PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Study: Telling fewer lies linked to better health and relationships

2012-08-07
(Press-News.org) "Pants on fire" isn't the only problem liars face. New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that when people managed to reduce their lies in given weeks across a 10-week study, they reported significantly improved physical and mental health in those same weeks.

Funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the "Science of Honesty" study was presented recently at the American Psychological Association's 120th annual convention.

"We found that the participants could purposefully and dramatically reduce their everyday lies, and that in turn was associated with significantly improved health," says lead author Anita Kelly, a Notre Dame psychology professor whose research includes the study of secrets and self-disclosure.

Kelly and co-author Lijuan Wang, also of Notre Dame, conducted the honesty experiment over 10 weeks with a sample of 110 people, 35 percent of whom were adults and 65 percent of whom were college students. They ranged in age from 18 to 71 years, with an average age of 31.

Approximately half the participants were instructed to stop telling both major and minor lies for the duration of the 10-week study. The other half served as a control group that received no special instructions about lying. Both groups came to the laboratory weekly to complete health and relationship measures and to take a polygraph test assessing the number of major and white lies they had told during that week. According to Kelly, Americans average about 11 lies per week.

Over the course of 10 weeks, the link between less lying and better health was significantly stronger for participants in the no-lie group, the study found. For example, when participants in the no-lie group told three fewer white lies than they did in other weeks, they experienced on average about four fewer mental-health complaints, such as feeling tense or melancholy, and about three fewer physical complaints, such as sore throats and headaches, the researchers found.

In contrast, when control group members told three fewer white lies, they experienced two fewer mental-health complaints and about one less physical complaint. The pattern was similar for major lies, Kelly said.

Compared to the control group, participants in the more truthful group told significantly fewer lies across the 10-week study, and by the fifth week, they saw themselves as more honest, Kelly said. When participants across both groups lied less in a given week, they reported their physical health and mental health to be significantly better that week.

The study also revealed positive results in participants' personal relationships, with those in the no-lie group reporting improved relationship and social interactions overall going more smoothly when they told no lies.

"Statistical analyses showed that this improvement in relationships significantly accounted for the improvement in health that was associated with less lying," said Wang, who is a statistician.

Is it difficult to keep from lying in day-to-day interaction?

Participants said they realized they could simply tell the truth about their daily accomplishments rather than exaggerate, while others said they stopped making false excuses for being late or failing to complete tasks, Kelly said. Others said they learned to avoid lying by responding to a troubling question with another question to distract the person, she said.

INFORMATION:

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

NASA sees Typhoon Haikui approaching China in visible and infrared light

NASA sees Typhoon Haikui approaching China in visible and infrared light
2012-08-07
Two NASA satellites have captured data on the activity of Typhoon Haikui as it nears the China coast. NASA's Terra satellite provided a visible look at the storm, while NASA's Aqua satellite investigated it in infrared light. Both showed some strong thunderstorms within that were likely packing heavy rainfall. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Typhoon Haikui on August 5. The AIRS instrument captured an infrared image of the cloud temperatures that showed the strongest storms and heaviest rainfall in all quadrants of the storm except the northern area. The strongest storms ...

Disney Research technique improves rendering of smoke, dust and participating media

2012-08-07
ZURICH – Computer graphic artists often struggle to render smoke and dust in a way that makes a scene look realistic, but researchers at Disney Research, Zürich, Karlsruhe Technical Institute in Germany, and the University of Montreal in Canada have developed a new and efficient way to simulate how light is absorbed and scattered in such scenes. "Our technique could be used to simulate anything from vast cloudscapes, to everyday 'solid' objects such as a glass of orange juice, a piece of fruit or virtually any organic substance," said Dr. Wojciech Jarosz of Disney Research ...

The scientific side of steroid use and abuse

The scientific side of steroid use and abuse
2012-08-07
Leslie Henderson is concerned about steroid abuse, not necessarily by sports luminaries like Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, but rather by adolescents. "There is this disconnect among young people that somehow your emotions, your thought processes—things that have to do with your brain—are separate and different from what steroids may be doing to your body—your muscles, your heart, or your liver, or anything like that," says Henderson, a professor of physiology and neurobiology, and of biochemistry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. She is also the senior associate ...

Risk of stroke from cardiac catheterizations

2012-08-07
MAYWOOD, Il. -- When a patient undergoes a cardiac catheterization procedure such as a balloon angioplasty, there's a slight risk of a stroke or other neurological complication. While the risk is extremely small, neurologists nevertheless may expect to see catheterization-induced complications because so many procedures are performed, Loyola neurologists write in the journal MedLink Neurology. Cardiac catheterizations include diagnostic angiograms, balloon angioplasties and stent placements. More than 1.4 million procedures are successfully performed each year. Cardiac ...

