With marijuana becoming more and more popular and more states starting to legalize it, there is an important question to ask. How high is too high to drive? A recent study from the Huffington Post took 20 volunteers and tested their driving skills while high. All of the volunteers had smoked before and the driving simulator was at the University of Iowa in the National Advanced Driving Simulator.

Since the University of Iowa is a smoke-free campus, the volunteers got high by vaporized marijuana and sometimes given alcohol on top of the marijuana. The drivers were all given the same amount of marijuana; about one joint worth.

The volunteers were placed into many different driving simulations. Some included city simulators with people crossing the streets, others on highways, and some in rural settings with deer jumping out. All of the examples were challenging driving tests and the volunteers levels of intoxication were recorded throughout the study.

The current law is that 5 nanograms of active THC per milliliter of blood in the blood is the legal limit for driving. This study, however, found that THC levels don’t necessarily correlate with ability to drive. A different study talked about in this Huffington Post article mentions 6 out of 25 participants tested positive for THC 7 days after feeling the effects of the marijuana.

“In 2011, Denver marijuana reporter William Breathes memorably demonstratedTHC’s unpredictable effect on the body. After a night of sleep and not smoking pot for 15 hours, a sober Breathes still tested nearly three times higher than the proposed legal limit.”

This specific instance shocked me. William actually got tested, was sober, and still was way above the legal limit. This shows that the current law about the 5 nanograms of active THC is not the best law. Different people could drive completely fine with this level or more while others may not be able to drive at all with a level that high. This seems like THC affects each person differently or the affects wear off after awhile but the THC is still present. This topic clearly needs more research done on this as marijuana starts to become legalized in more places.

Something interesting I found was an app called My Canary which lets a smoker play “games” to see if they are too high to drive. The app tests reaction times, balance, memory, and other things to determine the level of intoxication and see if the person is okay. This is definitely a step in the right direction and this is the best way to tell if someone is intoxicated that anyone has come up with yet. This should be required for everyone driving after smoking marijuana. If the app could save scores, then the driver could prove that they are sober enough to drive.

Obviously, a lot of research needs to be done on this topic. I don’t think it is fair to send people to jail for having a high THC level if that clearly does not correlate with level of intoxication. This is a prime example of correlation does not equal causation. As these studies have shown, THC does not cause inability to drive in all cases. Much more research needs to be done to find the appropriate way of determining ability to drive after smoking marijuana. It may be difficult with it being illegal so many places but if an answer cannot be found then it may not be safe to have it be legal. But thats a whole other discussion.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/29/stoned-driving-study_n_5627655.html

http://criminal.lawyers.com/dui-dwi/how-high-is-too-high-to-drive.html

How High Is Too High to Drive?

http://www.businessinsider.com/my-canary-iphone-app-helps-weed-smokers-know-if-theyre-too-high-to-drive-2015-7

When you think of aggressive and dangerous dogs, usually you think of specific breeds or maybe childhood memories. A recent study from the Huffington Post called “Human directed aggression in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris): Occurrence in different contexts and risk factors,” actually shows that aggression is based off of many factors besides breed. Now breed can be an included factor, but not exclusive. Aggression is defined as ” barking, lunging, growling, or biting.” The study sent out over 14,000 surveys and got about 4,000 responses with only 3% reporting aggression. The study focuses on aggression toward family members, strangers in the house, and strangers outside of the house.

Basically, the study found correlations between a lot of things and level of aggression. Dogs with older owners tended to be less aggressive. Dogs coming from a breeder tended to be less aggressive than those coming from a pet store or shelter. Dogs who were spayed or neutered were less aggressive than those who were not. The study also looked at dogs who went to puppy obedience class and had the following findings.

“Attending puppy class correlated with less aggression toward strangers both inside and outside the whole — but attending a training class for four or more weeks was related to more aggression toward family members. (Remember: the researchers found correlations here, not causation, which means it’s possible that dogs were going to obedience class for a long time because of their aggressive tendencies.)”

