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Feeling disgust? The evidence shows it matters

June 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Experiencing something icky – the smell of vomit or the sight of maggots, for example – elicits an emotional response from most people.  It’s a feeling we call disgust, likely an emotion that evolved to discourage us from ingesting noxious or dangerous substances.

But a growing body of evidence on disgust shows that it now plays a much broader role in attitudes and judgments about everything in our lives – our food, our politics, even our relationships. David Pizzaro, assistant professor in psychology at Cornell, is making ground-breaking advances in this area.

Pizzaro’s has found evidence that individuals who are more easily disgusted in everyday life tend to have different moral and political views than those who are less easily disgusted. Subtle manipulations of disgust in the laboratory, such as a foul order, can temporarily alter people’s moral and political judgments.

One of his studies showed that people who feel disgust more readily have more unfavorable responses to homosexuals.  Two others demonstrated that individuals who feel disgust more readily are more likely to be conservative.

This research shed lights on how basic differences in emotion leads to variations in social and political ideals that make up the fabric of our society. And provides concrete evidence that emotions play an important role in all of our lives.

You can listen to Pizzaro talk about his work on disgust by clicking on this link.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living Tagged With: , , ,

Teens and alcohol: What can parents do?

May 3, 2011 By 3 Comments

I will never forget the moment, even though it was years ago. My wife and I were chatting with the parents of one of our daughter’s friends, and the topic of a recent sleep-over came up. They told us that the kids – all young teens – had camped out behind their house, which surprised us. But our jaws progressively dropped as this couple went on to say how they had provided beer to the kids. When we expressed dismay, they responded along the lines of “Well, they’re going to do it anyway.” This seemed to us wrong to the core, but it indicates the dilemmas parents face in trying to control teen drinking behavior. 

There is a mountain of scientific data about the dangers of teen alcohol use. Perhaps most frightening is that teenage drinking predicts alcohol abuse as an adult. Adolescent alcohol use is also related to driving accidents and fatalities, poor school performance, and engaging in other types of risky behaviors. In fact, there’s so much data on the negatives of teen alcohol consumption that EBL won’t even waste your time with a review. 

But what’s a parent to do? That’s where information from a recent systematic review breaks new ground (for information about systematic reviews and why they’re so good, see here). 

In their article, Siobhan Ryan, Anthony Jorn, and Dan Lubman conducted a state-of-the-art systematic review about what parenting strategies are associated with adolescent alcohol consumption. Two positive outcomes were examined: delayed onset of teen drinking (the later the better) and levels of alcohol consumption in adolescence. The review only looked at longitudinal studies, where data on parenting practices were collected early in adolescence and data on drinking at a later time point. These are very strong designs. Further, they carried out sophisticated statistical analyses to combine the results of studies. 

Let’s come back to our question: What’s a parent to do? It turns out that there are a number of parenting strategies that work to reduce teen drinking. Four of the most important of these are: 

  • Parental modeling – and specifically children learning about alcohol by observing the parents’ responsible drinking behavior
  • Parental monitoring – the degree to which parents know where there children are and who they are with
  • Parent – child relationship quality – the level of warmth and affection in the relationship
  • Limiting availability of alcohol  – not providing alcoholic beverages to the child

I was particularly glad to see that last one, because every once in a while I wonder if I was wrong to criticize those parents who created a beer party for young teens. It turns out I was right. An editorial accompanying the review article puts this issue succinctly:   

Many parents consider that this is the best way to prevent negative alcohol outcomes in their children, i.e. by allowing drinking at home and directly supplying them with small amounts of alcohol when they go out to parties. In fact some parents go out of their way to inoculate their children with alcohol, sometimes before puberty, in order to break down any sense of alcohol being a taboo. This normalization of drinking alcohol is aimed at lessening the “big deal” of adolescent initiation rites involving alcohol. However, the evidence points in the opposite direction, that normalization of alcohol increases the risk of harm.  

