Psych Central News
Transcendental Meditation Linked to Higher Graduation Rates
Researchers believe improved graduation rates (versus dropping out) translates into higher earning potential, less crime and incarceration, and less dependence on government assistance programs.
The most recent data shows that only 69 percent of students graduate from our nation’s schools. Over the next decade it is estimated that more than 12 million students will drop out of school, resulting in an estimated loss to the nation of nearly $3 trillion.
“While there are bright spots in public education today, urban schools on the whole tend to suffer from a range of factors which contribute to poor student academic performance and low graduation rates,” according to lead author, Robert D. Colbert, Ph.D., associate professor, and director of Neag School of Education’s Diversity Council at University of Connecticut.
“Students need to be provided with value-added educational programs that can provide opportunities for school success. Our study investigated one such program, Transcendental Meditation, which appears to hold tremendous promise for enriching the lives of our nation’s students.”
The study, published in the journal Education, shows practice of Transcendental Meditation® was associated with higher graduation rates, compared to controls.
Analysis of school records at an East Coast urban high school was conducted with all 235 students enrolled during their senior year to determine on-time graduation.
Findings showed a 15 percent higher graduation rate for the entire meditating group compared to non-meditating controls, after taking into account student grade point average.
Subgroup analysis further indicated a 25 percent difference in graduation rates when considering only the low academic performing students in both groups.
According to Sanford Nidich, Ed.D, co-author and professor of education at Maharishi University of Management, “These results are the first to show that the Transcendental Meditation program can have a positive impact on student graduation rates.
“The largest effect was found in the most academically challenged students. Recently published research on increased academic achievement and reduced psychological stress in urban school students may provide possible mechanisms for the higher graduation rates found in this study.”
Researchers say the findings also showed significant differences for dropout rates and college acceptance.
Meditating students were less apt to drop out from school or go to prison, and were more likely to be accepted to post-secondary institutions.
Source: Maharishi University of Management
Student meditating photo by shutterstock.
Your Overconfidence Can Actually Be Dangerous
In a new study, researchers investigated overprecision – excessive confidence in the accuracy of beliefs. Such overconfidence can lead to, among other things, overvaluing investments, inaccurate diagnosis by physicians and an intolerance of dissenting views.
New research confirms that overprecision is a common and robust form of overconfidence driven, at least in part, by excessive certainty in the accuracy of our judgments.
Investigators found that the more confident participants were about their estimates of an uncertain quantity, the less they adjusted their estimates in response to feedback about their accuracy and to the costs of being wrong.
“The findings suggest that people are too confident in what they know and underestimate what they don’t know,” said researcher Albert Mannes, Ph.D.
The new findings are published in the journal Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Research investigating overprecision typically involves asking people to come up with a 90 percent confidence interval around a numerical estimate — such as the length of the Nile River. However, this approach doesn’t always faithfully reflect the judgments we have to make in everyday life.
We know, for example, that arriving 15 minutes late for a business meeting is not the same as arriving 15 minutes early, and that we ought to err on the side of arriving early.
Mannes, of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Don Moore, Ph.D., of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, performed three studies to account for the asymmetric nature of many everyday judgments.
In the first, participants estimated the local high temperature on randomly selected days and their accuracy was rewarded in the form of lottery tickets toward a prize.
For some trials, they earned tickets if their estimates were correct or close to the actual temperature (above or below); in other trials, they earned tickets for correct guesses or overestimates; and in some trials they earned tickets for correct guesses or underestimates.
The results showed that participants adjusted their estimates in the direction of the anticipated payoff after receiving feedback about their accuracy, just as Mannes and Moore expected.
But they didn’t adjust their estimates as much as they should have given their actual knowledge of local temperatures, suggesting that they were overly confident in their own powers of estimation.
Only when the researchers provided exaggerated feedback — in which errors were inflated by 2.5 times — were the researchers able to counteract participants’ tendency towards overprecision.
Experts say that the findings show that people all too often are overconfident in their beliefs of how things will happen.
“People frequently cut things too close — arriving late, missing planes, bouncing checks, or falling off one of the many ‘cliffs’ that present themselves in daily life,” said Mannes and Moore.
“These studies tell us that you shouldn’t be too certain about what’s going to happen, especially when being wrong could be dangerous. You should plan to protect yourself in case you aren’t as right as you think you are.”
Source: Association for Psychological Science
Man pointing at his watch photo by shutterstock.
Many Domestic Abuse Survivors Not Getting Needed Care
In a new study, University of Missouri researchers found that many abused women were not receiving needed mental health services.
“More than half of the women participating in our study suffered from depression, PTSD or both illnesses,” said Mansoo Yu, Ph.D., an assistant professor of social work in the College of Human Environmental Sciences. “However, most of the survivors had not used mental health services in the past year, even though they reported having access to the services.
“Social stigmas, shame, privacy concerns, health care costs and lack of information may prevent survivors from getting the help they need.”
Yu studied the rates of PTSD, depression and substance abuse among 50 female intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors and the types of services the women used.
The majority of IPV survivors had not used any mental health services, but they reported regularly seeing their primary care physicians.
“Medical professionals are uniquely positioned to screen for mental health problems, such as PTSD, depression and substance abuse disorders among IPV survivors and make appropriate referrals to other agencies or providers for treatment,” Yu said.
“Health providers play a critical role in intervening in the women’s lives and potentially helping them end the abuse.”
Yu and his colleagues also studied other services IPV survivors used. The abused women in the study reported having trouble accessing housing, legal services, crisis lines and medical care, all of which are services that contribute to women’s safety.
“The overall percentage of service utilization is really low, but once survivors use some type of service, they believe the service to be helpful,” Yu said.
“Abuse causes harm, and service providers and health professionals should strive to end abuse and the mental suffering that lingers in its wake by connecting survivors with services.”
The women in the study also reported rarely using shelters and difficulties obtaining public housing, which makes it challenging to leave abusive relationships when the women have nowhere to go, Yu said.
In addition, the women were skeptical of law enforcement professionals and legal services, which also poses problems because survivors often need to use those services to file for divorces or procure orders of protection to keep them from abusers, Yu said.
The study, “Use of Mental Health Services by Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence,” may be found in the journal Social Work in Mental Health.
Source: University of Missouri
Stop the violence photo by shutterstock.
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