I thought this was interesting to note that without a more experimental study, this specific study cannot show that correlation equals causation. This is obviously very important to note as a scientist or researcher on this topic. As we discussed in class, making the assumption that correlation equals causation could have cause a serious error in the final conclusion of the study.

The study does say that breed can affect aggression in dogs but stresses that there are other factors that are not considered. The study also suggests that a certain breed may seem more aggressive but that could potentially be due to the owners. Certain owners may be more attracted to a specific breed making the dogs seem more aggressive when in reality it is directly related to the owners. This was not specifically studied but rather suggested as a hypothesis.

An article on the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals talks about aggression. This gives an extensive list of things that qualify as aggression like different types of biting, lunging, growling, showing teeth, and a few other rather bizarre behaviors that are said to be aggressive. This post then goes into different types of aggression. I think this section is very important. This looks at potential environmental caused aggression that most likely the owners might not admit to in the previous study by the Huffington Post. Some types of aggression are territorial aggression where the dog is aggressive towards an intruder of the dogs space. Another type is possessive aggression where the dog is possessive over its things like toys, food, bed, etc. Other types of aggression include protective, fear, defensive, social, frustration-elicited, redirected, pain-elicited, sex-related, and predatory aggression.

The article then goes into risk factors of aggression. Risk factors listed include size, age, bit history, severity, predictability, targets, triggers, ease of motivating the dog. Really, the only factor that directly is caused by the breed is the size. The other seven factors are related to the personality of the dog, environment, and owners. Still, I find that large dogs are usually more docile. This article is saying that in theory, large dogs are able to conflict more damage than small ones.

I think that a study should be done to evaluate the owners as well as the dogs. The owners could answer questions about the dogs and the dogs should be observed to see if the answers match. The owners should also be evaluated because the owner obviously directly affects the dog and if the owner is not aggressive, it would be interesting to see how aggressive the dog is in return. My conclusion for now is to be kind and not aggressive toward your dog and regardless of the breed, you’ll have a sweet dog.

A recent Huffington Post article summarized the findings of the meta-analysis called “Having Less, Giving More: The Influence of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior.” This analysis took a few different studies and compared them. All of the studies came to roughly the same conclusion: if you are rich, you are selfish and have less empathy towards others than people of a lower socioeconomic standing. To me this sounds ridiculous but lets take a look.

The first study, “Study of the Day: Rich People Feel Less Empathy” that was posted on goodmenproject.com. It had mock job interviews with about 300 people where each person was supposed to tell the emotion of a stranger from a photograph. People of higher socioeconomic standing had a much harder time of determining feelings than those of lower social class. This was the first major study done regarding something like this. I am not convinced though because the study doesn’t mention how these people were picked or how much of a variance between social class was represented. Also, 300 people is not enough to convince me when this world is made up of a few billion. Its a good start but lets move to the next one.

The next study was, “Low-Income People Quicker to Show Compassion.” There is not many detail on this study besides the fact that lower income people are more compassionate was their finding. People who read about the study gave a quick backlash of comments saying that this couldn’t be true. Personally, without more information on the study I don’t know how true it is either.

Another thing this meta-analysis looked at was the article from thinkprocess.org called, ” ‘U.S.’ Chamber of Commerce Lobbied to Help Kill Bill to Provide Health Care to 9/11 First Responders.” The title pretty much explains the article. The bill that was supposed to help get 9/11 first responders health care was viciously shut down by the U.S. Many 9/11 first responders were dying of asbestosis. The reason it was shut down was because the money to fund it came from closing a tax loophole in foreign trade. The Chamber did not want to damage relations with an unknown foreign power by shutting down this tax loophole so this bill about the first responders was shut down instead. The Chamber never released which foreign power was pressuring them to make this decision. The article itself makes it sound like the Chamber is made up of bad, selfish people, but in reality they may have been saving us from another major international crisis that we didn’t know about. So I don’t think its fully fair to be so critical regarding the Chamber. The Chamber did say that they support the bill if there was a way to fund it differently.

