Why Self Image Suffers Among Seniors

Reference:
Lee Dye (2010, April 7). Why Self Image Suffers Among Seniors
Retrieved April 16, 2010, from
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/image-suffers seniors/story?id=10301708&page

Summary:
A new broad study illustrates that self-esteem changing always with the human lifespan. It surveys the number of 3,617 Americans over a 16-year period from 1986 to 2002, and that survey involves all of the factors that can affect our health and our financial prosperity by testing the effects of gender, ethnic, education, income, employment status, social support and so on. Many of factors can affect self-esteem, but only income and heath are able to explain the decrease of people in old age. The new study also found several factors such as women always had lower self-esteem than man before they are 80 years old, self-esteem of white as similar as black before they are 60 years old except when they at age 25 , and education is important in maintaining self-self. These factors lead to self-esteem line shown as a trajectory. If someone has higher self-esteem, he would have a better body, less criminal behavior, lower levels of depression and more success than other people with lower self-esteem. Although many factors related to self-esteem, only health and poor income play a major role in old age.

Reaction:
Self-esteem is your opinion about yourself, it refers to individual value. People who have good opinions about themselves that means they have a high self-esteem. Elder people would transfer the focus of life from work to families after they retirement, they maybe feel a little depression because they cannot show their own value any more in the society .This situation always take a few negative effects and hurt the elder self-esteem.
Meanwhile, love, health and income become more important thing than the others for elder. Love can reduce elders’ formless mentality and make them feel they are also important in status of their families. Health can keep elder have a good mood and enough abilities and confidence to do something that they like, and income can make elder feel they are still independence instead of depend on their children, so they will give themselves a good opinion.

Vocabulary:
Self-esteem：respect for yourself
Trajectory：the curved path an object follows after it is thrown or shot into the air
Maintain：to continue to have; kept in existence, or not allow becoming less
Longitude ：the position to the east or west of an imaginary circle around the earth that goes through the North Pole, the South Pole, and Greenwich, England
Mastery：complete control
Diminish：to reduce or be reduced in size or importance
Legacy：A legacy is also money or property left to a person by
Retirement：the point at which someone stops working
Vulnerable：able to be easily hurt, influenced, or attacked

Jealousy Really Can Blind You, Study Finds

Jealousy Really Can Blind You, Study Finds

Reference:
Bryner Jeanna (2010, April 15). Jealousy Really Can Blind You, Study Finds. Live Science Managing Editor，Retrieved April 26, 2010, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36567772/ns/health-behavior/

Summary:
New research suggests that jealousy can actually lead people to miss the right thing from their eyes. A new study, which did by Steven Most of the Department of Psychology at the University of Delaware, can prove this phenomenon. In this experiment, the researchers selected 25 couples to take the test; each of people has a screen next to them. All of female were asked to pick some target pictures from a series of quickly play pictures, and all the target pictures are landscapes. There are some very unpleasant pictures played during the playing process, which can interfere women’s feeling. At the same time, each male also has a screen with playing landscape; the researchers asked them to give scores to landscape and the researchers make them to see some photos of single women at the middle of text process and asked them to give "attraction" points to these women. Then the researchers asked women participants feeling of anxiety when their partners assessing other women’s charm. The results showed that female who was jealousy with the heightened jealousy can single out the number of target pictures were less than the female with a little jealousy.

Reaction:
Jealousy is an emotion and typically refers to the negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear, and anxiety. It often consists of a combination of emotions such as anger, sadness and disgust. Jealousy just likes a devil, it can lead people to do something terrible or even destroy something beautiful, while, it is a commonly psychological phenomenon, and everybody has jealousy emotion in their hearts, especially girl, because girls like more beautiful things than boys, they always pay more attention to their appearance, beautiful cloth, decorations and so on and they want to own all of pretty things that the like, if they don’t have but their friends have it, jealousy may be caused. So jealousy always joined with the comparison, and it can break the relationship easily. I think people should keep a balanceable mind-set, because where there is no comparison, no jealousy.

Vocabulary:
Gruesome: extremely unpleasant and shocking
Heterosexual: opposite sex
Graphic: producing very clear and detailed mental images
Preoccupied: the thing you think about most
Distraction: entertainment
Manipulation: to control something by using the hands
Prioritize: to arrange in order of importance so that you can deal with the most important things before the others
Tough: not easily broken, weakened, or defeated; strong
Stimulus: something that causes growth, activity, or reaction
Prone: likely to do, get, or suffer from something

Good News for Worriers Who Suffer from Depression

Good News for Worriers Who Suffer from Depression


Reference：
Good News for Worriers Who Suffer from Depression, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Retrieved April 15, 2010, from http://www.apa.org/news/psycport/PsycPORTArticle.aspx?id=knightridder_2010_04_15__0000-7012-SL-Good-news-for-worriers-who-suffer-from-depression-0415.xml

Summary：
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that worrying action can help reduce the effects of depression. Through the searcher of brain, researchers found that depression and anxiety are common co-diagnoses, and anxiousness can causes patterns of brain activity in the right inferior temporal lobe and chronic worry can causes patterns of brain in the left frontal lobe region, a place which is connected to language and depression has been advanced revealed to activate the brain's right frontal lobe. For this study, researcher found that there is an increased activity in the area of the brain when people feel anxiety, and this phenomenon is also commonly happened in depression. So the research suggests that sometimes worrying is a good thing to do for people because it can counterbalance the depressed emotion and reduce its effects.