By being a good role model, monitoring one’s children carefully, and maintaining warm relationships, parents can make inroads into this very thorny problem, and perhaps keep their kids sober longer.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, Youth Development Tagged With: , , , ,

How to convince volunteers to care for trees

February 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The evidence shows that trees are an important part of our landscape – whether here in forested Ithaca, or in densely populated urban areas.

Studies have found that trees help improve focus, promote a sense of community, and deter crime. So it’s no surprise that major cities across the nation are launching initiatives to plant trees. New York City is undertaking one such project.  Called the MillionTreesNYC initiative, it aims to plant one million trees across all five city boroughs by 2017.

But urban forestry projects typically encounter a problem, explained Gretchen Ferenz, a senior extension associate at Cornell Cooperative Extension in New York City.

“Capital project funds will support planting and immediate care of trees for a couple of years, but costs for longer term care to ensure a young tree’s growth often are not included in municipal budgets,” she told the Cornell Chronicle for a story. “As a result, many urban trees do not survive into maturity.”

Ferenz’s office has joined forces with Cornell’s Department of Natural Resources to create the Urban Forestry Community Engagement Model, a program that provides workshops about the importance of trees to community members in two New York City neighborhoods. The goal is to enlist residents and organizations to become stewards of their community’s trees and, ultimately, to develop resources to help groups around the country do the same.

As part of the program, they’re collecting evidence to learn how to get more community members involved in caring for trees in their neighborhoods. They recently published a study that examines motivations and recruitment strategies for urban forestry volunteers.

Through a survey and focus groups, as well as a review of existing literature on the topic, the team found volunteer who plant and care for trees in their communities are motivated by a wide range of factors.  And most have a limited knowledge of the benefits of urban forests.

This type of work is an important first step in helping cities learn how to engage community members to help care for trees in their neighborhoods – and ultimately in making our world a bit greener.

(You can learn more about the Urban Forestry Community Engagement Model by clicking here.)

Filed Under: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Evidence-Based Living, policy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

New federal diet guidelines follow the evidence

February 17, 2011 By 2 Comments

Here at EBL, we’ve discussed how difficult it is to figure out what nutrition advice to follow, especially when there’s so much health and nutrition advice in the media that refers to anecdotes and simplistic inferences from single studies.

For those looking for real evidence about what to eat, there’s some good news.  The federal government has issued new dietary guidelines based on an extensive evidence-based review.

The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services appointed 13 nationally-recognized experts in nutrition and health to review the scientific literature on how nutrition impacts health and disease prevention.

The experts worked with a new resource – USDA’s Nutrition Evidence Library, a clearinghouse of systematic reviews designed to inform federal nutrition policy. (You can read more about the process the panel used to create the new nutrition guidelines by clicking here.) The library employs post-graduate level researchers with experience in nutrition or public health to build its content.  The researchers analyze peer-reviewed articles to build bodies of evidence, develop conclusion statements and describe research recommendations.  It’s an EBL dream! 

So what do the new guidelines recommend? 

The entire report from the committee of experts is more than 400 pages long, with specific advice on everything from energy balances to food safety.  Government officials distilled this report into 112 pages of dietary guidelines, and 23 recommendations for the general population. Among them are:

  • Focus on consuming nutrient-dense foods and beverages.
  • Reduce daily sodium intake to less than 2,300 milligrams (about 1 teaspoon).
  • Limit the consumption of foods that contain refined grains, especially refined grain foods that contain solid fats, added sugars and sodium.
  • Eat a variety of vegetables, especially dark-green and red and orange vegetables, and beans and peas.
  • Consume at least half of all grains as whole grains. Increase whole-grain intake by replacing refined grains with whole grains.
  • Increase the amount and variety of seafood consumed by choosing seafood in place of some meat and poultry.