Another study that was looked at was, “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior.” This study stated, “Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals.” Also, it said, “Upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.” This study is also not explained in this meta-analysis so I have a hard time believing how credible it actually is. With little information given about this study, it could just be people making things up (like that one graduate student’s study we talked about in class during the $100 challenge). This study claimed that people of higher economic class feel more entitled to things than others.

The meta-analysis concludes by saying that rich people aren’t empathetic because their parents raise them to be selfish and strive for success regardless of the cost while other lower class parents teach their children to “care about the welfare of others.” That seems like it was just pulled out of a hat to me. None of the “studies” discussed mentioned parents relation to a child’s selfishness. Now this does sound like a good theory and something that should be tested but it hasn’t been yet.

Overall, I think this is just kind of a bizarre meta-analysis. It doesn’t go very in depth with each study and while it has an interesting main idea, it doesn’t execute the analysis very well. But still, I simply think this idea is wrong. These studies don’t actually explicitly say that they’ve looked at the most rich people in the world. Look at Oprah for example. She is a very generous person and helps those in need whenever she can. Taylor Swift and other celebrities are involved in outreach programs. Warren Buffet even states that he doesn’t know why he doesn’t get taxed as much as his secretary here. These are some of the richest people in the world but being rich doesn’t mean you don’t care about others.

The reason you care about other people comes down to a little part of the brain. The amygdalae is a little piece of your brain and the size of this  piece directly correlates with how much you care about others. This video below explains it in more depth. I think a study should be done on different socioeconomic people’s size of amygdalae. Until that happens, I’m not convinced.

“Beer bellies” are a common name for those pudgy bellies usually on older men (older being over generally 35 which will be here sooner than we know it). Everyone knows that having extra weight is not healthy but only after a little bit of research did I discover just how unhealthy it actually is. A beer belly, also referred to as “apple shape” makes people more susceptible to disease and death. Actually, this study talks about this in depth and says that people with an apple shape body are more likely to have serious health problems than people with a pear shaped body and even obese people. The study watched over 15,000 people with different BMIs for 14 years to see their risk of death related to weight and location of the weight. Another doctor in this article, Dr. Lisa Neff, said that weight in the middle area can seriously increase someone’s risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other abnormalities. Beer bellies are also dangerous because the fat is contained around the body’s most important organs versus a pear shape where the fat is concentrated around the hips and thighs and not many organs.

People get beer bellies from a few things. The most obvious is overconsumption of beer. Beer is typically served in large servings as opposed to other types of alcohol and are served at many different places such as bars, baseball games, concerts, etc. whereas you generally can’t get a shot of whiskey when you go see the Phillies. Alcohol in general is mostly calories that don’t have nutritional value so they are stored as fat and can make people feel more hungry.

Another potential cause of beer bellies is a bad diet. Beer is typically associated with unhealthy eating although unhealthy eating alone can cause a beer belly regardless of beer intake (maybe you would call that a pot belly then). Depending on your body, your extra weight from unhealthy eating may go to your stomach. Most people with beer bellies are past the age of 35 which means that their metabolisms are starting to slow down. If someones metabolism starts slowing down but the person doesn’t adjust their eating habits, they will gain weight.

Also, a major cause for a beer belly is a lack of exercise. Most people do not exercise as much as is required to keep the extra belly fat off. Beer and unhealthy food are usually associated with sedentary events. When you go to see the Phillies, you get a beer, a hot dog, and take a seat for the next few hours. When you watch football on TV, you get a lot of beer, nachos and a pizza, and sit on the couch and watch the game. When you go to a bar, you sit at the bar and may order food or just beer but you sit there the whole night (or maybe you have fun, you do you). Generally beer, unhealthy food, and sitting are associated with each other. Also, most people now days have jobs where they sit all day at work and don’t exercise outside of their walk from office to car.

Genetics is the last main cause of a beer belly. Unfortunately, this is something no one really has had control over. In class we briefly talked about how changing genes is starting to become possible. It would be interesting to see if it would be possible to change someone’s gene to avoid having the apple shape body. It seems like it could definitely happen if not now, in the near future. I’d also be interested to see a study comparing different types of genes and their relation to beer bellies or see if light beer does significantly make a difference in a beer belly.

