Mirror Therapy

Treatment for phobias—for example, of flying— often involves repeated exposure to that fear. Women with body-image disorders may benefit from a similar therapy: studying themselves in mirrors in a white leotard. Psychologists in Germany tested the technique on 30 overweight women with binge-eating disorder and 30 women of the same age and weight without the disorder. In front of three-panelled mirrors, the subjects answered 135 appearance related questions, including: What do your eyes look like? Are you wearing makeup? Are your hips lean or are there visible cushions of fat? (The psychologists asked the women to respond in neutral terms.) After one session, the women with body-image disorders reported low self-esteem and feelings of depression. But after a second session one to three days later, their moods and self-esteem rose, as did the control group’s slightly—indicating, that “getting familiar with one’s appearance may make one more accepting of one’s self.”

Smart Faces

Attractive faces are also intelligent faces, according to a study by psychologists from universities in the US and Australia. The investigators showed head shots of children and adults to 24 subjects and asked them to rate the presumed intelligence of each person. The judges thought the better-looking people were smarter than the unattractive ones. And they were, with few exceptions, correct, the researchers determined, based on intelligence tests of the people in the photographs. (The relationship between attractiveness and IQ was “small” and did not exist for adolescents or older adults.) It may be that a preference for “certain facial qualities evolved because they signal high intelligence,” the researchers say, adding that “more intelligent mates might confer survival benefits.”

Rules of Attraction

In large, densely populated cities with fewer men than women and high costs of living, women seek mates with money, brains, and careers. In smaller, less expensive cities where men outnumber women, a man’s personal qualities and interests matter more than his earning power. These are the findings of Cornell University evolutionary biologists who have studied 2,300 personal ads in 23 cities. They analyzed the attributes women sought in four categories: physical attractiveness, potential for wealth, emotional appeal, and personal activities or interests. They found that just as in bird populations, females in crowded, competitive environments focus on finding providers. In more relaxed environments, they have the luxury of looking for less survival-oriented attributes. The study also found that the more women described their own physical attributes, the more likely they were to seek attractive mates.

The Sadder Sex?

Women suffer depression at twice the rate of men, long-standing studies show. Experts, however, have yet to establish any biological cause specific to women. But according to studies, women exceed men primarily in a particular mood disorder that includes anxiety and physical symptoms along with depression. Researchers reviewed findings on more than 20,000 subjects from an epidemiological study by the National Institutes of Mental Health in New York. The rates of depression marked by guilt, loss of interest, and physical and mental lethargy—depressive symptoms that psychiatric studies indicate are biologically driven— proved to be similar among both sexes (2.3 per cent of women and 1.7 per cent of men at any given time). But for anxious somatic depression, often accompanied by appetite and sleep problems, women maintained the traditional two-to-one ratio (2.8 per cent of women, 1.4 per cent of men). Social pressures—to which women are more susceptible—appear to have greater influence than biological factors on this type of depression.