Do homosexual marriages last longer ?

There will always be battles during heterosexual marriages between the sexes because men and women want different things. According to one study, over 40-year span, the divorce rate for heterosexual couples in their 1st marriages is 67%.

Guess what is the divorce rate of homosexual marriages ?

In theory (and many studies have showed), gay/lesbians couples should understand their partners' bodies and biases with a certainty, resulting relationships less mired in deception and friction. However, it turned out that the break-up rate for homosexuals, over a 40-year span, is grim 64%, and gay men are far more likely to split than lesbians.

Well..., we are all Homo sapiens.

Source: Psychology Today, Jan/Feb, 2007.

Is silver hair really sexy on guys ?

According a recent pull among Match.com users, the answer is yes. 72% of women think gray hair is hot! Apparently many women believe men with gray hair (silver fox ?) having more money and power, and much more mature in terms of building relationships and families.

Condoms too big for Indian men ?

A recent survey found that 60% of Indian men have penises which are between 3 and 5 centimetres shorter than international standards used in condom manufacture.

This is not a laughing matter. About 1 in every 5 times a condom is used in India it either falls off or tears, an extremely high failure rate; and Indian already has the highest number of HIV infections of any nation.

Are female teacher better for girls ?

Are female teachers better for girls? or male teachers better for boys? One interesting (may be controversial ) study say the answer is yes. According to the author, Thomas S. Dee (an economist at Swarthmore College), “Learning from a teacher of the opposite gender has a detrimental effect on students, My best estimate is that it lowers test scores for both boys and girls by approximately 4% of a standard deviation and has even larger effects on various measures of student engagement".

I am just glad that the 4% is not a big number (if it is confirmed by other studies). Be reminded that about 80% of teachers in U.S. public schools are women currently - the same likely to be true, more or less, for other countries.

Dee said he also discovered that a teacher's gender influenced attitudes towards student behavior: Female teachers were more likely to see boys as disruptive, and male teachers were more likely to see girls as inattentive.

Can you believe this ?

Many men don't know how to use condoms; when paired with ill-fitting condoms during sex, this lead to high levels of erection loss, scientists report. Many grown men apparently are not confident in their ability dress themselves—and they don't necessarily fit comfortably, so men often lose their erections while preparing for safe sex, the researchers say. Rather than risk repeated failure, these men may ditch condoms for a high-performance, high-risk sexual encounter. Kinsey Institute fellow Cynthia Graham surveyed 278 men at an sexually transmitted infection (STI) clinic and found that 37% had lost an erection while applying a condom at least once. 40% of those men reported ditching the condoms before they had finished intercourse, in contrast to about 20% of those who didn't have erectile issues.

Men put off going to ER during big games

David Jerrard, a emergency physician, looked at hospital emergency room visits around 800 regular season college and pro football, baseball and basketball games in Maryland. He found that male emergency room attendance increases by 50% after the conclusion of a football game. Also, 30-40% more men check into emergency rooms after a baseball game ends than during the innings. Men stay home instead of seeking treatment for everything from chest pains to a cut finger. Jerrard warns, "Men should not risk their health by putting off going to the emergency room because they want to see the final results of a football game. It could be the last game they ever see."

In my opinion, when men are watching a football game, they are just too focused to feel the pain.

Taller men and slimmer women have better chances of finding a date

Ever wonder why Snow White found Prince Charming so attractive ? May be because he is tall.

A new study out of the University of Essex shows that for every 1 inch of height a man has on his rivals, the number of women who want to go out with him increases by 5%.

In addition to discovering that ladies like tall men, the researchers found that dudes dig smart chicks: Women with a college degree bested their less educated counterparts. Thin women also did better than the clinically overweight. Both sexes preferred youthful partners, and non-smokers generally stuck to other non-smokers, showing that people prefer rosy cheeks and rosy lungs. Most significantly, the researchers said, a man's success was dependent upon how he stacked up against the others in his speed dating group; a 5'9 man in a group of 5'6 guys did as well as a 6'2 man in a group of 5'11 guys

Men do compulsive buying too

I have long believed that only women experience compulsive buying disorder, a condition marked by compulsive buying and subsequent financial and relationship ruins. It turn out that men have the same problem, according to a survey done by Stanford University School of Medicine. The researchers found that 6% of women and 5.5% of men in US had symptoms consistent with compulsive buying disorder.

Well, we are all human; men and women just buy different things.

Divorce harms women's long-term health

Another study from Iowa State's Institute for Social and Behavioral Research suggests divorce harms women's long-term health. In the short term, women who got divorced reported 7% more "psychological distress" than those who didn't. After a decade, the divorced group reported 37% more physical illness than the married group. Women who remarried fared better than those who didn't.

Excess weight reduces men's fertility

Obese men are more likely to be infertile than their slimmer peers, according to the first study to look at whether a man's weight influences a couple's fertility (Epidemiology, Sept. 2006).

Researcher found for every excess 10 kilograms, or 20 pounds, may cut a man's fertility by 10%.

