Sunday 28 February 2010

Stoned honey-bees, Facebook jealousy and swearing.


Honey-bees dance more, when they are given cocaine, and they have withdrawal symptoms (1). In the paper 'Effects of cocaine on honey bee dance behaviour' from November 2009 issue of The Journal of Experimental Biology, Stephenson and colleagues explored in five separate experiments, such aspects as honey-bees level of locomotive activity, dance behaviours, responsiveness to sugar and learning processes - everything when bees were high on coke...

The usual science of Facebook brings us some new data. Lets start from numbers - from the sample of 5000 filled divorces, 19.78% couples quote Facebook as a factor in break up. Now, study from last year Cyberpsychology and Behaviour journal shows that increased time spend on Facebook by couples in romantic relationship significantly predicts Facebook-related jealousy and suspicion (2). Muise et al (2009) surveyed 308 undergraduate students. Quoting they results, authors argue that using Facebook exposes people to often uncertain and confusing information about their partner that they may not otherwise have access. Then the loop occurs - people start using Facebook more, and track more information that might heat up their suspicions. Whats more, majority of participants reported that their partners have unknown individuals and past romantic and sexual partners as friends on Facebook, which creates potential environment for jealousy. There is increasingly more data of that type, which nicely shows how online social networks integrate smoothly with our lives, as a part of augmented information reality. So beware ;-)

Finally, in a different article from 2009 issue of NeuroReport titled 'Swearing as a response to pain' authors investigate whether swearing affects pain tolerance (to be more precise - keeping hand in icy water for some period of time), pain perception and heart rate (3). In addition, they look at gender differences and the roles of pain catastrophising. They found that swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing. However, swearing did not increase pain tolerance in males with a tendency to catastrophise. I guess that the implication is - swear as f**k when you're in pain, and it should feel better, but it won't work if you moan too much in general.

References:
1.
Barron, A. B., Maleszka, R., Helliwell, P. G., Robinson, G. (2009) Effects of cocaine on honey bee dance behaviour. The Journal of Experimental Biology 212, 163-168.
2.
Muise, A., Christofides, E., Desmarais, S. (2009) More Information than You Ever Wanted: Does Facebook Bring Out the Green-Eyed Monster of Jealousy? CYBERPSYCHOLOGY & BEHAVIOR, 12, 441-444.
3.
Stephens, R., Atkins, J., Kingston, A. (2009) Swearing as a response to pain. NeuroReport 20, 1056–1060.

[image credit: CharlesLam]

1 comment:

  1. "19.78% couples quote Facebook as a factor in break up"

    I wonder how many quote phonecalls and conversations in person as a factor in their break ups :P

    ReplyDelete