節錄

Daily Mail
22 Aug 2007

Why fatties say everyone's to blame but themselves

Being unhappy. Being happy. Friends who eat like a horse and never put on weight. Childhood admonishments to think of the starving in Africa.
These are some of the reasons the overweight give to explain their size because they are too ashamed to admit they simply eat too much, according to a study.
Researchers found there is such a stigma attached to being overweight that over-eaters are desperate to find something - or someone - else to blame.

The findings mirror comments by Hamish Meldrum, the head of the British Medical Association, who said patients were increasingly seeking weight-loss pills and surgery rather than trying to change their diet and do more exercise.
Karen Throsby of Warwick University questioned 35 patients who applied for such surgery on the NHS to discover why they felt it was the only solution.
She found there were three main types of excuses used by the overweight, according to a report published in the journal Social Science and Medicine.

The first was genetic, with many claiming they had a "fat gene" or that being big ran in their family. Others said they knew others who ate more than they did but never put on weight.

The second most common excuse was that the problem stemmed from their childhood. Many claimed relatives gave them food as a reward and others said their parents told them to eat up and think of the starving in Africa.

The third reason was that a stressful lifestyle had led to weight gain. Illness, divorce, bereavement and parenthood were all blamed for over-eating.

Women cited both happy and unhappy events as reasons for eating more and men said stressful occasions gave them a longing for beer, curry and fast food.

Miss Throsby said the excuses were the result of the way overweight people were pilloried by society.

"Those who become fat often find themselves needing to account for their size in order to refute the suggestion of moral failure that attaches itself easily to the fat body."

Colin Waine, chair of the National Obesity Forum, added: "Many patients seek explanations that absolve them, saying it's their genes or their glands. But in fact it's 99 per cent to do with food intake and lack of physical activity.

"Our genes haven't changed since before the Stone Age - yet obesity has escalated in the last 30 years."



2007年8月25日
明報

現代女性每天都注重使用清潔液、護膚品及化妝品，英國紀錄片製作人泰勒反其道而行，效法《不瘦降之謎》進行人體科學測試，連續6周不洗澡、不洗頭、不化妝、不使用任何化學清潔劑，以證明美容產品的社交與心理效應大於實際作用。

日搽200化學品 萌實驗念頭

現年42歲的泰勒表示，英國人每年花105億鎊（1640億港元）打扮，她自己每年花2000鎊（3.1萬港元）購買美容產品。「我很容易被美容產品廣告吸引。今年較早前一個晚上，我發現自己每天把超過200種化學品塗在皮膚上。雖然它們都聲稱安全，但誰知道混在一起會不會有『化學雞尾酒』效應。」

身上有異味 旁人未抗拒

她於是想出這個讓自己當「泥人」的實驗。「人體需要美容產品與保持清潔這一概念，已成為社會風土病。我想看看若我完全不清潔會怎樣？」在實驗前，她先作身體檢查，測試腋窩、口腔及陰部細菌含量，方便6周後作對比。

她在實驗期間只穿著3套外衣，包括運動衫、Ｔ恤牛仔褲及夏季連衣裙。為了保護3名子女，她每次準備食物時都戴上特製手術手套。實驗開始時，她如常外出跑步，回家後強忍不洗澡。兩周後，兒子聲稱她身上有異味，不敢再與她擁抱。但同時，她開始首次「泥人社交實驗」。她乘火車出席公司派對，途中她擔心別人會避開她，但最終沒有人這樣做，在派對中亦沒有被人懷疑。「這令我開始質疑孩子們是否反應過大。」

坦稱3周未洗手 家長即彈開

踏入第3周，泰勒嘗試與孩子學校的家長打交道。當時，她的頭髮捲成一團，趾甲顏色怪異，皮膚乾燥。最初沒有人察覺她的異樣，但當她坦稱3周沒有洗手後，其他家長反應強烈，盡量遠離她，令她感到極為尷尬。「她們看來十分迷人，我就好像衣衫不整的人。」

4周後，她的身體出現明顯變化，皮膚發生「蛻變」，看上去「比10年前更青春」。困擾她多年的腸躁症有所改善，眼袋也消失了，她估計這與皮膚停止攝入有害化合物質有關。但在另一方面，她的心理壓力卻日益增加。在實驗的最後階段，她因怕遭人排斥而缺席友人婚禮。