As you can imagine, the EBL team is thrilled that the government is using systematic reviews to make national diet recommendations.  They’re worth reading to see if you can improve your own diet.  Even small changes can make a big difference when you consider the evidence.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, policy, The Learning Center Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Another evidence-based diet tip: Keep a diary

February 3, 2011 By 4 Comments

Are you still working on that New Year’s resolution to lose weight?  If so, there is some newly published evidence that might give you the boost that you need.

A systematic review published last month in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association concluded that there is a “consistent and significant positive relationship between self-monitoring diet, physical activity or weight and successful outcomes related to weight management.”  (You remember how much we love systematic reviews, right?)

The article reviewed 22 studies that looked at self-monitoring during weight loss programs.  Fifteen of the studies focused on keeping a food journal, one looked at keeping an exercise journal, and six tracked subjects who recorded their weight at least once a week. 

Researchers found that both written and electronic journals helped with weight loss.  They also found that that people kept a weekly record of their weight lost more than those who weighed themselves less frequently. 

Despite the conclusive evidence, the review identified limitations in the methods of many of the studies included. In all but two studies, participants were predominantly white and women. And most of them used self-reporting instead of researchers collecting the data themselves.

Still, the evidence is pretty clear:  If you want to lose weight, keep a journal of your diet, weight and exercise.  Just this simple task can make all the difference.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, The Learning Center Tagged With: , , , ,

Video Feature: How the physical environment affects children

January 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Here at Evidence-Based Living, we’ve written before about the research of Gary Evans, a Cornell professor in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis who has spent much of his career researching how the physical environment impacts child well-being – especially for children in poverty.

Evans, an environmental psychologist, has completed a large body of research that examines the relationship of crowding, noise, housing and neighborhood quality on the lives of children.  His research reveals that these factors can have a lot of impact on a child’s academic achievement, as well as cognitive and social development.

Last year, Human Ecology undergraduate student Kyler Wilkins earned a first place finish in the College of Human Ecology’s 2010 Elsie Van Buren Rice Awards public speaking competition for his presentation of Evans research entitled “The Hard Knock Life: The Environment of Poverty and Children’s Development.”  In it, Wilkins describes how Evans research is being used by policy-makers to improve children’s access to healthy foods in schools and conduct cognitive interventions in to improve the memories of children in poverty. You can see it here:

To learn more about Evans’s work, you can also view a one-hour lecture he delivered to extension professionals by clicking here.

Filed Under: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, policy, The Learning Center, Youth Development Tagged With: , , , , ,

Does reading aloud to young children make a difference?

December 23, 2010 By 2 Comments

One of my earliest memories as a child was sitting on a wooden porch swing reading books with my mom.  My mom tells me that she started reading to me from day one, and even read to her belly while she was pregnant. Needless to say, books have always held an important place in our home.

When my son Aaron was born, my husband and I started reading to him right away too.  In the beginning we had some children’s books, but we would also read aloud whatever each of us happened to be reading at the time.  Aaron heard a little Harry Potter and some Bicycling magazine, and even a few academic studies that I had to read for work. Now that he’s two years old, we read at least three or four children’s books together each day. Currently, his favorite stall tactic is, “Mama, how about we read a book?”

A few weeks ago, when a friend passed along a book to me about the benefits of reading to children, I was eager to learn about the tangible benefits. The book, called Reading Magic, makes the case that reading aloud to children helps them develop an interest in books, encourages those first words, inspires them to learn to read themselves, and creates a special bond between child and parent.

While I found the book interesting, it doesn’t offer any systematic, concrete evidence about reading aloud to children. So, of course, I had to do some digging.  It turns out my mom knew what she was doing all those years ago!

Three separate systematic reviews of what educators call dialogic reading – essentially engaging in a conversation with young children as you read to them – found positive effects for language skills, improved literacy and school readiness.

The study that piqued by interest the most was a review of 10 studies published by the Puckett Institute’s Research and Training Center on Early Childhood Development, an organization dedicated to identifying and implementing evidence-based practices that improve the development of at-risk infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

The study identified several specific benefits for children who regularly participated in dialogic reading, including: positive gains in expressive language development, increases in the length of spoken phrases, and greater expressive vocabulary scores.

