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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 [...]

Recently I made a post about the AIDS campaign in France where rather graphic images were used to get the message about safe sex across. New Scientist has two more stories that relate to the ways that people are promoting healthy behaviour or bringing awareness of health issues.
The first story relates to smoking and the [...]

Well, they say that sex sells, so I thought that it was about time that I jumped on that band-wagon. We all know the dangers of unprotected sex, or at least we should do, so how can we get the message across to those who still aren’t paying attention? In the Health module [...]

An interesting article over at psychcentral has identified a study looking into the sexual behaviour of adolescents and what variables effect is.
“… A study conducted in August 2006 examined longitudinal data from a survey of 5,401 Scottish teenagers. The researchers led by Daniel Wight of the Medical Research Council, Social and Public Health Sciences Unit [...]

Recently there has been a flurry of articles on addiction, the reasons why we become addicted and why do we continue to abuse these substances; be it alcohol, gambling or even love (there was a very interesting article about being addicted to love by Prof Mark Griffiths in a recent Psychology Review - and on [...]