Research Topic 1:

Boys who grew up in warm families feel more secure in their romantic relationships as adults and into their 80s, finds research in Psychological Science. A Harvard study examined data from a six-decade longitudinal study on 81 males starting in 1938. Researchers looked at early interviews with the participants and their parents about their childhoods; midlife interviews in which they discussed work, health and relationship challenges; and finally late-life interviews in which participants, in their 70s and 80s, discussed their current relationships. Men who grew up in nurturing family environments were more likely to have secure attachments to their romantic partners late in life, and that association could be explained, in part, by better emotional regulation skills in midlife.

Research Topic 2:

Honesty is the best policy with children. Telling small lies my desensitize our brains and lead to ever-bigger lies, suggests research in Nature Neuroscience. The researchers used functional MRI to scan 80 participant brains as they played computer game in which they could benefit from lying to an unseen partner. When participants told an initial small lie, their amygdala showed a strong response. But as their lies escalated throughout the game, the amygdala response got smaller. The researchers suggest that the reduced amygdala response could reflect a reduced emotional response to dishonesty and that further research could explore whether the same slippery slope principal might apply to other behaviors including violence and risk-tasking.

Happy New Year,
Susie Bean Gives Team