Heena Sharma Blog

Despite the widespread use of oral contraceptives (OCPs) by women, many are not aware that it may impair their ability to recognise others' emotional expressions, which may have serious consequences in interpersonal contexts, suggests a new study. The study showed that healthy women who use birth control pills are poorer judges of subtle facial expressions than non-users. "More than 100 million women worldwide use oral contraceptives, but remarkably little is known about their effects on emotion, cognition and behaviour," said senior author Alexander Lischke from the University of Greifswald in Germany. "However, coincidental findings suggest that oral contraceptives impair the ability to recognise emotional expressions of others which could affect the way users initiate and maintain intimate relationships," said Lischke. To investigate the effects of OCPs on women's emotion recognition, the researchers administered a special emotion recognit...

Heterosexual sexist men who think their female partners or wives want to control them are more likely to underestimate their power in romantic relationships and act aggressively , researchers say. The study examined what is known as hostile sexism, or the belief that women want to control men, in romantic relationships because the power dynamic is different from the workplace or other areas of life. "Power dynamics are not as simple in intimate relationships because even in well-functioning relationships, both partners are inescapably dependent on each other," said Emily J. Cross, post-doctoral student from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. "This mutual dependence constrains an individual's power. This can be very difficult for men who have sexist views because they are already concerned about losing power to women and they may lash out at their significant other in harmful ways," he added. For the study published in the Journal of P...