How to do you lose a beer belly? Basically, you lose a beer belly the same way you lose any weight. Drinking less caloric beverages such as beer will help or perhaps switching to a light beer. Also, exercising more will help even if it is just as much as riding a bike to work or walking around outside during your lunch break. Also, it is important to eat healthy by cutting out unhealthy snacks and binge eating. Eating more small meals throughout the day will help rather than many large ones. But most people have heard this before and still no one changes their ways.

A rather bizarre way I thought of that might be a motivator for men with beer bellies to lose that belly is to have a competition. Men would dress up as Santa for Christmas to start the challenge. Then, they would lose the weight necessary to get rid of the belly in time to be Uncle Sam for the 4th of July! The men could post pictures online of their transitions and maybe even be in parades for Christmas and the 4th of July. Its a rather out there idea but I think it sounds like fun! #Santa2Sam #ByeByeBelly ?? What do you guys think?

http://alcoholrehab.com/alcoholism/how-to-lose-a-beer-belly/

http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v57/n10/full/1601678a.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/belly-fat-study_564130bae4b0411d30724458

We’ve all been there before. You eat so much food that you feel like you can’t move and end up staying in one spot until you fall asleep. Food comas are typically associated with Thanksgiving although they can come anytime of the year. They’re so common that people even blog about them! The popular myth is that turkey causes food comas but that is in fact not true. DNews talks about how turkey has an amino acid called tryptophan, that causes a release of serotonin and melatonin in the brain causing lethargy and tiredness, but many other non-vegan food such as chicken, yogurt, eggs, etc. also have tryptophan. Food comas, or postprandial somnolence, is primarily caused by carbohydrates causing tryptophan to go to the brain and releasing melatonin and serotonin. Melatonin and serotonin are chemicals that makes the body tired and eventually causes you to fall asleep. Amy goes more in depth in DNews about this weird phoneme but hopefully I summed it up enough. Basically, when you eat certian food with this special chemical (tryptophan) and food with carbs together, you get tired. Still confused? Watch this DNews video.

So how do we avoid the dreaded food coma?

Well, the short version is don’t eat that much but we all know that’s unlikely. This BuzzFeed article gives some pretty good tips as to how to avoid a food coma before it happens. It suggests to drink lots of water, avoid alcohol, eat greens, eat healthy snacks and breakfast, eat in small amounts along with a few others. Basically, thats what most sites tell you to do. But if you’re like me, you don’t plan ahead very well (note the time of this blog post in relation to the due date). I need a way to get over a food coma fast when its too late and I’ve already stuffed my face with turkey and creamed corn and everything else that comes with the holidays. The only thing I could really find on a cure for after you’ve eaten a lot, is to try to walk around and help clean up the dishes and whatnot. As I don’t like doing dishes much, I’d really like to see a study done to try to discover a way to stop the release of melatonin or how to get past the ridiculously full feeling faster. This is such a common problem for people it shocks me that no one has found any way to get rid of the food coma after it’s already set in.

I decided maybe I could change my diet and avoid the food coma this way. After I looked a little deeper to see what foods have the most tryptophan in them and found this list. Basically its all the good meat and other protein foods that are essential to human growth and are just really yummy. So I decided I didn’t want to cut those foods out of my holiday diet. Obviously, I love bread and pasta and decided I didn’t want to cut those out either. So that left me with no solution other than to eat in proportion, try to apply these tips before the food coma comes, and hope that someone will find a way to stop the melatonin and not make me sleepy and so full! Happy holidays everyone. Eat safe.

http://americannutritionassociation.org/newsletter/focus-tryptophan

http://www.womenshealthmag.com/food/food-coma

http://www.healthywomen.org/content/blog-entry/so-you-think-you-cant-avoid-food-coma

http://www.livescience.com/52899-full-gut-microbes-signal-brain.html

I’m sure everyone has heard about the coral reefs quickly getting close to extinction. To understand why this is such a horrible thing, it is important to know about why coral reefs are so important in the first place. This video by DNews explains just how important coral are. Basically, coral has been around for an insanely long time. Coral has adapted over that time to grow together, creating reefs. These reefs help keep the carbon dioxide in the water down, keep millions of marine species alive, and protect our shores against natural disasters, amongst many other things. Now in class we always say how correlation does not equal causation but in the case of coral, it does. Coral becoming extinct would cause our entire planet and way of life to drastically change. Without a coral reef home, many different types of marine life would most likely eventually become extinct which would have a drastic and disastrous ripple effect on life as we know it.