All of this raises the question, what the heck makes dialogic reading so special?  Essentially, the adult helps the child become the teller of the story by asking questions and prompting the child to participate. The Reading Rockets project, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, provides some practical tips on how to engage in dialogic reading with kids.

If there are any small children in your life, sit down with them for a regular story time. The evidence shows it’s great for kids.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, The Learning Center, Youth Development Tagged With: , , ,

Portable space heaters: Money-savers or energy-wasters?

December 16, 2010 By 6 Comments

In Ithaca, it seems that the weather took a sudden dip a few weeks ago.  Temperatures fell below freezing within a few hours, and it doesn’t look like they’ll warm much until spring. That was our cue to turn on the heat for the season.

As much of the northern hemisphere launches into winter, millions of people across the country are firing up their home heating systems – an act that will cost most households hundreds if not thousands of dollars this year. 

With those costs comes the natural inclination to save a little money.  That’s when many – myself included, occasionally – turn to portable electric space heaters. When there’s a chill in the room, it seems so logical to flip a switch to warm a smaller space, instead of cranking up the heating system for the entire house.  But are electric space heaters a good way to reduce your heating costs?  The evidence says no.

Mark Pierce, extension associate at Cornell’s College of Human Ecology, is an expert in energy efficiency issues in residential buildings.  He conducted a detailed analysis of heating costs in a 1,200-square-foot, three-bedroom house to determine if there is a benefit to using portable electric heaters.

Pierce asked the question, which is more expensive: heating the entire house to 70 degrees for three hours, or heating the house to 60 degrees for three hours and using a space heater to raise the temperature of one room to 70 degrees? 

His analysis factored in all sorts of details like the levels of insulation in the floors, walls and ceiling, heat loss through windows and doors, and they type of heating fuel used. He assumed an outside air temperature of 10 degrees.

Using average costs for heating fuels in New York, he found turning down the thermostat from 70 to 60 degrees would reduce heating costs by about 50 to 80 cents, depending on the heating fuel used.  Meanwhile, using a portable heater to heat one room from 60 to 70 degrees over the same time period would cost 52 cents – a meager savings, even when using the most expensive heating fuels.

But why is the cost of heating just one room with a space heater so high?  Because electricity is about twice as expensive as fossil fuels, Pierce explains.

“Electricity is more expensive because it is a secondary form of energy, meaning that a primary form of energy – burning fossil fuels to power a generator for example – must first be consumed to make electricity,” he writes. “By the time electricity gets to your home from a power plant, about 70 percent of the energy consumed to create it has been lost due to generation and distribution system inefficiencies.”

Instead, Pierce recommends other ways to reduce your heating bills, such as adding insulation to your floors, walls and ceilings, installing a more efficient heating system and sealing holes and cracks around doors, windows and electrical outlets.

You can read more evidence-based tips about reducing your home heating bills by clicking here.  Wishing you a warm and cozy winter!

Filed Under: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Evidence-Based Living, The Learning Center Tagged With: , , , ,

Drinking in college? Yep, it hurts your GPA

December 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

When those in authority try to get college students to drink less, they typically go for scare tactics. They remind students about the dangers of alcohol poisoning, arrest, or accidents. Because binge drinking can be so hazardous, over 100 college presidents have signed on to a movement called the Amethyst Initiative that seeks to reduce bouts of heavy drinking. (And believe it or not, the main policy recommendation of this group is to lower the drinking age!)

So students have heard about the most extreme (and low-frequency) negative effects of alcohol consumption on campus. But what about more frequent outcomes? There’s one concern common to all college students: academic performance. There aren’t many people like the Delta frat brothers in the movie Animal House, who are proud when Dean Wormer tells them: “Here are your grade point averages. Mr. Kroger: two C’s, two D’s and an F. That’s a 1.2. Congratulations, Kroger. You’re at the top of the Delta pledge class.”

