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How We Should Wash Our Hands and Just How Bad We Are At Washing Them

How We Should Wash Our Hands and Just How Bad We Are At Washing Them

Shaking Hands with All Those Pesky Germs Out There Seems Like a Scary Thing to do
I am a body language expert and I wrote the book SNAP about first impressions. I tell my clients to shake hands to bond and create rapport with people quickly. I have done years of research on handshakes so I think you should read this article and learn how to properly wash your hands and you might want that that person in the rest room with your to wash their hands as well.
Here is the research on germs a
We are very, very bad at washing our hands, says science
A whopping 95 percent of people are doing it wrong



Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

Is It Time for Doctors to Ditch the White Coat? First Impressions in Health Care



Is It Time for Doctors to Ditch the White Coat? First Impressions in Health Care

You go to the doctor and he or she walks into the room with that clinical white coat. How does that effect their first impression? And how does that effect you as the patient. You may know that I speak on body language and patient care so I particularly interested in the latest research on doctors white coats.


Is it time for doctors to ditch the white coat?
The traditional uniform is causing more problems than you think


Anyone who has considered medicine as a career imagines walking into a white, clean exam room with the power to comfort and heal the sick. To add to this angelic fantasy, we do not forget to imagine ourselves wearing a freshly laundered white coat bearing what only many years of arduous education and sleepless nights can provide: First name, last name, M.D.
The white coat is a badge of perseverance, intelligence, empowerment, and authority — for new interns, a reassurance that they have what it takes to take care of the life of another. But this Victorian symbol of purity and sanitation may soon go the way of the lobotomy.
I recently returned from an interview at Mayo Clinic, where I was surprised to see so many business suits. As one of the world's meccas for medicine and health care, I expected a place that resembled, well, a hospital. Instead I encountered what appeared to be a fancy hotel with a curiously large number of wheelchairs.
The rationale behind the white coat restriction makes sense given Mayo's dedication to providing the best for patient care and comfort. The organization's philosophy: The white coat builds a barrier between patient and physician, increasing the chances for the patient to feel anxious.
And Mayo patients seem to like it. Surveys have found that patients felt most comfortable when physicians wore scrubs, followed by semi-formal/business attire, then followed last by white coats. In order to maintain its high standards of professionalism, Mayo went with the suit and eschewed the white coat. (The only ones who can wear white coats in public are those in scrubs coming from or going to the OR.)
In a separate 2005 report published in the British Medical Journal, researchers found that patients preferred doctors wearing semiformal attire — defined as dark pants and long-sleeved shirt with a tie for men, and dark-colored skirts or pants with a blouse for women. Those ensembles beat out the white coat, formal wear, and casual attire.
Mayo is not alone in recognizing the symbolic power of the white coat. As Jean-Phillip Okhovat, a UCLA medical student, puts it, "I think the white coat creates an immediate sense of hierarchy. Not wearing a white coat makes it less intimidating for the parent and child."
In psychiatry, the white coat can not only add to this patient-physician barrier, but also become a target of aggression for patients with a history of troubled visits to the doctor. Yang Yu, a University of California, Irvine, medical student, recalls, "Mentally ill patients can perceive the white coat as a threat. There have been instances of people in white coats who were attacked."
Inevitably, when the topic of white coats comes up, the issue of spreading infections is never far away. Even as someone who works in health care, the white coat can sometimes make me cringe. I have no idea how many hundreds of patients that coat rubbed up against, and sometimes I can tell that the coat has not been washed in weeks. The gloves get changed, the paper on the examination bed gets rolled out, and copious amounts of hand sanitizer are used, but none of that may matter if the biggest culprit is right on the doctor's clothes.
In one study, researchers found that doctor's white coats were contaminated with all kinds of bacteria, including Staphylococci resistant to penicillin, erythromycin, and clindamycin. The worst areas were the sides of the white coat, the cuffs, collars, and pockets.
The National Health Service in the U.K. has already banned the use of long-sleeved white coats, and instead adopted a "bare below the elbows" rule to reduce unnecessary infections. The NHS also requires that doctors leave their uniforms at the workplace, where it is regularly laundered to reduce cross-contamination. This policy has already shown a marked reduction in infections. (I should mention, however, that despite evidence showing that white coats harbor bacteria, many professionals remain unconvinced that this makes a difference in terms of nosocomial infections.)
Every July and August of each year, recently admitted medical students don fresh white coats to symbolize the beginnings of this arduous yet rewarding journey toward becoming a physician. But the tone is changing as physicians continuously ask themselves how best to serve their patients. As Don Berwick, a Harvard Medical School professor and former Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, put it at the commencement for the Yale School of Medicine in 2010:
Those who suffer need you to be something more than a doctor; they need you to be a healer. And to become a healer, you must do something even more difficult than putting your white coat on. You must take your white coat off.
When you take off that white coat in the sacred presence of those for whom you will care — in the sacred presence of people just like you — when you take off that white coat, and tower not over them, but join those you serve, you become a healer in the world of fear and fragmentation.

Is it time for doctors to ditch the white coat?
The traditional uniform is causing more problems than you think













Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

Is Norman Bates a Realistic Psychopath? How Movies Portray Psychopaths and Psychologist Define Them



Is Norman Bates a Realistic Psychopath?
How Movies Portray Psychopaths and How Psychologist Can Use Movies to Help with a diagnosis.
I have studied the movies and the creative career of Alfred Hitchcock with a fascination that help prepare me for my TV interviews on HLN analyzing suspected Murderers. I have written extensively about narcissism and find this research fascinating. If you like the article you may want to pick up the nonfiction book The Murder Room about a real life secret society of experts who solve cold case murders. But don't, absolutely don't read the book in bed and then try to go to sleep.