So what do we do?

Another video from DNews goes on to talk about how scientists have been experimenting with lab-grown super corals. Specifically, a scientist from The Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, Ruth Gates, has attempted to create coral that can tolerate the warm, acidic water that is predicted to be the future of the ocean. She has succeeded in making this coral on a small scale but the next challenge is to see how we can put this into a widespread solution.

Personally, I love snorkeling. The first time I snorkeled was when I was 5 years old. It was 2001 and I was learning to snorkel in Mexico. I remember seeing these beautiful colors of the reef and from then forward, always wanted to snorkel when I traveled somewhere tropical. However, my last tropical vacation was to Hawaii this past summer and I was utterly shocked to see how much the coral has changed in those 14 years since I first saw a reef. The only colors I saw was from the occasional parrot fish. I’ve been snorkeling roughly every other year since 2001 but this year was the most upsetting for me. Hawaii is supposed to have some of the most beautiful snorkleing in the ocean and all I saw were bleached, dead or nearly dead traces of a once beautiful reef.

BUT IT IS NOT TOO LATE! There are things that we can do here at home. Some major things are to save water; avoid pollution from cars by riding bikes or walking; plant a tree; use sunscreen like Badger Balm that is not harmful to coral reefs; be cautious not to touch any coral when snorkeling or swimming in the ocean. Also, Discovery Channel has the “Racing Extinction Challenge.” Start the challenge today and help save our oceans before its too late and we’re all (for lack of a better word) screwed.

http://coralreefs.wr.usgs.gov/risk.html

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0025326X87906497

http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/habitats/coralreefs/ways-to-help-coral-reefs/index.htm

http://www.badgerbalm.com/s-35-coral-reef-safe-sunscreen.aspx

Everyone needs a little bit of caffeine every so often. Some people need it more than others. With stores like Starbucks popping up at every corner, the preferred choice of caffeinated beverage seems to be coffee. However, tea has recently stolen my heart and heres why it should steal yours too.

First, tea has caffeine in it also. Black, green, white, and oolong tea have caffeine that can actually be beneficial to your health. One article discusses the long term positive health affects that tea can have. The article says that tea is thought to have serious cancer-fighting properties and it is filled with antioxidants. Not enough studies have been to to 100% prove this point but tea is thought to have medicinal purposes and a soothing effect on its drinker. This article also discusses how hot tea is better than cold tea because production adds sugar and other ingredients to cold tea that can be avoided in hot tea.

Also, the longer the tea brews, the more caffeine it produces. Caffeine content can also be based off of what temperature the tea brews at. While it is true that coffee has more caffeine than tea, that is not necessarily a benefit. Tea has many antioxidants that help the release of the caffeine into the body. This means that the caffeine will not result in a “caffeine crash” at the end of its cycle. It also means that the caffeine will have a gentler release into the drinker’s system. This article talks about all of this and also mentions that if you are looking for a decaf drink, self brewing will not successfully produce those results. It says that if you do a quick brew to try to take out the caffeine, you may get most of the caffeine out but also take the healthy antioxidants with it. If you want a guaranteed decaf tea, stick to herbal.

Unfortunately, caffeine overall is not healthy. It is a drug that can have withdrawal symptoms and other negative effects on the body. According to this article, caffeine can cause anxiety and sleep problems like fatigue, restlessness, and insomnia. It can also have negative effects such as spinal bone loss in postmenopausal women and can lead to stomach aches, heartburn, and high cholesterol. This article then goes on to say that it can have certain benefits such as decreasing the risk for Alzheimer’s, suicide, stroke, and oral cancers. So ultimately, drink it at your own discretion. My suggestion is that if you “need” to drink caffeine, drink the caffeine with the healthy antioxidants: tea.