But it’s tricky to test the effects of alcohol consumption on academic performance. One big problem is that there may be another variable explaining both poor student performance and drinking (for example, mental health issues) so the connection could be what scientists call “spurious” (seemingly correlated, but there’s something in the background that promotes both behaviors).

I love to report on a truly clever research design, and that’s what we have from economists Scott Carrell of UC-Davis and his colleagues Mark Hoekstra and James West. Their article published by the National Bureau of Economic Research takes advantage of a unique data set, allowing them to test the effects of starting to drink more heavily.

Their data come from the 2000-2006 classes of the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA). Unlike most college campuses, the ban on underage drinking is strictly enforced and can lead to expulsion. Surveys show that drinking before age 21 is much lower at the USAFA than at most college campuses. Another advantage: The USAFA has a highly standardized curriculum where students don’t choose their subjects or professors in core courses and everyone takes the same exams.

So hand it to the researchers for finding an ideal research setting to answer their question (there ought to be a prize for this)!

Now if you’ve followed me this far, using these data, what would be the ideal test of the effects of alcohol? You’ve got it: Each cadet’s 21st birthday. Prior research clearly shows a sudden increase in drinking immediately following turning 21. So they were able to look at students who turned 21 shortly before final exams versus those who turned 21 afterwards.

The results: Drinking definitely affects academic performance. In an interview, Scott Carrell notes that the reduction is approximately half a letter grade. And the effect is strongest for high-performing students. The trend doesn’t just last for the week of the birthday party, but continues for around eight months afterward.

So college binge drinking doesn’t just lead to low-frequency, high-impact outcomes like fatalities. It can also lower GPA and, the authors’ suggest, future life chances as a result.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, Youth Development Tagged With: , ,

Medicine by the numbers: Cornell professor on how we make health care decisions

November 29, 2010 By 1 Comment

These days, a routine trip to the doctor’s office can easily morph into a complicated calculation of risks and benefits. With the advent of pharmaceutical advertising and the plethora of medical information on the Internet, patients have more choices and responsibility to make decisions than ever before.

Enter Cornell professor Valerie Reyna, a faculty member in human development and expert in judgment and decision-making.

Her ground-breaking research has shown that medical information is difficult to understand for people of all education levels. In laboratory studies and analyses of real-world data, Reyna has found that adults tends to make all decisions – including medical decisions – based on the overall meaning or gist of situation, instead of using statistics and details. So there is a disconnect between the way medical information is presented and the way people make decisions. 

For example, the risk of dying on the table during carotid endarterectomy (a vascular surgery procedure that removes plaque from the lining of your carotid artery) is 2 percent. In one of Reyna’s studies, some patients undergoing the surgery estimated their chance of dying as 10 percent, while others estimated as little 0 percent or no risk at all. Even though zero is numerically closer to two than ten is, someone who estimates 10 percent has made a more informed choice because that person grasps the important bottom-line: the surgery involves some risk.

But Reyna has found that gists are only as good as a person’s level of knowledge or understanding. For instance, the gist that “condoms block the exchange of bodily fluids” leads people to overestimate condoms’ effectiveness against sexually transmitted diseases, because it does not take into account infections that are transmitted by skin-to-skin contact, such as human papilloma virus. In this case, the bottom line is that some infections are transmitted skin to skin, not via exchange of fluids.

Reyna wants to help bridge this disconnect and make sure patients have the kind of information they need to make solid, informed choices. She has created a web page that explains how her basic research can help patients and their physicians map our health care choices.