Is Norman Bates a realistic psychopath?
A new study examines 400 movies to see whether Hollywood gets psychopathy right


Pycho's psycho leaves a lot to be desired.
At least that's the conclusion of a new study that tried to determine realistic portrayals of psychopathic behavior on the silver screen. According to forensic psychiatrists Samuel Leistedt and Paul Linkowski, who led a team that studied hundreds of films, Norman Bates was too delusional and disconnected from reality to qualify as being a psychopath. The world's most famous mama's boy, if they had to diagnosis him, was more psychotic than psychopathic.
Bates isn't alone. Psychopathy isn't what most movies make it out to be, Leistedt and Linkowski say, and most psychos in film, especially in the medium's early days, are either caricatures or based on a poor or incomplete understanding of the disorder. And because the definition of psychopathy has changed over the years, movie psychos from one era might be diagnosed differently today.
To gauge the realism of movie psychos and see how their portrayals have evolved, Leistedt and Linkowski put together a team of forensic psychiatrists and movie critics to watch 400 movies dating from 1915 to 2010. The majority of psychopathic characters were ignored because they had magical powers, were nonhuman, or were otherwise way too unrealistic. The 126 characters that were left got a closer look from the team to find the most accurate psychopaths.
Aside from giving screenwriters and actors an idea of what they're doing right or wrong, the researchers hope that their work can be a useful teaching tool for psychology and psychiatry students. Diagnosing and recognizing psychopathy isn't easy, and very few students will get to see the real deal during their training. A library of the best movie psychos could be the next best thing — and a lot safer.
Here are a few of the movie psychopaths that the study deemed realistic, and those that were the stuff of fantasy.

Realistic psychopaths

1. Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men. The bolt pistol-toting hit man was called out for a frighteningly realistic portrayal of a damaged mind. Leistedt and Linkowski call him a "well-designed prototypical idiopathic/primary psychopath," who displays an " incapacity for love, absence of shame or remorse, lack of psychological insight, inability to learn from past experience, cold-blooded attitude, ruthlessness, total determination, and lack of empathy." Chigurh reminded them of real-life contract killers they've studied, like Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski.
2. Gordon Gekko, Wall Street. "One of the most interesting, manipulative, psychopathic fictional characters to date," say Leistedt and Linkowski. "Successful psychopaths" and "corporate psychopaths" like Gekko are getting more attention from filmmakers and clinicians alike in the wake of global economic crisis, and the researchers expect to see more figures like this pop up in both movies and newspaper headlines.
3. Henry, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. The title character, inspired by real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, shows a "powerful lack of empathy, emotional poverty, and a well-illustrated failure to plan ahead" that faithfully reflects the lack of stability in a psychopath's life.
4. Hans Beckert, M. "One of the first, rarest, and more realistic" portrayals before the 1960s, the character is an "outwardly unremarkable man tormented by a compulsion to murder children ritualistically, which is a substantially more realistic depiction of what would eventually be known today as a sexually violent predator (SVP)."

A little too crazy

1. Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and other "slashers." On the whole, slasher films stray pretty far from realistic psychopathy. Even if you ignore the supernatural elements in some of the movies, the killers' sadism and "ability to predict the plan that the future victims will use to escape" left most of them excluded from serious analysis.
2. Hannibal Lecter, Silence of the Lambs. "Lecter is an exceptionally intelligent sophisticated socialite, whose disarming charisma, erudition, civility, and wit disguise his true nature," Leistedt and Linkowski say — and that's not a combination you'll often find in the real world. Lecter is not only an unrealistic psychopath, but also a poor depiction of a psychiatrist. He's "an extraordinarily astute clinician who can diagnose Jodie Foster's psychological conflicts by identifying her perfume and assessing her shoes and clothing with Holmesian accuracy." These abilities, Leistedt and Linkowski dryly note, "are not generally found in everyday clinical practice."



Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

Improve Your Job Interviews on Skype,


How Do Your Prepare to Give and Interview via Skype


Many of my clients have asked me how to interview and give a good interview via Skype. It certainly isn't easy, but you can do it.  Prepare you room check to see what shows up on the screen. Simplify your background. Try different locations for the lighting to make you look your best. Even guys may want to use a little brush of translucent powder so you don't look sweaty on camera. Make sure you if you wear glasses that they don't have a glare bouncing off of them. Lens Crafters has nonglare lenses for an extra 40 dollars. Do a dry run of your interview with a friend. Preferably someone who isn't hyper critical. Check your connection, and sound.

during the interview notice the words that the interviewer is using and mirror them back. For example if they say, "We have a great TEAM here at EYZ company."  you can say somewhere in the interview. When I was working with the TEAM at...." or if they use a technical term a few times and you know what it means you can use it as well. This makes you sound and feel to them that you
are a good match.

Make sure you have examples of your successful contributions in previous jobs. For more tips including body language for good interviews go check out my other job interview posts.

Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional a body language expert and a interview coach.
 For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

The Research Shows an Anti-redhead Prejudice in Attraction and Why I have a thing for Red Headed Men


The science behind anti-redhead prejudice and Why I have a thing for Red Headed Men

It started in Kindergarten. I saw his red hair from across the room and I was immediately smitten. I could not help myself. I wanted to be friends with Kenny Sharp. His smile and his freckles and that ginger hair did things to me. We were both four and he became my Crayola red crayon boyfriend through first and second grade and set the tone for my life long love of red headed men. Why? I think it is my Scottish heritage on my mothers side of the family we are Lochries. I think I long for my Scottish roots and few read headed children.  My proclivity for red headed men does not fall in line with the national average of what makes a man attractive. Most women spurn the advances of a read headed man. But not me. Here is the research.

The science behind anti-redhead prejudice
Studies show that people are less likely to make a move on a redheaded girl or accept the advances of a redheaded guy. Why?


