kong people found it difficult to talk about their problems, which meant they had been neglected by doctors. He said more resources were needed to educate people on sexual complaints and how to deal with them.
The telephone survey showed over half the men and women respondents aged between 18-59 had experienced at least one symptom of sexual under-performance for at least three consecutive months in 2001.The research confirms previous work on sex in the territory.
Last year a survey by a condom manufacturer revealed Hong Kongers claimed to have sex 63 times a year. That puts them next to bottom of Asia's sexual-activity league with only the Japanese having sex less often -- an average 36 times in 12 months.
That humans develop sexual dysfunction in overcrowded conditions should not come as any great surprise. First year psychology students do experiments with rats which show that the number of non-fertile, non-breeding, or homosexual rats increases when too many rats are put into an area. Why should we think we humans are any different? Both Hong Kong and Japan are overcrowded. Add to that a strong work ethic and over-work, and you have a potent recipe for a sagging sex life. BM
Read more in BBC News
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What Is a Disease?
February 25, 2002
Complaining of what it calls "the medicalization of human experience," the prestigious medical journal BMJ has published a list of what it calls "non-diseases." By "non-disease" they mean "a human process or problem that some have defined as a medical condition but where people may have better outcomes if the problem or process was not defined in that way."
In other words many of these complaints are a product of somatization, where stress or a mood disorder, such as depression, takes on a more "physical" form.
They are not suggesting that the suffering of people with these "non-diseases" is not genuine. The suffering of many with "non-diseases" may be much greater than those with widely recognized diseases. The point is that some other, more appropriate, intervention is required such as counseling, psychotherapy or psychiatry rather than standard medical procedure.
The list is:
- Air rage
- Alcohol dependency
- Anorgasmia
- Astigmatism
- Attention deficit disorder
- Baldness
- Bed wetting
- Benign prostatic hypertrophy
- Big ears
- Birth
- Boredom
- Brain death
- Calcium deficiency
- Cellulite
- Chinese restaurant syndrome
- Circumcision
- Constipation
- Dandruff
- Deviation of the nasal septum
- Diabetes
- Dysfunctional uterine bleeding
- Dyslexia
- Ejaculatory disorders
- False memory syndrome
- Fibrocystic disease of the breast
- Fibromyalgiav
- Fibrositis
- Food intolerance
- Freckles
- Frozen shoulder
- Glue ear
- Grey or white hair
- Grief reaction
- Gulf war syndrome
- Halitosis
- Hangover
- Hirsutism
- Hypercholesterolaemia
- Hyperhidrosis
- Hypertension
- Hypertrichosis
- Hypoglycaemia
- Hypotension
- Hysteriav
- Insomnia
- Iron deficiency
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Jet lag
- Loneliness
- Low back pain
- Low bone mineral density
- Menopause
- Migraine
- Most allergies
- Multiple chemical sensitivities
- Munchausen syndrome by proxy
- Munchausen's syndrome
- Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome
- Nail chewing
- Non-ulcer dyspepsia
- Obesity
- Onychomycosis
- Pain
- Personality disorder
- Polycystic ovary syndrome
- Positive cervical smear
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Pregnancy
- Premenstrual syndrome
- Recurrent miscarriage
- Repetitive strain disorder
- Restless legs syndrome
- Road rage
- Seasonal affective disorder
- Short stature
- Sick building syndrome
- Skin tags
- Skin wrinkles
- Smoking
- Social phobia
- Somatization disorders
- Stress
- Stretch mark
- Teeth grinding
- Teething
- Tendonitis
- Tension headache
- Tonsillar enlargement
- Total allergy syndrome
- Trans-sexualism
- Transvestism
- Ugliness
- Unhappiness
- Varicose veins
- Verrucas
- Warts
- Whiplash
The BMJ invited it's MD subscribers to comment or to add to the list and among those suggested were:
"Arrogance" -- to be applied to the editorial board of the BMJ!