Everyone has been there. You wake up one morning after a really nice dream and you want to remember it but you can’t. Why? Well the short answer is that science doesn’t actually know yet. Here’s the long answer.

When you fall asleep, you go through the four stages of sleep. The final stage being the REM (rapid eye movement) stage. This is the stage in which you dream. Your brain activity is much higher in this stage. Typically, if you are woken during this stage, you’re more likely to remember the dream. Actually, according to this study, you’re more likely to remember dreams the more you wake up in the night. The study took 36 participants and measured their brain activity while awake and asleep. Half of the participants were “high recallers” because they frequently remembered their dreams (nearly every day) and the other participants were “low recallers” because they hardly remembered their dreams (once a month). Basically, the researchers found that both groups had similar brain activity when they heard their name while asleep. However, while awake the high recallers had a decrease in the alpha wave in their brain. The study says this means that the brains of high recallers are activating more sections of their brain. This possibly suggests that the brain reacts to outside stimuli more and wakes the participants up more which could help explain why they remember dreams more. The study said that on average, the low recallers woke up an average of 14 minutes during the night and the high recallers were awake an average of 30 minutes during the night.

Basically what I took from this is that if you have more brain activity, you will be more likely to remember dreams and not get quite as much sleep. Still, that didn’t explain why. This article talks about the thoughts of Sigmund Freud. Freud  suggested that we don’t remember our dreams because they are thoughts or feelings that we are repressing because we cannot handle them at the time. He says that our brains don’t want us to remember some dreams because they’re too traumatic. This doesn’t make sense to me because I am pretty sure some of the crazy and random dreams I have are not too much for me to handle. So I think this is a possible theory but probably unlikely.

Another theory is that our brains don’t remember dreams because dreams by nature are very vague. This article suggests that dreams that are reoccurring are more likely to be remembered. This theory makes more sense to me. Dreams are very bizarre and we may need to have them more than once to really remember them. Then again, when I have a dream I can never tell if I’ve had the dream before or if it is an especially vivid new dream. This site also talks about ways to possibly remember your dreams better.

As we talked about in class, not everything can be explained by science. Perhaps this is one of those topics. Or, perhaps we simply need to do more research on the topic. Then again, does it really matter if we remember our dreams? Probably not, but it is a highly discussed topic anyway.

Recently, the media has been talking about how men with beards have poop in their beards. Swabs of beards have shown that there is the same bacteria in beards as in faeces according to an article in USA Today. This seems a little extreme and a lot gross. Another article by The Guardian says that there is no need to worry about having poop in your beard. They said there iphas been no proper study done and the pool of me. They sampled was a small group of people. The Atlantic discusses that this could be a feature exclusive to men in Albuquerque.

This definitely calls for a professional study to be conducted with a large group of men tested from all over the world. The scientists could swab the men’s beards and then test for the same bacteria as in faeces. This would majorly change how men with beards are viewed in modern day society. They should then go on to test to see if shampooing or washing the beards could get rid of the bacteria.

This would be a really gross discovery if it is in fact true. I would think that the scientists could get the beards clean by washing them just as women wash their hair to clean it. I should seriously hope this is the case as I do like men with facial hair and I don’t have any desire to kiss someone with faeces on their face.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/05/how-filthy-is-your-beard/392258/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/05/04/beard-swab-results/26861943/

http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/may/04/no-need-for-men-to-get-flush-faced-about-faeces-in-beards

Selfies are the new trend of the 21st century. Everyone takes them but not everyone post them to social media. Personally, I do not post them because I feel awkward about it. Maybe thats a good thing (even though I’m a woman) according to this study done by Ohio State University. The study takes 800 men and surveyed them. They asked about their posting habits on social media regarding selfies, editing, etc. as well as asking about anti-social behaviors and self-objectification. Ultimately, their findings linked selfies and editing to narcissism and psychopathy. Seems rather extreme to me but also possible. Huffington Post says that the study doesn’t mean that these men are actually narcissistic or psychopathic, just that they are more likely to be than other men not taking selfies. The study talks about how taking the selfie correlates with narcissism and editing the selfie shows higher levels of self-objectification. The men who scored higher in these areas scored in a more normal range for other regular behaviors.

