Pop psych

[twirlgrrl]

I don't know why I love pop-psych stuff. Sometimes it just feels good to see something you already suspect affirmed in print, regardless of the source.

For instance, these tidbits are adapted from a book called "The Female Brain." I got them from O.

A baby girl's skills in eye contact and face studying improve more than 400 percent during the first three months of life. Making eye contact is at the bottom of the boy baby's list of interesting things to do.

Men use about 7,000 words a day, women about 20,000.

Connecting through talking activates the pleasure centers in a girl's brain, providing a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of orgasm.

Oxytocin (the "love hormone") is released in the brain after a 20-second hug from a partner--triggering the brain's trust circuits.

Early on, female ovaries begin producing huge amounts of estrogen that marinate the little girl's brain and spur the growth of brain circuits and centers for connection.

When she's under stress, a woman's desire for sex and physical touch shuts down, perhaps because the stress hormone cortisol blocks oxytocin's action in the female brain.

Rejection, it turns out, actually hurts like physical pain because it triggers the same circuits in the brain.

Men notice subtle signs of sadness in a face only 40 percent of the time; women pick up on them 90 percent of the time.

Comments

[blakeh.livejournal.com]

Like you, I enjoy these boiled-down versions of the truth and in some instances, I think they have some semblance of accuracy to them. However, what frustrates me is when people read these kinds of bullet points and think that they're a slave to them -- as if biologically they are unable to change these traits. That's just plain wrong.

Men can learn to be more intuitive and there are certainly men who use more than 7,000 words each day. The genders may have certain cultural predispositions to certain behaviors, but we are not bound by them.

[sagefemme11.livejournal.com]

Agreed.
Thanks for that.

I have this book sitting on my shelf awaiting my perusal, and as much as I enjoy the neuro-endocrine backdrop of things, I still appreciate an articulate, emotionally engaged man. And there are PLENTY of those out there. :-)

[twirlgrrl.livejournal.com]

Amen, and hallelujah!

[twirlgrrl.livejournal.com]

My goodness, I couldn't agree more. Thank God there are men who use more than 7,000 words each day--my husband is one of them! I bet you are too, in the right company. I think that's why I framed this as sort of a guilty pleasure... I guess I most often use them as affirmation, or as justification. For instance, the only one of these that jumped out at me immediately upon first read was the one about the female desire for sex and physical touch shutting down under stress. That's because that particular factoid would have been useful as a sort of defensive weapon in a recent conflict in my relationship.

I included a bunch more that I found at least marginally interesting on second read. But as I was typing/rereading them I was acutely aware at how compressed the language is--absent all the qualifiers that could make any of them logically or technically accurate.

Still.

[blakeh.livejournal.com]

Another book on the topic that I found to be very, very interesting (and a bit more researched) is Mismeasure Of Women (http://www.amazon.com/Mismeasure-Women-Better-Inferior-Opposite/dp/0671797492/sr=8-1/qid=1159887734/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-4218463-2257712?ie=UTF8&s=books). It's a very good read.

[twirlgrrl.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip.

[artemis-rich.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Dude. Like, what he said. Ya know?

(Giggle. I make joke! Giggle.)

[ninjalie.livejournal.com]

woww I acually didn't know a lot of these things.

[twirlgrrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this stuff is interesting, but of course we have to take it all with a grain of salt! It's good for using as a weapon when you need it, as in "But honey, I don't want to have sex with you because you're stressing me out, and this book says that stress is affecting my oxytocin levels! Now go do the dishes!!"

[blakeh.livejournal.com]

The wisest thing I've learned about women:

Housework is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

If your gf/wife comes home and dinner is on the table, the dishes are done and the house has just been cleaned, I guarantee you'll be treated to some seriously mind-blowing sex! ;)

[twirlgrrl.livejournal.com]

So true, so true. Well, except for the guarantee part.

[artemis-rich.livejournal.com]

Damn straight!