Free Republic

It's up to the good people in Indiana and North Carolina to do the right thing: They should ignore the political mischief and judge Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on their visions for America, which has played out during this primary. Looks like Clinton has gotten a lift from the fear-mongering, and is now slightly ahead of Obama in Indiana, and has narrowed his double-digit lead in North Carolina. Polls in Indiana show Clinton now leads Obama there by four points among likely Democratic voters, 48 percent to 44 percent. Eight percent of voters there remain undecided, according to an...

A team of researchers from Canada and Japan have uncovered some remarkable results on how eastern and western cultures assess situations very differently. Across two studies, participants viewed images, each of which consisted of one centre model and four background models in each image. The researchers manipulated the facial emotion (happy, angry, sad) in the centre or background models and asked the participants to determine the dominant emotion of the centre figure. The majority of Japanese participants (72%) reported that their judgments of the centre person’s emotions were influenced by the emotions of the background figures, while most North Americans...

How do you overcome an emotional phenomenon with rationality? By now most of us have seen the news stories describing the Cult of Obama, or Obamania. People cry when he speaks. Despite holding signs that say “Stand for Change” his speeches are interrupted by women fainting and falling to the ground. (Wordsmith has photos and video). Hillary Clinton, the once annointed Queen of the Democrat Party has done everything in her power to overcome that flood of raw emotion and remind people that it takes a President, not a good speechmaker, to get the job done. Hillary: Talk is Cheap...

Source: Vanderbilt University Date: October 15, 2007 Humans Perceive Others' Fear Faster Than Other Emotions Science Daily — You may not be fully dressed without a smile, but a look of horror will make a faster first impression. Vanderbilt University researchers have discovered that the brain becomes aware of fearful faces more quickly than those showing other emotions. New research has found that the brain processes images of fearful faces faster than images of neutral or happy faces. (Credit: Vanderbilt University) "There are reasons to believe that the brain has evolved mechanisms to detect things in the environment that signal...

This 420 page effort contains two intertwined books. The one interests me, reports on recent neuroscience advances documenting how people come to political decisions. The one that does not interest me, is a liberal cook book with multiple recipes for winning elections. The books differ; hence, the opinions about the entire book differ. For example, Daniel Gilbert, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, states this is a fascinating book that appeals to the hearts and minds on both sides of the aisle. Dr. Gilbert is referring to the first book. On the other hand, Howard Dean, the Chairman of the...

MIT biochemists have identified a molecular mechanism behind fear, and successfully cured it in mice, according to an article in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Researchers from MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory hope that their work could lead to the first drug to treat the millions of adults who suffer each year from persistent, debilitating fears - including hundreds of soldiers returning from conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. Inhibiting a kinase, an enzyme that change proteins, called Cdk5 facilitates the extinction of fear learned in a particular context, Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain...

I really think that this is one of the big stories of the day. Maybe because it is something I've been saying for years ... about liberals, that is. It looks like we have a high-powered brain scientist serving as the latest advisor to the Democratic party. Drew Westen conducted research which leads to his conclusion that politicians – liberal politicians -- should try and appeal to people's emotions, rather than bogging them down with data and facts. Where did we first find out about this research? Why, at the ultra-left wing "Take Back America" convention, that's where. The study...

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- New research conducted by doctors in England shows that unborn children can face emotional stress during a pregnancy as the baby's mother faces stress herself. Pro-life advocates say the study has implications for abortion as society learns more about the amazing development of children before birth. The British Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists released the results of the study on Thursday and says that unborn babies as early as 17 weeks into pregnancy suffer from stress.The stress results when hormones transferred from anxious mothers reach the baby through the placenta. Researchers measure the levels of...

One Tuesday last fall I sat in on a positive-psychology class called the Science of Well-Being — essentially a class in how to make yourself happier — at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. George Mason is a challenge for positive psychologists because it is one of the 15 unhappiest campuses in America, at least per The Princeton Review. Many students are married and already working and commute to school. It’s a place where you go to move your career forward, not to find yourself. The class was taught by Todd Kashdan, a 32-year-old psychology professor whose area of research...

Sniffle-Busting Personalities: Positive mood guards against getting colds Bruce Bower People with generally positive outlooks show greater resistance to developing colds than do individuals who rarely revel in upbeat feelings, a new investigation finds. Frequently basking in positive emotions defends against colds regardless of how often one experiences negative emotions, say psychologist Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and his colleagues. They suspect that positive emotions stimulate symptom-fighting substances. "We need to take more seriously the possibility that a positive emotional style is a major player in disease risk," Cohen says. In a study published in 2003, his...

