Hot MedFax

So you think you're drawn to liberal, social-cause-minded politicians because you love Hillary?  Nah.  It was in you all along. According to a new study, our desire for like-minded others is actually hard-wired in us and it controls our choices in friends and partners.  (Though maybe not in my house.  My husband has become a Fox News-lover and somehow, we're still married.) But, in what might be considered a paradigm shift, the study’s most surprising finding may be that people in relationships do not change each other over time. Instead, researchers' evidence places new emphasis on the earliest moments of a relationship—revealing that future friends or partners are already similar at the outset of their social connection, a major new finding, say the authors. "Picture two strangers striking up a conversation on a plane, or a couple on a blind date,” says Assistant Professor of Psychology Angela Bahns (Wellesley College).  “From the very first mome...

This probably won't surprise too many of us.  But women are more empathetic than most, but not all, men. A fascinating new study has revealed that men and women attracted to men are more empathetic than men and women attracted to women, according to a new study from the Department of Psychology at the University of Haifa. “People attracted to a particular gender, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual, have common social tools, and thus exhibit the same level of empathy,” says Professor Simone Shamay-Tsoory of the Department of Psychology at the University of Haifa who conducted the study, according to newswise.com. Sociologists claim that empathy plays an important role in the development of human society in that it contributes to peoples’ understanding of others and causes them to take the latter’s feelings into account. Behavioral and brain studies show that activities related to empathy are regulated differently in men and women, based on preferences tha...