What ever one thinks of the particular "diseases" on the BMJ's list they have a point. The medicalization of human experience is rampant and is largely driven by those with a vested financial interest in making a particular ailment a recognized and insurance recompensed disease. People are reluctant to accept the fact that a condition may be a somatization of a mood disorder, an emotional or lifestyle problem, or even a relationship issue. BM
Read more in the British Medical Journal
Read the responses in the British Medical Journal
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Two Studies Confirm That Happiness and Health Are Linked to Relationships
February 10, 2002
A study by the University of Florida of what makes elderly people satisfied with life and a separate study by researchers at the universities of Illinois and Pennsylvania into which students are really happy have come to remarkably similar conclusions. It all boils down to relationships.
The Florida researchers found that those who expressed real fulfilment in their twilight years were those who joined in cultural, social, religious and sporting activities. In terms of what kept them happy and healthy these things were more important even than physical activity.
The researchers at Pennsylvania and Illinois identified 22 college undergraduates who scored in the top 10 percent on a variety of measures of happiness. They then compared those very happy students with 60 others who were average in happiness and 24 who were very unhappy.
They found that the happiest students differed from the other groups in consistent ways. They were more social, spent less time alone and reported strong relationships with friends, family and romantic partners. They were more extroverted, more agreeable and less neurotic than their unhappy or somewhat happy peers.
Satisfied with their lives, the very happy students "had virtually never thought about suicide, could recall many more good events in their lives than bad ones and reported many more positive than negative emotions on a daily basis," wrote Dr Ed Diener and Dr Martin Seligman in their report, which appears in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science.
But the researchers found no link between happiness and behaviors that in previous studies had been associated with general wellbeing. The happiest students did not exercise more, get more sleep or attend church services more frequently than their less happy counterparts.
However, lest anyone conclude that an abundance of happiness equals uninterrupted bliss, the psychologists noted that even the happiest students had their bad days and low moods, confirming that their emotional systems were in working order, not stuck in a single, blithesome mode.
"Virtually none of them are at a 10 and nobody stays at a 10," Dr Diener said. "So many people say, 'I want to be happier than I am now.' There is this expectation of being super happy."
In fact, Dr Diener said, unpleasant emotions not only signal that something is wrong, but motivate people to make necessary changes.
Dr David Myers, a professor of psychology at Hope College in Holland, MI, said the study's findings underscored the importance of "our deep need to belong and to connect with others in deep relationships."
Gosh! In the Uplift Program we've been saying that good relationships are essential for happiness for years. So nice to have our concepts backed up by yet more research. BM
Read more in The New York Times
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Death Rates "Linked to Poor Education"
January 7, 2002
A study carried out at the University of Arkansas suggests that an increase in the number of people failing to complete high school is connected to an increase in death rates.
Professor Andreas Muller studied census material for all the US states for 1989 and 1990. He tested whether the link between poverty and the probability of dying was due to different levels of formal education.
Many studies have already shown a link between poverty and mortality rates, but Professor Muller's study concentrated on the effect of educational achievement. His findings, which are published in the British Medical Journal, were that a 20% increase in adults without a high school diploma was linked to an increase of 2.1 deaths per 1,000 people.
Professor Muller said: "Educational attainment was a more powerful predictor of differences in mortality than income inequality in the United States. The potential role of education has been over-looked in previous research on income inequality and mortality."
He said his study suggested that a lack of high school education could account for variations in death rates among US states.
Paradoxically, other studies in the same BMJ issue throw doubt on the assumption that death rates are linked to "poverty" in some developed countries.
Read more in theBritish Medical Journal
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Mothers Who Kill Their Children Can Show Intense Grief
December 8, 2001
Doctors have been warned not to dismiss the possibility of foul play in cases of sudden infant death, even if the parents display intense love and grief. The warning has come after a woman who killed three children managed to convince the authorities that they had died naturally.
It took three murders and two attempted murders for the woman (referred to as M) to be convicted. The delay perhaps resulted from the fact that doctors could not accept that someone who could grieve so deeply was capable of such atrocities.
Extracts of the woman's interviews with a therapist have been published in this month's Archives of Disease in Childhood "in the hope that it may help doctors identify some other woman in time to stop her earlier than M was stopped," said the authors.
M described having a breakdown soon after she killed her first daughter and showed intense grief. "I remember just throwing my whole body over this coffin I was just absolutely hysterical," she recalled.
It was probably this type of behavior that convinced doctors that the death was natural, said the authors. "The value of reading M's account is in alerting health professionals as to how easy it can be to empathize with such a parent. Such empathy may contribute to natural resistance to serious consideration of evidence which indicates the parent may constitute a risk to their child," they said.