I think this is a good theory. However, it does not seem like a good place to start with a hypothesis like “People who post and edit selfies are narcissistic and psychopathic.” Men in general post far less selfies than women from my humble observations. Frankly, I can’t remember the last time I saw a straight man post a selfie. I have seen gay men post selfies as well as women but never straight men. This study does not mention sexual preference of the men observed which could be a serious confounding variable in this study. Also, they only sampled 800 men which is a small sample of the total male population. In addition, the men were taking a survey therefore, they knew what they were being asked about so it was not a blinded study. They may have changed their answers to put what they think the researchers “want” to see. Overall, there are quite a bit of flaws in this study.

To get a better feel for this hypothesis, researchers should conduct a study on men, homosexual men, women, and homosexual women as well as a randomized study including everyone. This would help expose the possible confounding variable of sexual preference. The next step would be to try to understand why (if so) sexual preference correlates with posted selfies. Researchers should also look at the social media of each person in the study and see for themselves what the person posts and not rely solely on what the person says or how they answer a survey.

Also, the study just shows a possible correlation with selfies and narcissism/psychopathy. It doesn’t try to explain what causes what. It would be necessary for the study to try to determine if it is a direct cause that narcissism and psychopathy cause selfies or a reverse cause where the selfies promote and cause narcissism and psychopathy. Personally, it seems more likely to me to be a direct cause but that is just a gut feeling (which isn’t scientific.) The study should go deeper into the lives of the participants to determine levels of narcissism and self-objectification and then compare them with number of selfies posted to determine if there is a correlation beyond just asking the men a few questions.

I think this study would be much more interesting to conduct if it were women being focused on. In my circle of social media, I see many women posting and editing selfies but hardly any men as I mentioned before. It therefore seems like a more obvious answer to the select few men who post but possibly a larger, less obvious answer for women. Since women more commonly post selfies, this should be an easier study to conduct. Researchers then would have to determine the level of narcissism and psychopathy and compare it to selfies posted and edited by these women.

There is quite a bit more of research required to come to any sort of conclusion. Selfies are still a new trend and therefore hasn’t given science much time to do studies on selfies and those who take selfies. Really, there are hardly any studies done on the subject. There are a lot of questions that need answered. Is there a correlation between selfies and narcissism/psychopahty? Does sexual preference have any correlation with this? Are women more likely than men to post selfies? Does that mean that women are more likely than men to be narcissistic or psychopaths?

Then, scientists have to figure out the mechanism of all these answers. They have to start asking the question, Why?

Basically, I think that this is a good hypothesis but the study sucks. There is not enough evidence to base a conclusion off of. I am very interested to see the results of future studies but until then there really is no solid answer. I think that if studies show a direct correlation, we need to figure out a way to stop it. No one wants a world of narcissistic, psychopathic people.

Clearly there is much work to be done on this topic.

http://www.kineo.com/blog/4-reasons-to-use-selfie-videos-in-elearning

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/12/selfies-narcissism-psychopathy_n_6429358.html

https://news.osu.edu/news/2015/01/06/hey-guys-posting-a-lot-of-selfies-doesn%E2%80%99t-send-a-good-message/

Hello! My name is Hope Williard and I am a sophomore in the Smeal College of Business. I am taking this class to fulfill my science requirement. Specifically I chose this class because I have a friend who took this class last fall. She really enjoyed the class and said it was interesting and not too difficult. I am not a science major because I don’t want to go into any field of science as a career. I am not a math person and typically math and science go hand-in-hand. Also, I have fun doing labs but typically do not do well in them. I look forward to learning about the different areas of science in a fun learning environment. Here is a link to one of my favorite ways to learn about science.