Mothers, children underestimate obesity in China

2012-08-07
Childhood obesity is on the rise in China, and children and parents there tend to underestimate body weight, according to Penn State health policy researchers. "Because many overweight Chinese children underestimate their weight, they are less likely to do anything to improve their diet or exercise patterns," said Nengliang Yao, graduate student in health policy and administration. "If they don't make changes, they are likely to be obese and have a lot of health problems in the future -- as we often see in the United States already." Children between the ages of 6 and ...

New study examines injuries to US workers with disabilities

2012-08-07
A new study conducted by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital and The Ohio State University compared medically attended noncccupational and occupational injuries among U.S. workers with and without disabilities. The study, appearing online in the American Journal of Public Health, found that workers with disabilities are significantly more likely to experience both nonoccupational and occupational injuries than those without disabilities. Rates of nonoccupational and occupational injuries ...

Racial differences in diabetes diagnostic thresholds

2012-08-07
BOSTON – Healthcare providers should take into account differences among racial groups when using hemoglobin A1C levels to diagnose and monitor diabetes, new research from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center suggests. In a study published Aug. 7 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers analyzed National Health and Nutrition Survey data from 2005 to 2008 to examine the association between hemoglobin A1C levels in black and white adults and the risk for retinopathy, an eye complication of diabetes that is detectable early in the disease and can ultimately lead to ...

Extreme plasma theories put to the test

Extreme plasma theories put to the test
2012-08-07
The first controlled studies of extremely hot, dense matter have overthrown the widely accepted 50-year old model used to explain how ions influence each other's behavior in a dense plasma. The results should benefit a wide range of fields, from research aimed at tapping nuclear fusion as an energy source to understanding the inner workings of stars. The study also demonstrates the unique capabilities of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. While researchers have created extremely ...

Brain signal IDs responders to fast-acting antidepressant

Brain signal IDs responders to fast-acting antidepressant
2012-08-07
Scientists have discovered a biological marker that may help to identify which depressed patients will respond to an experimental, rapid-acting antidepressant. The brain signal, detectable by noninvasive imaging, also holds clues to the agent's underlying mechanism, which are vital for drug development, say National Institutes of Health researchers. The signal is among the latest of several such markers, including factors detectable in blood, genetic markers, and a sleep-specific brain wave, recently uncovered by the NIH team and grantee collaborators. They illuminate ...

Scientists define new limits of microbial life in undersea volcanoes

Scientists define new limits of microbial life in undersea volcanoes
2012-08-07
By some estimates, a third of Earth's organisms live in our planet's rocks and sediments, yet their lives are almost a complete mystery. This week, the work of microbiologist James Holden of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and colleagues shines a light into this dark world. In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they report the first detailed data on methane-exhaling microbes that live deep in the cracks of hot undersea volcanoes. "Evidence has built that there's an incredible amount of biomass in the Earth's subsurface, in ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Using lightning to make ammonia out of thin air

Machine learning potential-driven insights into pH-dependent CO₂ reduction

Physician associates provide safe care for diagnosed patients when directly supervised by a doctor

How game-play with robots can bring out their human side

Asthma: patient expectations influence the course of the disease

UNM physician tests drug that causes nerve tissue to emit light, enabling faster, safer surgery

New study identifies EMP1 as a key driver of pancreatic cancer progression and poor prognosis

XPR1 identified as a key regulator of ovarian cancer growth through autophagy and immune evasion

Flexible, eco-friendly electronic plastic for wearable tech, sensors

Can the Large Hadron Collider snap string theory?

Stuckeman professor’s new book explores ‘socially sustainable’ architecture

Synthetic DNA nanoparticles for gene therapy

New model to find treatments for an aggressive blood cancer

Special issue of Journal of Intensive Medicine analyzes non-invasive respiratory support

T cells take aim at Chikungunya virus

Gantangqing site in southwest China yields 300,000-year-old wooden tools

Forests can’t keep up: Adaptation will lag behind climate change

Sturgeon reintroduction initiative yields promising first-year survival rate

Study: Babies’ poor vision may help organize visual brain pathways

Research reveals Arctic region was permafrost-free when global temperatures were 4.5˚ C higher than today

Novel insights into chromophobe renal cell carcinoma biology and potential therapeutic strategies

A breakthrough in motor safety: AI-powered warning system enhances capability to uncover hidden winding faults

Research teases apart competing transcription organization models

Connect or reject: Extensive rewiring builds binocular vision in the brain

Benefits and risks: informal use of antibiotics to prevent sexually transmitted infections on the rise in key populations in the Netherlands

New molecular tool sheds light on how cancer cells repair telomeres

First large-scale stem cell bank enables worldwide studies on genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease

Hearing devices significantly improve social lives of those with hearing loss

CNIC scientists reveal how the cellular energy system evolved—and how this knowledge could improve the diagnosis of rare genetic diseases

AI sharpens pathologists' interpretation of tissue samples

[Press-News.org] Study: Telling fewer lies linked to better health and relationships