Are people with red hair — gingers, redheads, individuals of unusual rufosity, whatever you want to call them — less attractive than people with other hair colors? That is certainly what received wisdom tells us. Alongside the impression that they have fiery tempers, unquenchable libidos, and cold, clammy hands (OK, I made that last one up), one of the most common bits of folk wisdom about redheads is that they are just not that cute.
Color of my love
In 2012, the journal Psychological Studies published a study that created quite a stir on this topic, and was widely reported as "bad news for redheads."
Researcher Nicolas Guéguen examined how hair color alone could influence a person's chances of scoring at a nightclub. He had women dress up in differently-colored wigs, and measured how often they were approached by men. Similarly, they had men wearing differently-colored wigs approach various women over the course of the evening, and measured how often their advances were accepted or rebuffed.
By using the same set of men and women, and changing only the apparent color of their hair, this experiment was able to separate the influence of hair color itself from other features of physical attractiveness, such as facial features, skin tone, height, and body proportions.
Just as you might expect, based on common folk-wisdom and stereotypes, women were approached most often when wearing a blonde wig and men were rejected the most often when wearing a ginger wig. The news looks pretty bad for ginger men.
Or does it? Studies have shown time and again that facial symmetry, height, and body proportions matter the most to people's immediate assessments of physical attractiveness. These are also features that are more intrinsic and harder to change or hide than hair color. If the only thing that people are responding to is the hair color itself, this may actually be good news for redheads. It means that the only thing that "turns people off" is something that's fairly easy to change.
Unfortunately, this also helps to perpetuate the stereotype that redheads are intrinsically less attractive. When so many ginger celebrities actively cover it up by coloring their hair, it only makes it more difficult for people to think of "hot gingers."
This reassures people in their belief that redheads are "usually not hot," simply because they don't know how many hot people out there really are redheads.
What about the freckles?
At this time, there isn't any evidence to suggest that gingers are less likely to have those traits that are considered "generically attractive" by the majority of the population, such as high cheekbones, symmetrical faces, and well-proportioned bodies. However, they are much more prone to having freckled skin.
Skin tone is another one of those well-studied features that has been shown to consistently have an impact on people's assessment of physical beauty: Those with clear, evenly-colored skin are widely regarded as being more attractive than people with patchy, blotchy, or freckled skin.
Nowhere is this more obvious than when looking at professional photos of redheaded models and celebrities. Even those "hot redheads" that flaunt the redness of their hair usually are made-up on magazine covers to have almost unnaturally even skin tones.
Moreover, there is a reasonable theory to explain why the bias against freckles might be more than just a cultural prejudice. Not to be too blunt about it, but freckles are cancer factories.
Let's be clear, before the hate mail starts pouring in. Some people find freckles very attractive, and that is fantastic. Not all freckles automatically lead to cancer, either. But the type of melanin that causes freckles can increase the skin's sensitivity to ultraviolet radiation and make skin more prone to getting cancer.
They therefore can serve as a quite real biological "warning sign."
In the northern latitudes, this isn't as much of a problem as when you get closer to the equator. In fact, although the gene patterns that are associated with having red hair are present in both northern and southern areas of Europe, there are many more actual redheads in the north.
Part of the reason for this is that in the south, the "redhead genes" are mixed in with more dominant genes for darker skin, so the genes that produce ginger hair do not have an opportunity to express themselves and be visible.
So there may be an evolved, adaptive response to be less attracted to people with freckles, on the grounds that they are more likely to develop skin cancer. This could also explain why celebrity redheads tend to have their freckles airbrushed away to make them look more appealing.
However, it does not explain why there still remains such a strong bias against gingers — freckled or not — especially in the northern latitudes where sun exposure is less of a problem.
Attractiveness and gene-mixing
It is also possible that both red hair and freckled skin are viewed as less attractive because they are both recessive traits. This means that the traits are easily covered up by the effects of other genes. For example, if you get genes for red hair from one parent but brown hair from another, you are likely to not have red hair yourself.
The same is true for the trademark pale, freckled skin of redheads: When mixed with the genetic codes for darker skin, the fact that the "freckles gene" is present in a person may never actually become visible.
This could be related to attractiveness because there is an evolutionary benefit to mixing genes from different groups. When a person's heritage is very mixed, there is less of a chance that a harmful recessive gene will have an opportunity to express itself.
Charles Darwin proposed this idea, calling it "heterosis:" The theory that cross-breeding across populations would lead to children that are genetically stronger than their parents.
Consistent with this theory, Dr. Michael Lewis discovered in a study that was published in 2010 that people will rate photos of individuals with mixed-ethnicity backgrounds as "very attractive" 55 percent more often than people from a single ethnic background.
What does this mean for gingers? It could be that having red hair serves as a biological cue for a lack of genetic mixing, which we have evolved to be biased against. But once again this biological theory must be interpreted with caution.
This doesn't mean that all redheads are inherently unlucky genetically and must be unattractive. But it does mean that attractive redheads are likely to have had a little more genetic mixing in their past than others.
Gingerism
All of these discussions of hair color, genetics, and attractiveness really don't address the bigger issue of prejudice, however. No matter how many good, sound theories there may be pertaining to the biology of attraction, and how or why it may be biased against people with red hair, it does not change the fact that biology cannot explain the insults, the taunts, and the hate crimes that gingers have to put up with their entire lives.
It also doesn't explain that gigantic influence that culture has, both positively and negatively, in the perception of redheads. Anti-redhead bias is dramatically more prominent in the United Kingdom, for example, than in the United States — with no really solid explanation apart from ingrained cultural prejudice.
Moreover, it is fairly trendy for actresses — usually those who are already considered popular and beautiful — to take on a redheaded look in order to be daring, edgy and fashionable. Julia Roberts, Rose McGowan, Cynthia Nixon, and Debra Messing are some memorable examples of celebrities that made red hair look exceptionally good.
So the scientific answer to the question "is there a basis for the stereotype that redheads are unattractive" is what someone might expect, if he is familiar with science. That answer is: Eh, kind of, but not really.
Studies show that on average, people may be less likely to make a move on a redheaded girl or accept the advances of a redheaded guy. On the other hand, as long as you don't have prominent freckles, many gingers can pass as blondes or brunettes, showing that the difference is purely superficial.
Moreover, if you are already hot, you can get away with dying your hair red and it's seen as "trendy" rather than unattractive.
And while there may be a plausible evolutionary explanation for a minor anti-ginger bias, especially in southern latitudes, true "ginger haters" will have to look somewhere else for an excuse for their bad attitudes.

Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

The HUG - What does it Reveal?




Blake Shelton, 37, gave Miranda Lambert, 30, a bear hug backstage at the MusiCares Person of the Year event in LA on Jan. 24.  Patti observes that they show such a beautiful merging in the above photo.  They look like one person!  Patti noted that she does not think it would be possible for them to hug each other any tighter.  Miranda's smile is so content and sincere, and Blake's smile shows such security according to Patti.  Patti gives this couple a 5 on the Life & Style True Love Rating scale.


Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

Video Games Effect our Mood and Can Make Us Nice or Turn Us Into Jerks.


Video Games Effect our Mood and Can Make Us Nice or Turn Us Into Jerks.

I have a friend that said years ago he was addicted to an online Video game. He said that he played nonstop when he was not working,  and that the war game made him feel strong powerful and he eventually realized, very very angry.  In my book SNAP I have a chapter on Tech impressions and discuss how technology effects the way people perceive you here is research from my favorite magazine, THE WEEK on how gaming effects are mood.

Media-driven panics about what video games are "doing to our children" are scoffed at by gamers and most technology journalists. But are these haughty dismissals justified? Because studies are now coming thick and fast that find the minds of young people playing video games are affected by what they play. And not always for the best.
In a study titled Remain Calm, Be Kind, a quote from US general Colin Powell, researchers Whitaker and Bushman made the point that, of all media, video games are the most perfectly architected to change our state of mind. They're active: Gamers are indirectly doing things that they'd otherwise imagine or witness in books or film respectively.
They call this "managing our mood states," implying that aggressive actions make us feel short-tempered, while slower-paced games will cause us to feel relaxed.
They set out to demonstrate this. There is a wealth of information that ties aggressive video games to anti-social behaviour. But they wanted to complete the circle: To show that "nice" games make for nicer people too. If we had this information, it would suggest that the link between game and gamer is a strong one and can be both positive and negative.
They gave participants a selection of games to play — violent, neutral and relaxing — and then asked them to compete against each other in competitive games. Those who played high-stakes gaming like Resident Evil were more competitive than those that played less intense games like fishing.
Nice games make you nicer
The second part was asking the participants to help sharpen pencils. They didn't know that the experiment wasn't over, so they'd be acting entirely genuinely. They found that significantly more "relaxing" gamers helped out with this trivial task than violent ones, and summarized by saying that this was the first study to ever establish that nice video games make you a nicer person.
So far, so good. We already know that violent video games make violent people. They also apparently tend to push people into more "dangerous lifestyles": Drugs, wild sex. Not the typical image of your average gamer, granted. But the question is why and how these things happen. A relationship between video games and real-life violence is not damning evidence in itself.
In another study, a group of researchers looked at reactions to faces in pain for gamers, while they lay in fMRI machines. An fMRI machine works by detecting the movement of blood around the brain, and thus what areas are being used at what times (it stands for "functional" Magnetic Resonance Imaging).
What the researchers wanted to know was how the processing of emotions was affected by a lot of video gaming, so they watched the action happening in the frontal lobes of the brains as their subjects looked at the pictures.
They found that the gamers — who all play Counter-Strike, a Call of Duty-type war game — responded less to images of real violence than non-gamers. Images of accidents and disfigured faces did not trigger the same neuro-chemical reactions as for other people.
The researchers concluded by saying players of violent games have better top-down control of their emotions. Put more plainly: They lack empathy.
A lack of empathy?
That certainly echoes the worries of parent and teacher groups. Although, two caveats spring to mind: Gamers might well not react to disfigured faces as much, but that might not mean they lack empathy. A lot of people began to lose touch with the image of starving children in NSPCCC adverts — which doesn't make them monsters, they've just seen the image a few times before.
And the second thing to bear in mind is that fMRI has "worked" on a dead fish. That's not to discredit the study, but it does put the results in slight perspective.
There is a hook in the study, though: The idea of BIS, our Behavioural Inhibition System. This system allows us to react better in uncertain — often violent — situations. In a war zone, when bullets are flying over your head and have been for several weeks, the last thing you want is the constant recognition of the brutality of warfare.
Similarly, in war games, to be surprised by every act of violence will get you killed. We inhibit these typically empathetic behaviors because, frankly, we have to.
The study goes on to suggest that maybe that's how we can classify those who play first-person shooters: By a "habituated" BIS circuit, or a lack of empathy to the point it isn't mandatory. They found that the part of the brain associated with empathy, the lateral prefrontal cortex, are used less in experienced gamers.
This might be active inhibition of empathy for the sake of winning the game. In-game situations are often made more intense by pleas for mercy or kindness which frequently have to be ignored.
World of Warcraft (Facebook.com/Warcraft)
Immersive vs non-immersive
What does this mean outside of the game? It's not like fictional violence is the invention of video games. Why, German folk tales have been preaching the virtue of a messy punishment for centuries. And then there's the bible — which has been mandatory reading for billions of people.
But video games differ from these media crucially because we're not just being asked to listen and take part passively. Even as storytellers, we are playing the part of a narrator, not a performer. In video games we — everyone — is an actor. And we have to follow the script we're given.
There's another study, Virtually Numbed, published this year, which tasked video gamers with an endurance test. They had to pick up paperclips out of a bucket of ice cold water either after reporting that they were acid gamers or actually playing a video game. Instead of looking at good vs bad, though, the researchers were interested in immersive vs non-immersive.
The researchers wanted to see what the effect was of putting yourself in the place of an automaton — i.e., a video game character that did not display emotions. They found that those people who did this were more tolerant to pain than those that didn't. They tested the hypothesis with other experiments and the conclusion was that players act similar in real life to the robotic avatars they play.
It's not just searching for good vs evil, or picking up the traits of characters you enjoy playing as. The mere act of pretending to be a virtual character can change self-perception — even down to the way we perceive physical sensation. Video games can, rather quickly, change you.
There's another paper, from 2009, with the ominous title More Than Just a Game that does literally think about "the children." Because childhood and the teenage years are such important parts of growing up, it's important to see what they're interacting with during that time.
Knights of the Old Republic (Facebook.com: StarWarsTheOldRepublic)
Video games mean trouble
The researchers took a dim view of video games. In fact, they found video games correlated with everything from drug use to poor romantic relationships. And while some of this is unsubstantiated, plenty of it is backed by their evidence, in the form of university questionnaires, and the decade of research that's come before them.
"Video games mean trouble" is the message that seems to come through in all of this. It's jumping the gun, sure, given what we know now about the benefits of relaxing video games. But while some video games have a positive effect on mood, the ones that do, such as Endless Ocean, make up a negligible market share compared to big sellers such as World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, both of which are stacked with blood and death.
The psychology of all this isn't uplifting: Violent video games are linked to real-world violence, and we should stop pretending otherwise. That link is blurred, but in terms of neurochemistry there is now research that confirms that the brains of gamers change depending on what they do in-game.
In the game Knights of the Old Republic, a classic Star Wars spin-off, gamers can select whether to act like the "good" Jedi or the "evil" Sith. Sitting at your console, it might be hard to believe that what you do next might actually impact who you become in the real world. But it turns out the Dark Side is very real.




Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

Why Your iPhone Wants to be Your Best Friend

Technology Friend or Foe?

I saw the movie HER with a group of friends. The movie takes place in the future and the main character has a new improved IPhone like device with its own personality and they start dating. It's a very odd and thought provoking movie. The research study below my entry is about how we use are phones as our companions because they are designed to be.
In Fact, my friends and I couldn't stop talking about the implications of having a tech girlfriend or tech boyfriend and discussing how we currently view and interact in our relationships. I am fascinated by the idea we are and will continue to use technology as our personal companion. In my book, SNAP Making the Most of First Impressions Body Language and Charisma I discuss how we date are phones and carry them around and tend to them like they are our own little three year old child and give specific steps to use technology properly, with respect to your clients and fellow employees.

My audiences talk about how they bring their iPhone or pad or laptop to be with them and how it might be the last thing they interact with and touch before they go to sleep and the first thing they reach for in the morning. Yep, when I am on the road speaking that is certainly true for me. Goodness I use it to read up about every author who's books I am reading,  the history of the places I visit, the directors and actors in the movies I watch and I use my phone placed by my hotel bed side table as a sleep machine to block out hotel noise.
The other night I was watching a TV show that is my favorite guilty pleasure, "Graham Norton." on the show he had three famous actors, but the host spent a 5 minute segment playing with a little robot who walks and dances. All this happened with the actors sitting watching. And we were mesmerized. The robot was upstaging three actors. One of whom is listed as "The Highest Grossing Actor of All Time." ( You can look his name up on you smart phone) The little robot only costs 12,000 pounds. (more than 12,000 US Dollars. The last line of the article below was the most interesting it says, "But there's a trend here, and its toward technology as companion. It's as if consumer electronics companies are giving up the pretense that technology is connecting people and are instead designing it so that we don't miss them at all. " What do you think.

Here is an interesting article on how technology wants us to date our cell phones.


Why your iPhone wants to be your best friend    
Technology is increasingly designed to make you forget it's not human

Humans seek companionship. When no one else is around, we look elsewhere for it. I don't think I'm alone in turning on the television or checking Twitter at every opportune moment to "check in" on other people. On weekends or late nights in the office, I often fire up our drone and have it hover around the room. It makes me feel like someone else is there. Perhaps it would have been more practical for us to get a Roomba.
The point is, for as long as we've had technology, people have sought companionship from it. What's new is that consumer electronics companies are now designing their products to mimic human voices and even biological functions: From voice-activated phones to washing machines that coo in disturbing simpatico with human beings — not to mention the trend in car manufacture toward more explicitly face-like front ends.
You may know that Nokia chose its famous SMS tone because it shares a frequency with that of a crying infant. That's a sound most of the population is already keenly tuned in to. In other words, a mobile phone manufacturer tapped into maternal terror to ramp up the attention-seeking quotient of its handheld devices.
Apple's "personal assistant" Siri is one of the best-known examples of anthropomorphism in technology. Apple knows this, which is why the company is so smart and a little smug about it. Try asking Siri to "open the pod bay doors" and she will respond in a slow and monotonous tone, a stark change from her usual robotic accent.
While Siri lacks HAL's capabilities for art appreciation, chess-playing, and holding a conversation, people fell in love with her. You can't have a conversation with Siri, and you have to tap a button on the screen before issuing any command, so it's more akin to having to beat someone with a stick to get them to reply. But still.
Of course, Siri isn't a new concept. ELIZA, written by MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum in the sixties was a "digital psychiatrist." The worst kind of psychiatrist, too: ELIZA would ask never-ending questions based on the last thing you said to her. It's a mundane program by today's standards and not in any way useful, but for its time was absolutely amazing.
Weizenbaum was shocked by the reaction to ELIZA from people who didn't understand it. His secretary would spend hours telling this program about her problems. She was, however, incredibly upset when Weizenbaum showed her the conversation logs he had kept. Which is perhaps something we can all empathize with.
Sometimes the companionship we seek can be purely physical. I have no doubt many of our readers have fallen asleep to the soft "breathing" glow (not chosen by accident) of iBooks, iMacs, PowerBooks, and MacBooks over the years. It can be strangely reassuring to glance over at your machine and know it's asleep. Alas, Apple have phased this out in their latest generation of computers as new technology allows them to be always on.
But there's a trend here, and its toward technology as companion. It's as if consumer electronics companies are giving up the pretense that technology is connecting people and are instead designing it so that we don't miss them at all. Bit sinister, really. Don't you think?







Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

Circle First - Puppies use the earths magnetic fiel to decide to "do their duty".




Circle First - Puppies use the earths magnetic field to decide to do their duty


Have you ever seen a dog search and circle to find the perfect place to do their thing?
I have certainly noticed it in my dog Bo. And with the snow here in Atlanta its been epically difficult for Bo to find the perfect place. When I was the  National Spokesperson for Pup-Peroni Dog treats
I was studying every piece of research on dog nonverbal behavior, but their was no research on this funny little dog dance. Now they have discovered that dogs circle for a reason. Here is the research from NPR.org.



