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Back in January I talked about a fascinating video from a TED conference where Vilayanur Ramachandran discussed a new ‘treatment’ for phantom limb pain that he had come up with: the mirror box. I’m fascinated by phantom limb pain as I feel that it provides massive support for the thesis that pain perception is [...]

It’s widely accepted that when a person suffers from stress this has massive negative effects on that person; both psychologically and physically.  Much research has provided support to the idea that a being stressed can effect our immune system quite drastically making us prone to illness.  However, could being exposed to a stressed parental environment [...]

I have written about Health Promotion a bit in the past but over the last few months there’s been quite a lot of talk about it so here I am going to collate it into another carnival of research.
1) Increase the costs to get them doing it.
The Health Belief Model states that we need to [...]

The influence of our role models on behaviour is something of particular interest to psychologists and we study it through the entire psychology course. More specifically we look at the research conducted by Bandura and his work into Social Learning Theory (SLT) in the imitation of aggression. In a television advertisement called [...]

In the A2 health module we look at pain perception and what can affect this. One of the most fascinating disorders within pain (well in my opinion at least) is phantom limb pain. Phantom limb pain is when pain is perceived in a limb (although it can be experienced in other parts of [...]

Which gender experiences the most pain? The age old question is still rife: what hurts more, child birth or being kicked in the … well .. man bits?  I try to raise this question when talking about measuring pain in the Health section of the A2 using the McGill Pain questionnaire to quantify – well [...]

Social Comparison Theory and Obesity
As we are becoming more aware of the health implications of obesity and what we eat, from the ‘let some pretentious cow tell you what not to eat’ programmes to the traffic lights (which are appearing on the front of all my favourite foods telling me exactly how unhealthy what I [...]

I’ve spoken about health promotion a few times in the past, and echoing the title of my last post: have we gone too far? As of the 1st July smoking in an enclosed public place became illegal. As psychology students you learn about health promotion and ways to make the masses ‘more health [...]

I’ve made a few posts on here about pain and the perception of pain. The gate theory of pain suggests that perception of pain can be influenced by external influences like distraction. Could smell have a similar effect on the perception of pain? Well a new study would have us believe that [...]

Pain is a funny thing (well it’s not the funny if you’re in pain). Perception of pain, some would argue, is a largely psychological phenomenon which is influenced greatly by the mind. Be it the mind making you feel pain in a limb that doesn’t exist, or you mind blocking out pain so [...]