4周眼袋消失 身體含菌未超標

實驗完畢時，她再度驗身。研究員測出她身體的細菌數目增加5000倍，但仍屬「正常」水平，這印證了她的想法，即多日不用清潔液亦不損身體健康。但實驗亦證明保持口腔衛生極重要——由於6周沒有刷牙，她需要進行人生首次補牙手術。

泰勒表示，6周的泥人經歷證明，「我根本不需要這些浪費金錢的美容產品。多年來我使用過量化學品，有時候把自己的健康置於危險境地。我現在只需要一塊香皂、有機洗髮水和護髮素，以及一支潤膚膏」。但她亦坦言泥人生活不實際。「我永遠不會再這樣做，因為不清潔身體會影響你的友誼、家庭關係與自信。」

泰勒的紀錄片《我可以髒到什麼程度》，將於9月5日在BBC3播出。

每日郵報



星島日報
2007年8月25日

一滴檸檬汁

人人都說「性格決定命運」，這不止是老生常談，而是有科學根據的。

BBC一套名為《The Human Mind》的紀錄片中，找了兩群人做性格實驗。一群較內向的人和一群外向的人，要他們伸出舌頭，每人接受「一滴檸檬汁」的刺激，看看各人分泌多少口水。

結果發現，內向的一群人分泌的口水比外向的超出很多。這代表甚麼？同一樣程度的刺激，對於內向的人會引起較大的反應，即是說，他們不用太多刺激也會得到足夠的愉快感覺；相反地，外向的人之所以坐不定，是因為他們要尋找更多刺激才可以得到足夠的愉快感覺。

所以說，那些喜歡跳降落傘、笨豬跳 和登上澳門 觀光塔頂繞一個圈的人，是因為他們的身體不滿於現有的刺激，必須做些「危險動作」才高興。

我們的腦袋是怎樣對外來刺激產生反應？這是天生的，當然後天也可以或多或少地改變，但的確，很多已經是預設了......



BBC - The Human Mind

Personality: A User's Guide

We are all familiar with the idea that different people have different personalities, but what does this actually mean? It implies that different people behave in different ways, but it must be more than that. After all, different people find themselves in different circumstances, and much of their behaviour follows from this fact. However, our common experience reveals that different people respond in quite remarkably different ways even when faced with roughly the same circumstances. Abbey might be happy to live alone in a quiet and orderly cottage, go out once a week, and stay in the same job for thirty years, whilst Beth longs for exotic travel and needs to be surrounded by vivacious friends and loud music. Charlie goes through a string of divorces from marriages that seemed solid, whilst Derek stays in one that seems unlikely for most of his life. Erica loves walking and landscape paintings, whilst Fran likes abstract art, punk rock and bungee jumping.

In all of these cases, we feel that it cannot be just the situation which is producing the differences in behaviour. Something about the way the person is ‘wired up’ seems to be at work, determining how people react to situations, and, more than that, the kind of situations they get themselves into in the first place. This is why personality seems to become stronger as we get older; when we are young, our situation reflects external factors such as the social and family environment we were born into. As we grow older, we are more and more reaping the consequences of our own choices (living in places we ourselves have chosen, doing jobs that we were drawn to, surrounded by people like us whom we have sought out). Thus, personality differences that might have been very slight at birth become dramatic in later adulthood.

Personality, then, seems to be the set of enduring and stable dispositions that characterise a person. These dispositions come partly from the expression of inherent features of the nervous system, and partly from learning. Researchers sometimes distinguish between temperament, which refers exclusively to characteristics that are inborn or directly caused by biological factors, and personality, which also includes social and cultural learning. Nervousness might be a factor of temperament, but religious piety is an aspect of personality (overlaid, perhaps, on some temperamental foundation).