Dog owners have all been there when walking their canine companions.
Fido sniffs the ground and maybe turns around a few times. He searches. "No, not that patch," he seems to say. "Maybe this one. ... Or over here. ... Umm, maybe not."
Then, finally, he gets into position to ... well, let's just say leave that deposit that you'll have to pick up.
According to researchers from the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, the pooch might be aiming to poop along a north-south axis that lines up with the Earth's magnetic field.
In the journal Frontiers in Zoology they report that after watching 70 dogs do their business over a two-year period (1,893 defecations and 5,582 urinations), they reached the conclusion that they (the dogs) preferred to do their No. 2s "aligned along the North-South axis under calm [magnetic field] conditions."
And when the magnetic field is in flux, "this directional behavior was abolished" — which might sometimes explain why your dog just can't seem to settle on a place to go.
One might ask why this discovery might be important.
Well, according to the Czech researchers, this is the first time a "measurable, predictable behavioral reaction" to the magnetic field's fluctuation has been demonstrated in mammals. And that, in turn, could mean that other behavior scientists need to "revise their former experiments and observations and consider the phenomenon in their current and future experiments." It also might mean that "biologists and physicians [should] seriously reconsider effects magnetic storms might pose on organisms."
One also might ask who had to do most of the observations. Our hats are tipped to him or her.
We should also give a nod to Taro Gomi, author of Everyone Poops, for giving us a start to our headline.











Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

What Can a Media Coach Do For You?



What Does a Media Coach Do?


A Media Coach is person who gives feedback and instruction to someone who going to be interviewed by the media. The goal of media coaching is to improve the coaching recipient's content, branding and delivery. If the person being coached is going to be interviewed on television perhaps his or her clothing and other aspects of their physical appearance may also receive recommendation for changes and improvements by the media coach. A media coach may help a client write their "talking points" that is the main points they hope to cover in the media interview as well as help them write and rehearse answers to possible questions posed by the media interviewer. Most media coaches will create and ask the "tough questions" that a news source may ask their "coachee" so that he or she will be prepared with a good, well delivered response. With coaching someone can remarkable improve their confidence, appearance, and "messaging."

People running for elected positions such as the president of the United States may get a speech coach or media coach to help them improve the way they are perceived via various media outlets. Book authors, topic experts , corporate officers and corporate spokespersons may also hire a media coach.

That is the definition here is my personal note.
You may have wondered why certain people did not get media coaching or perhaps received poor media training. Think of the deer in the headlights look given by Tiger Woods in his famous Media interviews about his infidelity or certain presidential candidates that muffed their big media moments.

I am have learned and continue to learn so much about media interviews. If you need a media coach please contact our office. Dorothy@PattiWood.net

Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.
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What Does a Media Coach Do?

What Does a Media Coach Do?

I am working on a contribution for Wikipedia on the definition of the term Media Coach. Here is what I have so far to explain what a media coach can do.

Media Coach is person who gives feedback and instruction to someone who going to be interviewed by the media. The goal of media coaching is to improve the coaching recipient's content, branding and delivery. If the person being coached is going to be interviewed on television perhaps his or her clothing and other aspects of their physical appearance may also receive recommendation for changes and improvements by the media coach. A media coach may help a client write their "talking points" that is the main points they hope to cover in the media interview as well as help them write and rehearse answers to possible questions posed by the media interviewer. Most media coaches will create and ask the "tough questions" that a news source may ask their "coachee" so that he or she will be prepared with a good, well delivered response. With coaching someone can remarkable improve their confidence, appearance, and "messaging."

People running for elected positions such as the president of the United States may get a speech coach or media coach to help them improve the way they are perceived via various media outlets. Book authors, topic experts , corporate officers and corporate spokespersons may also hire a media coach.

That is the definition here is my personal note.
You may have wondered why certain people did not get media coaching or perhaps received poor media training. Think of the deer in the headlights look given by Tiger Woods in his famous Media interviews about his infidelity or certain presidential candidates that muffed their big media moments.

I am have learned and continue to learn so much about media interviews. If you need a media coach please contact our office. Dorothy@PattiWood.net

Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

Kissing Can Helps Us Choose a Mate and Strengthen the Bond Between Mates


 
One of my favorite TV shows is THE GOOD WIFE, though my favorite part of the show are the courtroom scenes I have noticed that their is a lot of kissing on the show and recently the kissing has been hot and heavy for the husband and wife lead characters that makes sense as it strengthens the bond between mates.
  Last Valentines day I was on the Steve Harvey show talking about kissing and how men dose their kissing mates with testosterone that makes women a bit more amorous and recent research informs us that another purpose of kissing is vet the suitability of a potential mate.
 
Here is the article I read in The Times.
 