She also offers some tips:

  • Health providers should explain options qualitatively. Instead of relying solely on numbers, it’s helpful to explain probabilities verbally, stressing the bottom-line meaning of information.
  • Display information visually. Simple bar graphs and pie charts help patients extract important information without getting hung up on memorizing the details.
  • Tailor the format to trigger the appropriate gist. Frame messages and choose the most suitable visual formats to convey the bottom line.
Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, The Learning Center Tagged With: , , ,

How older adults make decisions

October 26, 2010 By 1 Comment

As the U.S. population continues to grow older and technology moves ahead at break-neck speeds, older adults are being asked – in many cases required – to make more complex decisions than ever before.

 Should they stay in their homes or invest in a senior living community where care will be available when they need it?  Which prescription drug plan is best?  What course of treatment is best for serious illness?

But are we giving older adults the information they need to make quality decisions? The evidence suggests that the way older adults make decisions differs substantially from the way younger adults do. Research conducted by psychologist Joseph Mikels and economist Kosali Simon, both Human Ecology faculty members, offers practical insights for improving older adults’ decision-making. Their findings are summarized in a paper created by Human Ecology’s Department of Human Development.

For starters, research has shown that emotional functioning and regulation improve with age. Older people report more frequent positive emotions and fewer negative emotions, and they are more likely to focus on, and remember, positive information. When helping older adults make complex decisions, it may be best to encourage them to focus on their feelings as opposed to the specific details. They may not only make better decisions, but also feel more satisfied with their choices.

Studies also show that older adults do not desire or value choice to the same extent that younger adults do. In a series of large-scale surveys, hundreds of adults over 65 and undergraduate students reported how many options they wished to choose from in a variety of domains, from prescription drug plans to ice cream flavors. Older adults desired on average less than half as many options as younger adults did.  When older adults face a decision, it’s better to present them with a reasonable number of options.

“For example, instead of listing all of the available home health care agencies in the area, first present the five or so most popular ones,” the paper suggests. “If the person you are assisting isn’t satisfied with any of them, present an additional few options. By restricting the flow of information in this manner, you will increase the odds of making a high-quality, satisfying decision.”

Filed Under: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Evidence-Based Living, The Learning Center Tagged With: , , , ,

Financial education: Behavior change is possible

October 21, 2010 By 1 Comment

One-third of U.S. adults report that they have no savings. More than a quarter of them admit to not paying their bills on time. And more than half of American households don’t have a budget.

Given these figures, it’s not surprising that more than 40 percent of U.S. adults would give themselves a grade of C, D, or F for their personal finance knowledge.  These figures come from the 2009 Consumer Financial Literacy Survey by HarrisInteractive, which surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. adults last year.

Given this dim view of personal finance in our nation, it’s clear that many households would benefit from programs that provide financial education.  But do these programs actually help families improve their financial situations?

A new study reveals the answer is yes. Two researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison pulled together evaluations from 41 financial education and counseling programs in a systematic review. Their article is published in the Fall 2010 issue of the Journal of Consumer Affairs. They used a research process called a qualitative systematic literature review to summarize evaluations that measured financial education and counseling’s impacts on financial knowledge and behavior.

The majority of studies cited in their review conclude financial education and counseling are beneficial and hold the promise of improving financial knowledge and facilitating behavior change. But the study also notes that many of these evaluations share methodological weaknesses including selection bias and measurement issues.  Many of the programs also do not utilize an explicit theory or framework for behavior change, which would lend precision to both program development and the measurement of program impacts, the authors wrote.

They encourage researchers and educators who run these programs to pay more attention to theory-based evaluations and invest in randomized field experiments may be fruitful.

Here at Cornell Cooperative Extension, we offer classes to help families develop a household spending plan, save energy and reduce their energy bills and use credit wisely through a program called EmPower New York. The free workshops are offered in 46 counties and sponsored by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

EmPower is doing its  part to collect viable data on the programs’ effectiveness.  This year, they’re conducting phone surveys with the Survey Research Institute at Cornell to determine the extent of behavior change for those who’ve participated in the workshop.  They’re expecting results sometime in June.

Filed Under: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Evidence-Based Living, The Learning Center Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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