Making Science More Better For You on 11/30/07

Why yes Chip, I am feeling quite chipper. After all, my glass is half full.

Republicans Report Much Better Mental Health Than Others
Relationship persists even when controlling for other variables

by Frank Newport
Page:123

PRINCETON, NJ -- Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance, and education.

The basic data -- based on an aggregated sample of more than 4,000 interviews conducted since 2004 -- are straightforward.

The differences are quite significant, as can be seen. While Democrats are slightly less likely to report excellent mental health than are independents, the big distinctions in these data are the differences between Republicans and everyone else.

One could be quick to assume that these differences are based on the underlying demographic and socioeconomic patterns related to party identification in America today. A recent Gallup report (see "Strong Relationship Between Income and Mental Health" in Related Items) reviewed these mental health data more generally, and found that men, those with higher incomes, those with higher education levels, and whites are more likely than others to report excellent mental health. Some of these patterns describe characteristics of Republicans, of course.

All right, all you happy people line up over here. From now on you are going to call yourselves Republicans. Gripers and whiners line up over there. You can call yourselves Democrats. And yes, that is why they call them blue states.


Darwin or no Darwin, speak for yourself
How Our Ancestors Were Like Gorillas

ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2007) — New research shows that some of our closest extinct relatives had more in common with gorillas than previously thought. Dr Charles Lockwood, UCL Department of Anthropology and lead author of the study, said: "When we examined fossils from 1.5 to 2 million years ago we found that in one of our close relatives the males continued to grow well into adulthood, just as they do in gorillas. This resulted in a much bigger size difference between males and females than we see today.

"It's common knowledge that boys mature later than girls, but in humans the difference is actually much less marked than in some other primates. Male gorillas continue to grow long after their wisdom teeth have come through, and they don't reach what is referred to as dominant "silverback" status until many years after the females have already started to have offspring. Our research makes us think that, in this fossil species, one older male was probably dominant in a troop of females.


Of course Beorge Brett and Charley Lau have been the same thing for years, but what would they know. It's not like they measured it or anything.

Better at Bat
Psychologists Link Hitting Skills to Vision

August 1, 2006 — Cognitive psychologists have discovered that baseball skills correlate with how a player sees the ball: Athletes who see the ball bigger than it is tend to perform better. In the experiments, athletes were asked to look at circles of different sizes and pick the ones that matched the ball. The better performers tended to pick circles larger than the ball, while poorer performers tended to pick circles that were smaller than the ball.

Witt found players picking the larger circles performed better, proving that a player's perception of the ball's size is somehow linked to his performance. "It's hard to know which direction the effect goes," she says. "Do you see it as bigger and therefore hit better, or are you hitting better and therefore see it as bigger?"

She also found athletes who hit poorly see the ball as being much smaller than it really is. She says, "If we're a poor hitter, we see the world full of really, tiny, tiny, tiny balls that are really difficult to hit."

So to do well in a game, think big to hit big.

Witt recently conducted another study to find out if golfers who do well in a game see the cup as being bigger. Preliminary results suggest golfers do, indeed, see the cup bigger when playing well.
Big game, big balls...we can see where this is going.

We suspect that it's the same gene that controls a person's ability to fold clothes and put them away.
One Gene Variant Puts Stressed Women At Risk For Depression; Has Opposite Effect In Men

ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2007) — A common variation in genes puts women who are under chronic stress at risk for increased depressive symptoms, but has the exact opposite effect in men, according to new findings from Duke University Medical Center researchers.

The researchers analyzed two independent samples of healthy individuals for the presence of a genetic variant that regulates levels of serotonin — a neurotransmitter that is linked to health in numerous ways, including emotion regulation.

One version of the gene puts women who are under chronic stress at risk for more severe depressive symptoms. But among men, the same gene variant appeared to be protective against depression. In fact, men with the opposite gene variant were the ones who experienced more depressive symptoms when under chronic stress.