Science
'Sexual Regret' in Human Survival, Reproduction
In the largest, most in-depth study to date on regret surrounding sexual activity, a team of psychology researchers found a stark contrast in remorse between men and women, potentially shedding light on the evolutionary history of human nature.
Researchers for the study, led by Andrew Galperin, a former social psychology doctoral student at the University of California-LA included University of Texas at Austin evolutionary psychologist David Buss and Martie Haselton, a UCLA social psychology professor.
The findings show how human emotions such as regret can play an important role in survival and reproduction. They suggest that men are more likely to regret not taking action on a potential liaison, and women are more remorseful for engaging in one-time liaisons.
In three studies the researchers asked participants about their sexual regrets. In the first study, 200 respondents evaluated hypothetical scenarios in which someone regretted pursuing or failing to pursue an opportunity to have sex. They were then asked to rate their remorse on a five-point scale. In the second study, 395 participants were given a list of common sexual regrets and were asked to indicate which ones they have personally experienced. The last study replicated the second one with a larger sample of 24,230 individuals that included gay, lesbian and bisexual respondents.
According to the findings:
The top three most common regrets for women are: losing virginity to the wrong partner (24 percent), cheating on a present or past partner (23 percent) and moving too fast sexually (20 percent).
For men, the top three regrets are: being too shy to make a move on a prospective sexual partner (27 percent), not being more sexually adventurous when young (23 percent) and not being more sexually adventurous during their single days (19 percent).
More women (17 percent) than men (10 percent) included "having sex with a physically unattractive partner" as a top regret.
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Brand-Conscious Consumers Take Bad News to Heart
Consumers with close ties to a brand respond to negative information about the beloved brand as they do to personal failure – they experience it as a threat to their self-image, according to a new study by a University of Illinois marketing expert.
Tiffany Barnett White, a professor of business administration, finds that consumers with a high self-brand connection maintained favourable brand evaluations even when presented with negative brand information, suggesting that the reluctance of brand-conscious consumers to lower their opinion of a brand might be driven more by a motivation to protect the self.
According to the study, brands become highly symbolic of a consumers' self-concept, so much so that consumers will defend their self-connected brands much as they would defend themselves from personal failure.
The study, however, cautions that brand-conscious consumers do have their limits. An Apple aficionado, for example, might be turned off by the squalid working conditions of the factories in China that churn out iPhones and iPads.
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Archaeological Discoveries Confirm Early Date of Buddha's Life
Archaeologists working in Nepal have uncovered evidence of a structure at the birthplace of the Buddha dating to the sixth century B.C. This is the first archaeological material linking the life of the Buddha – and thus the first flowering of Buddhism – to a specific century.
Pilgrims visit the wall below the nativity scene within the Maya Devi Temple at Lumbini, Nepal.
Pioneering excavations within the sacred Maya Devi Temple at Lumbini, Nepal, a UNESCO World Heritage site long identified as the birthplace of the Buddha, uncovered the remains of a previously unknown sixth-century B.C. timber structure under a series of brick temples. Laid out on the same design as those above it, the timber structure contains an open space in the center that links to the nativity story of the Buddha himself.
Until now, the earliest archaeological evidence of Buddhist structures at Lumbini dated no earlier than the third century BC, the time of the patronage of the Emperor Asoka, who promoted the spread of Buddhism from present-day Afghanistan to Bangladesh.
The discovery, led by Coningham and Kosh Prasad Acharya of the Pashupati Area Development Trust in Nepal, contributes to a greater understanding of the early development of Buddhism as well as the spiritual importance of Lumbini.
To determine the dates of the timber shrine and a previously unknown early brick structure above it, fragments of charcoal and grains of sand were tested using a combination of radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence techniques. Geoarchaeological research also confirmed the presence of ancient tree roots within the temple's central void.
Buddhist tradition records that Queen Maya Devi, the mother of the Buddha, gave birth to him while holding on to the branch of a tree within the Lumbini Garden, midway between the kingdoms of her husband and parents. Coningham and his colleagues postulate that the open space in the center of the most ancient, timber shrine may have accommodated a tree. Brick temples built later above the timber shrine also were arranged around the central space, which was unroofed.
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Electronic Cigarettes: New Route to Smoking Addiction for Adolescents
E-cigarettes have been widely promoted as a way for people to quit smoking conventional cigarettes. Now, in the first study of its kind, UC San Francisco researchers are reporting that, at the point in time they studied, youth using e-cigarettes were more likely to be trying to quit, but also were less likely to have stopped smoking and were smoking more, not less.
E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that look like cigarettes and deliver an aerosol of nicotine and other chemicals. Promoted as safer alternatives to cigarettes and smoking cessation aids, e-cigarettes are rapidly gaining popularity among adults and youth in the United States and around the world. The devices are largely unregulated, with no effective controls on marketing them to minors.
In the UCSF study, the researchers assessed e-cigarette use among youth in Korea, where the devices are marketed much the way they are in the U.S. The study analyzed smoking among some 75,000 Korean youth.
In the UCSF study, the researchers report that four out of five Korean adolescent e-cigarette users are "dual" smokers who use both tobacco and e-cigarettes.
The data for the study came from the Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey, an annual, nationally-representative survey conducted by the Korea Centers for Disease Control in 2011. The sample included 75,643 youth in grades 7 through 12.
Among students who used e-cigarettes, eight percent were concurrently smoking conventional cigarettes. After adjusting for demographics, current cigarette smokers in the study were found to be much more likely to use e-cigarettes than non-smokers.
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