WHETSTONE — On a late April night, Karla Wehr came home and saw her daughter-in-law’s caller ID number on her phone. “I knew something was wrong with Mike or the baby,” Karla said. Steeling herself for bad news, she called her daughter-in-law, Teresa, in Fort Hood, Texas. Mike — Spc. Michael Manning — had been wounded. “Her voice was trembling,” Karla said. Trying to be as calm as possible, the soldier’s mother said it was difficult to not let her emotions run away. News of battle wounds or deaths are something families dread, Karla said. But a second phone call...

Brain scans can identify who is more "rational" and who is more "emotional," says a new study in the current issue of the journal Science. Researchers at University College London put subjects into a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner and watched their brain activity as they sorted through some artfully structured choices. The researchers posed classic Tversky/Kahneman choices framed as gain and loss scenarios. In this case, the subjects were initially told that they would receive £50, but then were told that they had to choose between a "sure" option and "gamble" option. In so-called Gain frame, the...

Trying to get someone's attention? Looking angry may be the key. The face most likely to stand out in a crowd is an irate one, according to a new study, and men are better than women at picking up the anger that a face conveys. On the other hand, women are more adept at detecting more socially relevant expressions that communicate happiness, sadness, surprise and disgust. "The really interesting effect," said Mark A. Williams, the study's lead author, "is the difference between males and females." Dr. Williams, a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his co-author, Jason...

MEN and women are from the same planet, but scientists have the first strong evidence that the emotional wiring of the sexes is fundamentally different. An almond-shaped cluster of neurons that processes experiences such as fear and aggression hooks up to contrasting brain functions in men and women at rest, the new research shows. For men, the cluster “talks with” brain regions that help them respond to sensors for what’s going on outside the body, such as the visual cortex and an area that co-ordinates motor actions. For women, the cluster communicates with brain regions that help them respond to...

Liberals and conservatives can become equally bug-eyed and irrational when talking politics, especially when they are on the defensive. Using M.R.I. scanners, neuroscientists have now tracked what happens in the politically partisan brain when it tries to digest damning facts about favored candidates or criticisms of them. The process is almost entirely emotional and unconscious, the researchers report, and there are flares of activity in the brain's pleasure centers when unwelcome information is being rejected. "Everything we know about cognition suggests that, when faced with a contradiction, we use the rational regions of our brain to think about it, but...

Feeling lonely? Maybe it's not your fault. Loneliness might be in your genes. A study concludes that 48 percent of the variations in loneliness among people is due to genetics. The rest of the variation is due to differing life circumstances, such as leaving home or losing a spouse. "Feelings of loneliness may reflect an innate emotional response to stimulus conditions over which an individual may have little or no control," researchers wrote in the journal Behavior Genetics. Researchers in the Netherlands and the University of Chicago examined surveys of 8,387 young adults in the Netherlands Twin Register. Fraternal and...

On any given Sunday, 100 million households from Australia, Europe, and across the USA will tune in to view Joel Osteen broadcasting from the 30,000-member Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. Rated as the #1 inspirational television program by Nielson Media Research, Joel Osteen is preaching a message that certainly seems to be touching home with people all over America. In his much respected best selling book, Your Best Life Now-7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential, Osteen outlines a seven-step process for effecting profound change in your life. He speaks in terms of the positive in everyday life. Expect...

The founding fathers never envisioned direct election of the president by the people. In the beginning the people voted for state representatives and congressmen. State legislatures selected two men to represent the state in the Senate. Each state legislature selected a man (from anywhere in the country) to be president and another (not from the same state) to be vice president. There was no campaign and no presidential candidate to select his own vice president. These names were given to electors who journeyed to Washington to meet with the electors from the other states. This was the original electoral college....

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Although women who have an abortion may have a lesser immediate emotional reaction than those who miscarry, the long-term impact may be stronger for some, a new study suggests. Researchers in Norway found that women who'd had an abortion two years earlier were more likely than those who'd miscarried to be suppressing thoughts and feelings about the event -- although most women did not show this reaction. Overall, nearly 17 percent of 80 women who'd had an abortion scored highly on a scale measuring such "avoidance" symptoms, compared with about three percent of those who'd...

When a mighty force overstuffs a container, it shatters. Scott Trobec shattered, in 1996, after a lifetime of never saying an angry word to anyone. Sound impossible? Not to mental health experts who counsel men suffering from what could be called anger over-management. These men don't know how to get mad. They are not just gentle or easy-going types, the experts stress. They are the opposite extreme of the common view of men and anger -- violent, out-of-control guys who stab their wives or beat their children or shoot up the office where they got fired -- and they leave...