There are activities common to most humans that we enjoy immensely, without much thought, and as frequently as opportunity and instinct provide. On occasion, researchers feel they need to know why.
Recently, experimental psychologists at Oxford University explored the function of kissing in romantic relationships.
Surprise! It’s complicated.
After conducting an online survey with 308 men and 594 women, mostly from North America and Europe, who ranged in age from 18 to 63, the researchers have concluded that kissing may help people assess potential mates and then maintain those relationships.
“The repurposing of the behavior is very efficient,” said Rafael Wlodarski, a doctoral candidate and lead author of the study, published in Archives of Sexual Behavior.
But another hypothesis about kissing — that its function is to elevate sexual arousal and ready a couple for coitus — didn’t hold up. While that might be an outcome, researchers did not find sexual arousal to be the primary driver for kissing.
Participants in the survey were asked about their attitudes toward kissing in different phases of romantic relationships. They were then asked about their sexual history: for example, whether they had been more inclined toward casual encounters or long-term, committed relationships. They also had to define their “mate value” by assessing their own attractiveness. Later, during data analysis, the researchers looked at how individual differences affected a person’s thoughts on kissing.
Earlier research had suggested that in a new relationship, a romantic kiss serves to pull two relative strangers into each other’s space, their faces glued together, possibly transmitting pheromonal, sensory, even genetic cues to each other’s brain. This could be a kind of primal interview: Could this person be mating material?
Mr. Wlodarski’s results suggest a more nuanced dynamic.
The participants generally rated kissing in casual relationships as most important before sex, less important during sex, even less important after sex and least important “at other times.” (To clarify: researchers defined kissing as “on the lips or open-mouth (French).”)
Past research has shown that three types of people tend to be choosier in selecting mates who are genetically fit and compatible: women, those who rate themselves highly attractive, and those favoring casual sex. In this study, these people said that kissing was important mostly at the start of a relationship.
That may be because for these individuals, kissing turns out to be a quick, easy way to sample a partner’s suitability — a subconscious stop-go light. For them, “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” might not be far off the mark.
After that first kiss, these types are much more likely than other subjects to change their minds about a potential partner, researchers found. If it’s not in his kiss, forget about him.
But other people might use different criteria to size up their mates: men, those who rate themselves as less sexually attractive, and people looking for commitment. In the grand search for a partner, these individuals screen for people who seem to have the inclination and resources for the long haul. And for them, this study showed, kissing has a lower priority at the beginning of dating.
Particularly for men and women looking for long-term relationships, kissing serves other purposes, like relationship upkeep. They would use their orbicularis oris muscle to mediate, ameliorate and sustain their connections. They rated kissing equally important before sex and at “other times not related to sex.” For these participants, kissing was least important during sex.
Among the study’s participants who said they were in exclusive relationships, frequency of kissing, rather than of sexual intercourse, was best correlated with relationship happiness.
“You would think that intercourse would be even more bonding, more intimate, but that’s not necessarily so,” Mr. Wlodarski said. “Maybe you have a happy relationship and you don’t need more intercourse.” For contented couples, he said, kissing continued to be a conveyor of emotion.
Justin R. Garcia, an evolutionary biologist at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and a scientific adviser to Match.com who was not involved in this research, noted that kissing was so closely associated with emotional connection that sex workers often refuse to kiss their customers, insisting that it is “too intimate.”
Kissing has been shaped by both society and biology, Mr. Wlodarski noted. “In many cultures, kissing was one of the first opportunities for individuals to get close enough to sniff each other in socially acceptable ways,” he said. The Inuit press their nostrils on the cheeks or forehead of someone for whom they feel great affection, gently inhaling their scent.
Dr. Garcia, a co-author of “Evolution and Human Sexual Behavior,” said that the Oxford study contributed to growing research into factors that promote or discourage happy romantic and sexual relationships. “We really only understand a small portion of that,” he said. “But we know that physical contact, specifically good quality touch, is really important for long-term relationships.”
And perhaps not just for humans. Some animal species approximate what humans would call kissing. Chimpanzees press their mouths together. Certain parrots tap their beaks. Elephants put the tips of their trunks in one another’s mouths and swirl them about. “It’s what we biologists call an affiliative gesture,” Dr. Garcia said.
Some in Hollywood have managed to divine some of the subtleties of kissing without the benefit of Oxford researchers.
Michelle King, who with her husband, Robert, is a co-creator of CBS’s “The Good Wife,” thinks a great deal about whether and when her sexually charged characters lock lips. “We put even more emphasis on kissing than sex,” she said. “We treat it as though it has more emotional import.”
Referring to Alicia Florrick (played by Julianna Margulies), who has a wary relationship with her husband Peter (Chris Noth), Ms. King remarked, “You see Alicia having sex with Peter more frequently and recreationally than her kissing him.”
But referring to the characters Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) and Kurt McVeigh (Gary Cole), older people who have just gotten married, Ms. King said, “you only see kissing with them, and a fair amount of it. There’s a soulful connection there, and the kissing is more conventionally romantic.”
Still, she understood that viewers might wonder why the couple has not yet been seen having sex. “Production difficulties got in the way,” she said.
A version of this article appears in print on 10/29/2013, on page D6 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Now, a Kiss Isn’t Just a Kiss.


Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

He is Playing With His Wedding Ring. What Does That Mean Nonverbally?


He is Playing With His Wedding Ring. What Does That Body Language Mean?

When we look at the data from this blog the post that get the most hits are couples sleep positions and
What does playing with a wedding ring mean. There is actually no current research studies on the topic. However, because this question is asked so often I have observed over the years two things. First that many single women and married women want to know what it means.

The second if you are wondering what it means and your curiosity is driving you to this post I would hazard to guess you are anxious and stressed. Your central nervous system stress when you see human behavior that does not make sense to you. When for example the body language and the words spoken don't align. So for example a man says he cares for you, but does not where the wedding ring you have him or plays with he plays with it when he is out with you and their are other attractive women around, or you are single and out with a business colleague and he is flirting with you subtly while playing with a wedding ring that his wife gave him. There is mismatch there and it drives the limbic brain crazy and alerts the central nervous system to stress mode. (The stress responses are freeze flee, fight, fall or faint) So if you see the behavior and for a moment your freeze in place and are speechless be wary and know that something is very wrong.  

Side note. I am fascinated with autobiographies and biographies of women. I read Elizabeth Edwards Autobiography a few years ago and was struck by a chapter where she discusses how her husband keeps loosing his wedding band when he goes out running and how she in an effort to help him goes out and busy several wedding bands for him so he will always have one. The writing in that section was so odd and stilted. You know she wanted to say, I know my husband is cheating on me, but darn it I am going to fight for this relationship.


The Wedding Ring and Human Behavior: Current Research and Future Directions

Why some married people don't wear a wedding ring.
 
Some married people don’t wear a wedding ring. And some Facebook users tell the rest of the world everything about themselves except that they are in a relationship or married.
I am sure there are many good reasons why some married people don’t wear a wedding ring; for example, they may be allergic to gold, silver, or platinum. And the same may be true for those who don’t disclose their relationship status on Facebook.
Allergies aside, a good explanation for some people’s reluctance to advertise their marital or relationship status is that they are still (unofficially) on the mating market and want to keep their options open. Many married men and women who engage in extra-marital affairs, of course, are happy to wear a wedding ring, only to take it off before they go to a party without their spouse. Taking the wedding ring off and putting it back on repeatedly, however, can be risky because sooner or later you will forget to do the right thing with the right person. Living a double life, with and without the wedding ring, also increases the chances that you lose the damn ring and then are forced to make up some awkward story about how this happened. To curb people’s temptation to take off their wedding ring before they go on a date with someone they met online, a company that specializes in manufacturing and selling original gifts, called The Cheeky, has just released on the market an Anti-Cheating Ring (http://thecheeky.com/anti-cheating-ring), which has a negative engraving on the inside such that when you take off the ring, it leaves a mark on the finger’s skin that says “I’m married.”

