Hot MedFax

How's your kid's grip?  Did you know you can use it to figure out whether he's going to do his homework? No joke.  A new study says the ability to hold a grip predicts the willpower to do homework. According to newswise.com, researchers at McMaster University have established a connection between a person’s ability to maintain a firm grip and having the self-control to finish their schoolwork. There is not yet a clear cause-and-effect relationship between squeezing a handgrip and working up the willpower to tackle a school assignment, but it’s clear there is a connection, says Matthew Stork, a PhD candidate in Kinesiology and lead author of a study published in The Journal of Health Psychology. Stork and his co-authors looked at a group of 30 first-year university students, asking them their plans to engage in two tough challenges for students adjusting to university life: completing their school work and keeping up their exercise schedules. Both require hig...

Who has more self contro l, Republicans or Democrats? I've already given myself away that I'm a Democrat (and liberal, to boot), but a new study has found that conservatives showed a greater aptitude for certain aspects of self-control, performing better on tasks that test persistence and attention regulation. At the same time, liberals appear to exhibit greater self-control when confronted with the idea that free will exerts a negative impact on success. Hmm.  This reminds me of my own confusion believing in God, and then Charleston happens.  A lot of people believe God doesn't cause evil, man does, because of free will.  (But God doesn't stop it either.) Anyway, the study was an attempt to take a contemporary approach to how liberals and conservatives explain behavior and the consequences of those explanations for self-control. The behavior of political conservatives is often seen as reflecting a Protestant work ethic, according to the authors, throug...