Dr Richard Wilson, a community paediatrician and trustee of the UK Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths, said in a statement that all infant deaths should be fully investigated by a team of specialists including doctors, a social worker, and a child protection officer.
"The lesson from this individual case is that investigation of sudden unexpected infant deaths must not depend on subjective emotional response by professionals. In this country it is the coroner and police who have responsibility. Currently, the investigation of sudden unexpected deaths is so inadequate that it is possible to miss some causes, such as metabolic or genetic defects, which could each account for up to 1 in 30 deaths, or to miss homicide, which the Confidential Enquiry into Stillbirths and Deaths in Infancy estimated to be around 1 in 15 deaths," he said.
Reported on the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths website
Read more in the British Medical Journal
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AIDS Myth Causes Surge in Child Rape
November 26, 2001
Thousands of protesters have demonstrated outside a court in the Northern Cape town of Upington, following the appearance of six men charged with the rape of a nine-month-old girl.
One in nine South Africans is living with HIV-AIDS. Aid workers say that despite improvements in AIDS education, the myth of the virgin protection has taken hold in South Africa, fuelling an extraordinary increase in child abuse.
Police say 21,000 cases of child rape or assault were reported in the past year, most committed by male relatives of the victims.
It's not just in South Africa -- this belief is common in many parts of the world. BM
Read more in ABC News
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Gambling, Like Food and Drugs, Produces Feelings of Reward in the Brain
November 26, 2001
A new study published in Neuron lends support to the idea that gambling addictions may well have biological roots. Researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital found that prize money could activate many of the same "reward" areas in the brain turned on by food and drugs.
"This work argues that we can begin to dissect the systems that process reward and organize behavior in humans," says lead author Hans Breiter. "This is also the first demonstration that a monetary reward in a gambling-like experiment produces brain activation very similar to that observed in a cocaine addict receiving an infusion of cocaine."
The researchers set up an experiment to measure the brain activity of volunteers as they gambled. The subjects were given $50 and told they could lose it all or keep their potential winnings. Each subject played the game with one of three spinners: a "good spinner" offered them the chance to earn $10, $2.50 or nothing; an intermediate spinner offered $2.50, $0 or -$1.50; and a "bad spinner" let them win nothing or lose $1.50 or $6. The researchers measured each subject's brain activity using high-field functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) both during six-second spins and after the results were in.
The scientists found that depending on whether a subject played the game with the good, intermediate or bad spinner, he or she showed strong, moderate or low activation levels in certain key brain regions. "The results showed that an incentive unique to humans, money, produced patterns of brain activity that closely resembled patterns seen previously in response to other types of rewards," Breiter says. "This similarity suggests that common brain circuitry is used for various types of rewards."
Separately another study has shown that casinos, contrary to the belief of numerous cities and Indian tribes, don't bring economic health to a community.
In the journal Managerial and Decision Economics, two economists describe their recent analysis of the costs and benefits associated with introducing a casino to a community. Earl Grinols of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and David Mustard of the University of Georgia concluded that the costs outstripped the gains almost two fold, an imbalance that amounts to a national loss of at least $27.5 billion each year.
"Much of the information has been funded by the gambling industry itself," Grinols says, "and is marked by poorly executed or biased economic-impact studies that use incomplete data or make conclusions not supported by facts." Very often, calculations wrongly include the tax receipts and wages from a casino without also taking into account the establishment's effect on other businesses, from whom they drain revenue.
Also underestimated, Grinols and Mustard say, are the social costs. Two-thirds to 80 percent of gambling revenues come from just 10 percent of the population. But among this group, one in five files for bankruptcy and 21 to 36 percent gets fired from their job. These pathological gamblers take "a predictable path of exhausting personal resources, selling insurance policies, selling possessions and 'borrowing' from family and friends" to the tune of $13,586 a year. So too, crime rates are approximately eight percent higher in counties with casinos at least four years old.
Read more in Scientific American
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About the Author
Dr Bob Murray is a widely published psychologist and expert on emotional health and optimal relationships. Together with his wife and long-term collaborator Alicia Fortinberry, he is founder of the highly successful Uplift Program, and author of Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
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