Reaction：
With the development of society, more and more people feel high pressure from their life or careers that lead to production of some negative sentiments, like anxiousness, fidgeting and testiness. Meanwhile, a new study result of depression has founded that worrying is not a bad phenomenon any more, and can reduce the effects of depression. For example, someone took a test yesterday, but he doesn’t know whether he can get a high score in this test, so he feels a little worried about this test. But he can accept the situation easily when he knows he didn’t pass the test, because he already had anticipated this result in his mind before. Sometimes, a little worrying can help us accept the bad news with anticipation and keep us far from depression.

Vocabulary：
Combination: together
Panic: a sudden, strong feeling of anxiety or fear that prevents reasonable thought and action and may spread to influence many people
Arousal: not always sexual, but it sounds sexual
Chronic: A chronic illness or problem continues for a long time.
Frontal: a frontal attack/assault when you criticize or attack someone or something in a very strong and direct way
Diagnosis: when a doctor says what is wrong with someone who is ill
Patterns: way a particular way that something is often done or re

Self-Control, and Lack of Self-Control, Is Contagious

Self-Control, and Lack of Self-Control, Is Contagious
Reference:
Adapted from materials provided by University of Georgia. Self-control -- and the lack of -- is contagious. Science daily, Retrieved Jan 18, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100113172359.htm

Summary:
Researchers have found that self-control is contagious to people because people tend to mimic the behavior of those around them and self-control is contagious across behaviors. Researchers design five different ways to measure the self-control of people a. the researchers ask volunteers who were randomly assigned to think about a friend with either good or bad self-control. On a later test of self-control, those who wrote about friends with good self-control did the best, while those who wrote about friends with bad self-control did the worst. Finally, the result of this study demonstrate that self-control is contagious because being exposed to people with either good or bad self-control influences how accessible thoughts about self-control are.

Reaction:
Self-control is a concept of social psychology that frequently used. It says that people still can control themselves behaviors and decision under influence and temptation of the outside world. The self-control ability of people is different and each person’s self –control resources are limited, when the self-control resources are consumed by something, we are likely to do something impulsive and irrational, lying is a typical example, if everybody lie to answer questions ,maybe you can also choose to lie. Although others’ ideas can affect you and it also can reduce your self-control.So self-control is not only depending on who you are but also depending on how about the people around you. But I think people should persist their own ideas that they think right even if when they facing some opposition.

Vocabulary:
Exert - to cause yourself to make an effort
Mimic - to copy the way someone speak or moves
Obesity - fat
Contagious – able to be caught by touching someone with disease
Persisted – to continue something in a determined way even when facing difficulties
Randomly – chosen on regular
Interaction - correlation
Subliminally – not recognized or understood by the conscious mind ,but still having an influence on it
Ultimately - finally
Temptation – attract people

Loneliness Linked to High Blood Pressure

Loneliness Linked to High Blood Pressure
By Psych Central News Editor Reviewed by John M. Groho l, Psy .D. on March 19, 2010

Loneliness shares a close association with high blood pressure according to new research.
Researchers at the University of Chicago found that feeling lonely increases the blood pressure rate of individuals 50 years and older. The scientists examined the possibility that loneliness could bring on feelings of depression and stress, both of which are known to increase blood pressure levels.
The study examined 229 people between the ages of 50 and 68 and found that there was a connection between their blood pressure levels and need for companionship. While researchers were able to make a direct connection between the two, it still took a number of years before the correlation was noticed.
“The increase associated with loneliness wasn’t observable until two years into the study, but then continued to increase until four years later,” researcher Louise Hawley said.
This link is independent of age as well as other factors which cause blood pressure such as smoking, demographic difference like income and race, alcohol and body mass index (BMI).
Dr. Hawley concluded that individuals’ fears of not having social connections could play into their increased blood pressure levels.
“Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of people yet who have done loneliness interventions to any great success. So even if we know that we should be doing something about it, to find somebody who’s effective at helping may be a challenge,” Dr. Hawley says.
Researchers suspect that evolution may explain the link between loneliness and high blood pressure.
“Loneliness reflects a very fundamental need to feel connected,” Dr. Hawkley says.
“In evolutionary terms, you had to have the sense that you had your back covered. You traveled in groups, in tribes, in families. Anything to fend off threats from the environment… And that, I think, persists. We still need to feel like we belong, like we’re connected.”
Nutritional supplements such as potassium may help lower blood pressure.
The study appears in the March issue of the journal Psychology and Aging.
Source: University of Chicago

Reference:
John, M. (2010, March 19). Loneliness Linked to high blood pressure. Psych Central News Editor，Retrieved March 29, 2010, from http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/03/19/loneliness-linked-to-high-blood-pressure/12275.html.

Summary:
Loneliness can make people feel depression and stress, both of which could lead to the blood pressure increasing. Accord to survey 229 people that the ages of them are from 50 to 68, researchers at the University of Chicago found that there was a connection between blood pressure levels and need for relationship. But this phenomenon cannot be observed until 2 years, the blood pressure increasing will appear after four years later. So we need keep us contact with the others. However, some people don’t pay attention to it.

Reaction:
Everybody knows smoking, drinking a lot and some physical reasons could lead to bloody pressure increasing. But they cannot recognize that loneliness also can increase the bloody pressure. Because we maybe feel sad, boring, nothing is interesting or don’t want to do anything when we feel loneliness. If you always have the kind of negative feeling, you could feel so heavy stress that your blood pressure would be increased. I consider that human cannot living without relationship, we should always communicate with the other people, get some information from people, or share happy or sorrow with your friends. People can relieve their stress through the connection, which is benefit for our healthy, no matter the mental or physical.

Vocabulary:
Individuals – personal
Companionship – friendship
Correlation – relationship
Demographic – statistics of population
Alcohol –an element in drinking
Fundamental – basic
Fend off – resist
Persists – never give up