There are a number of mechanisms by which being overweight could affect fertility in males. For example, excess weight may reduce sperm concentration/count, alter hormonal balance and increase scrotal temperature, or overweight men may simply have lower libidos and less sex than normal-weight men.

Sex Differences in the Brain

Chart above is a summary of recent a study on psychological gender differences.
In comparing differences between the sexes, researchers use a statistical measure called d. This indicates how far apart the averages of two groups (in this case men and women) are, taking into account the range of values that contribute to each average. For example, the value of d for adult height is around 2. There is no arguing that in any given population men, on average, are taller than women. For behavioural and psychological phenomena, a value of d greater than 0.8 is considered large, of 0.5, moderate, and of 0.2, small. Any d less than 0.2 is a negligible difference.
Of the 124 cognitive tasks studied, 30% had a value of d close to zero and in a further 48% of cases, d was small. In other words, only 22% of reported behavioural differences between the sexes are worth raising an eyebrow over.
In summary, men and women think differently, but not that differently.

Blogging as good therapy

A new study finds nearly 50% of bloggers see the activity as a form of therapy.

For me, blogging is definitely therapeutic. It releases tension, stress and it is cost effective.

Distant prayer doesn't help

Praying for other people to recover from an illness is ineffective, according to the largest, best-designed study. 52% of patients experiencing complications regardless of whether they were the subject of prayers. And worst of all, 59% of the patients who knew they were being prayed for experienced complications. I think this should put to rest the notion that distant prayer has any effect.

Source: American Heart Journal, April. 2006.

If you believe in you are lucky, you will get lucky

If you believe in you are lucky, you will get lucky, according to experimental psychologist Richard Wiseman, the author of the book The Luck Factor . Wiseman gave research subjects the "big five" personality scale, which measures "agreeableness," "conscientiousness," "extroversion," "neuroticism" and "openness." Although there were no differences between lucky and unlucky people on agreeableness and conscientiousness, Wiseman found significant differences for extroversion, neuroticism and openness.

1) Lucky people score significantly higher than unlucky people on extroversion. Wiseman explains: "Lucky people meeting a large number of people, being a 'social magnet' and keeping in contact with people." Lucky people, smile 2 times as often and engage in more eye contact than unlucky people do, which leads to more social encounters, which generates more opportunities.

2) The neuroticism dimension measures how anxious or relaxed someone is, and Wiseman found that the lucky ones were 0.5 times as anxious as the unlucky ones--that is, "because lucky people tend to be more relaxed than most, they are more likely to notice chance opportunities, even when they are not expecting them".

3) Lucky people also score significantly higher in openness than unlucky people do. "Lucky people are open to new experiences in their lives.... They don't tend to be bound by convention and they like the notion of unpredictability." such, lucky people travel more, encounter novel prospects and welcome unique opportunities.

Those luck factors don't apply to winning lottery though. Although lucky people were 2 times as confident as the unlucky ones that they would win the lottery, there was no difference in winnings found by Wiseman's research.

Women buy more books than men

Publisher Weekly stated that women buy more books than men - to the tune of 68% of all books. (no surprise here). Of books that are read, 53% are fiction and 43% nonfiction., and 64% of book buyers say the bestseller list is not important.

Are obese men feebleminded ?

Men who are obese may have less brainpower than their trim counterparts, according the research done at University of Boston. The study found that men with a BMI of 30 or more scored on average 23% lower marks in tests of mental acuity. However, the study didn't make it clear whether the obesity is causing the lower IQ, or vice versa. Also, no similar link could be detected for obese women.

Obesity is already known to significantly increase the risk of strokes, cancer and heart disease. Recently, the same researcher has found a positive link between high cholesterol and IQ.

Male drivers waste six million hours a year

"Christopher Columbus did not need directions and neither do we" - men's motto about driving.

Based on responses from 2,000 adults, the UK based Royal Automobile Club Direct Insurance found that men who are lost wait an average of 20 minutes before giving up and asking for directions. In total, British male drivers waste nearly six million hours a year lost on the road because they are reluctant to ask for directions. Women only wait 10 minutes before seeking help. Men even endure a "nagging period" of around 10 minutes from their partner before throwing in the towel and stopping to ask the way, the poll showed.

The survey also revealed that only 27% of couples plan their journeys before setting off.

Male intelligence and sexual prowess

A study found that males, at least among bat species, make an evolutionary trade-off between intelligence and sexual prowess.

In bat species with monogamous females, males had testes (reproductive gland) ranged at 0.11% - 1.4% of their body weight, and brain size was about 2.6% of body weight; but for species where the females had a large number of mates, males had testes ranged at 0.6% - 8.5% of their body weight, and brain size dipped to 1.9% of body weight. Bats invest an enormous amount of energy in testis, and the investment has to come from somewhere.

I don't have similar numbers for other mammals (including humans). Care to guess, anyone ?

Are sexual standards vary between sexes ?

46% of women say that they can't enjoy sex with someone who isn't their intellectual equal or better. 27% of men feel the same way.

Men are about 1.5 times more likely to report that sex on the first date is okay.

Source: www.tickle.com