The discovery that temperamental differences are real is one of the major findings of contemporary psychology. It could easily have been the case that there were no intrinsic differences between people in temperament. That is to say, it might have been the case that all humans were basically running the same software, which would mean that given the same learning history, the same dilemmas, they would all respond in much the same way. Yet we now know that this is not the case. Personality measures turn out to be good predictors of your health, your sexual promiscuity, your likelihood of divorce, how happy you typically are – even your taste in paintings. Personality is a much better predictor of these things than social class or age. The origin of these differences is in part innate. That is to say, when people are adopted at birth and brought up by new families, their personalities are more similar to their blood relatives than to the ones they grew up with. The differences begin to emerge early in life and are surprisingly stable across the decades. This is not to say that people cannot change, but major change is the exception rather than the rule. Personality differences tend to manifest themselves through the quick, gut-feeling, intuitive and emotional systems of the human mind. The slower, rational, deliberate systems show less variation in output from person to person. Deliberate rational strategies can be used to over-ride intuitive patterns of response, and this is how people wishing to change their personalities or feelings have to go about it.

So what are the major ways personalities can differ? The dominant approach is to think of the space of possible personalities as being defined by a number of dimensions. Each person can be given a location in the space by their scores on all the different dimensions. Virtually all theories agree on two of the main dimensions, though they differ on how many additional ones they recognise.
An instantly recognisable dimension is neuroticism or negative emotionality, known as N by psychologists. The mind is equipped with systems for protecting itself from harmful things, like physical danger, disease, humiliation, and loss. These systems are driven by emotions like anxiety, fear and shame. It seems that in some people, the systems are a little more easily set off than others. Such people are high on the N dimension. They are worriers, prone to anxieties and fears. Low N scorers are laid back and un-phased by things. High scorers are vulnerable to depression, anxiety and panic, as well as physical ill health from all that stress. They are at high risk for divorce and likely to report themselves as unhappy at any given moment.

If you think of your friends, you will probably find it easy to rank them in terms of the N dimension. The adjective ‘neurotic’ has even entered everyday speech! This is probably because variation in negative emotion systems is a deep biological characteristic of humans, and even of other mammals. Animal breeders have long known that it is very easy to produce more or less fearful horses or dogs by selective breeding, and they have exploited this for producing military and working animals. We know from laboratory rats that you can produce a fearful and anxious strain in a few generations by breeding from the most fearful individuals.

Another key dimension is extraversion or positive emotionality (E). This is commonly used to mean sociability, but to psychologists it means something broader. The mind also contains systems for identifying rewarding things in the environment – food, comfort, mates, kin – and seeking them out. It is thought that brain circuits using the chemical dopamine function to make these positively rewarding stimuli ‘attention grabbing’ (you know the attention grabbing potential of a piece of chocolate cake or a nice looking person). Now these systems seem to be a little more responsive in some people than others. So some people (high E scorers) are strongly diverted towards intrinsically
rewarding things, and others (low E scorers or introverts) can get on just fine without them. High E scorers, not surprisingly, go out more, talk more, want to be famous more, have more sexual partners, and drink and take more drugs than low E scorers. Low E scorers are often more content with relatively quiet, self-contained jobs or hobbies whose rewards maybe longer coming. Extraverts generally describe themselves as happier than introverts, though there is a significant group of happy introverts who have strong, self-contained interests and vocations.

Extraversion and neuroticism are the two most broadly accepted dimensions of personality. Other influential proposals include Openness (with high scorers interested in art and abstract ideas, low scorers practical and down to earth), Conscientiousness (with high scorers methodical and dutiful, low scorers more distractible), and Agreeableness (with high scorers cooperative and trusting, and low scorers more aggressive and hostile). Together these make up the ‘big five’, or OCEAN (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism). The OCEAN system is the subject of an online study that we are currently carrying out here at The Open University.

People often ask what is the optimum personality profile to have. There is no simple answer to this question. It is certainly true that some extremes carry some risks. Low agreeableness is associated with violence, whilst high neuroticism is associated with the risk of depression and anxiety. However, all the systems whose operation is reflected in personality differences are there for a reason. Anxiety and fear are good things to have (at least a little), because the world actually is full of dangerous things. There is evidence that at least some high N scorers do well at college because they strive hard to avoid failure, and people who get convicted of traffic offences may be less neurotic than those who do not (and therefore, presumably, less fearful to the danger of getting caught). The balance between the different systems is probably all. If you are an extreme introvert, you might want to challenge yourself to experience the rewards of greater spontaneity and exchange; if you are an extreme extravert, you might want to teach yourself to undertake a long and lonely project that will ultimately be very rewarding. As human beings, we have the unique ability to look in at our personality from the outside and decide what we want to do with it...

http://www.open2.net/humanmind/article_personality.htm