With or without the engraving, the wedding ring is already supposed to work as an anti-cheating device. It’s a signal meant to inform others that the person who wears the ring is married and already committed to a relationship. All wedding rings look similar because it is important that the signal be recognized for what it is, and not mistaken for a random piece of jewelry. For those of us who study human behavior from an evolutionary perspective, the wedding ring is a fascinating cultural invention that says a lot about human nature and our mating system.

Since the wedding ring has a lot to do with monogamy and commitment, and the risk of betrayal and extramarital affairs, one could think of many studies that evolutionary psychologists might do to compare married people who wear and don’t wear rings in terms of their commitment to their spouse, or their tendency to cheat, or the overall stability and longevity of their marriage (one could also study the mating behavior of people who are not married but wear a wedding ring, and I suspect there are quite a few of them out there). Surprisingly, these studies haven’t been done. After doing a search for evolutionary psychology scientific articles using wedding ring as a key word, I found only one article, published in 2003 in the journal Human Nature. The article reported an experiment conducted by two Swedish researchers, Tobias Uller and Christoffer Johannson, to investigate whether women who have a brief conversation with two strange men, one who wears a wedding ring and the other who doesn’t, report the man with the ring to be more desirable than the other one. The researchers wanted to know whether, when it comes to choosing a man as a potential mate and in the absence of other information, a woman copies the choices made by other women. Since a man wearing a wedding ring has already been chosen as a husband by a woman, while a man without a ring presumably hasn’t and is therefore an unknown entity (or worse, he has been previously considered but discarded as a potential husband), a woman should play safe and choose a man who has a proven track record. In the experiment conducted by Uller and Johansson, however, the women found the men with and without the wedding ring equally desirable, or undesirable. For this being the only published study of the effects of wedding rings on human behavior, its results are rather unexciting.
But there is something else I found on the Internet. Andrew Harrell, a social psychologist at the University of Alberta, conducted a rather bizarre study of people who wear or don’t wear wedding rings. He furtively observed adults with children (estimated to be between one and seven years-old) in supermarkets and compared how often people who did or didn’t wear a wedding ring let the child wander more than 10 feet away in the supermarket. Harrell presented the results of this study at a conference a few years ago. He found that of the 862 adult-child pairs he observed, about 14% of the caretakers lost sight of their charges at least once. However, attractive young men and women without wedding rings lost sight of children significantly more frequently than everybody else (25% and 19% of the time, respectively). Harrell concluded that not wearing a wedding ring, especially if paired with young age and high physical attractiveness, may be an indicator of a lack of a commitment to one's family, including care of the children. In an interview I found on the internet, Harrell speculated that ".. an interest in establishing social, sexual or emotional ties outside of marriage may have the inadvertent consequence of diminishing attentiveness to children" and that ".. it's not surprising that this distraction occurs even in a mundane setting like a supermarket, which is more than a place to purchase bananas and cereal. It can also be a place for social encounters and maybe even a romantic rendezvous."
I can offer this additional piece of evidence in support of Harrell’s interpretation of his results: the character played by actress Elizabeth Shue in my children’s favorite movie Adventures in Babysitting was young, attractive, and didn’t wear a wedding ring: and she let the children she was babysitting wander more than 10 feet away from her many times in the movie, although none of her adventures took place in supermarkets, and therefore may have not been directly related to the potential for extramarital affairs.
So, this is it. This is the current state of research on the wedding ring and human behavior from an evolutionary perspective (if I missed some other study on this topic, I urge the readers of this post to let me know immediately). As for the future directions of this research, I just hope they will be as far away as possible from the previous ones.
Uller T, Johannson LC (2003). Human mate choice and the wedding ring effect: are married men more attractive? Human Nature 14, 267-276.
Absence of wedding ring connected to parental neglect
If you enjoyed this blog post and the previous ones, read my book Games Primates Play!

This article is from Psychology Today
The author writes about
The evolution and economics of human relationships.
Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net.

Cuddling is Key to a Committed and Loving Relationship, Research on Touch


Cuddling is Key to a Committed and Loving Relationship, Research on Touch  

This is what I have been saying for years in my workshops on body language!


Science: Cuddling is key to a committed and loving relationship
Hand-holding works pretty good, too
Sex, hugs, cuddling, hand-holding, and even innocent little kisses before you dash out the door to work every morning — all of them pay dividends toward a long and loving relationship. And now we have the science to back it up.
According to a new study, the culprit is our old friend oxytocin, a.k.a. the "love hormone." Its levels shoot up whenever we make physical contact with someone important to us.
It's widely understood that its reward system plays a crucial role in deepening the bond between two lovers. Past studies have suggested that it may help keep men from cheating, while others point to its dark side, which can make an abrupt breakup feel physiologically devastating.
Humans and many mammals are monogamous creatures (at least most of the time). What makes us go out of our way to lock ourselves into a committed relationship is still largely a mystery, suggesting there's some sort of biological advantage. "Monogamy is actually quite costly for humans, so there must be some form of benefit," said Rene Hurlemann, a psychiatrist at the University of Bonn in Germany who led the most recent study. "We'd expect humans, especially males, would disseminate their genes."
So what's inspiring warm-blooded males to stay loyal?
Researchers, publishing their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, discovered that regular jolts of oxytocin make our partners more attractive, to us and only us.
Hurlemann and his colleagues took 20 men who were in long-term and passionate romantic relationships with women, hooked them up to functional magnetic resonance imaging scanners, and showed them photos of their loved ones interspersed with images of an unfamiliar but equally comely stranger, or a house. Some men were spritzed with oxytocin, others with a placebo. To test whether oxytocin varied only with familiarity, they substituted highly familiar faces for the house images. Afterward, the men filled out the Passionate Love Scale questionnaire, which showed that their inner Romeo prevailed over their inner Lothario. They were fixated on their current romantic partner. [Los Angeles Times]
Makes sense. A "steady diet" of oxytocin helps trigger the release of dopamine, which means we're almost literally addicted to the person we're in love with. Cuddling is a drug, so to speak.
Such findings give us a better understanding of how some couples manage to make it for the long haul, and explains why physical support is tied so intrinsically with our emotional health. Take our friends John and Ann Betar, who eloped on Nov. 25, 1932, and, in addition to being completely adorable and amazing, are still madly in love with one another. What's their secret after 81 years of marriage?
"We always hold hands," said John.

Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.