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Yesterday, it was the international day to stop Men's violence against women. Politicians en masse took to the media to claim their spot in the limelight.
Studying social or neuro-psychological phenomena is very demanding. You need to have an understanding about the topic (psychology) and about methods.
In order to avoid the many pitfalls there's a methodological toolbox to take into account (e.g. Cooper, 2023). There are three concepts which are fundamental: validity, reliability, and representativeness. In their simplest form:
- Validity is:
- the characteristic of being founded on truth, accuracy, fact, or law.
- the degree to which empirical evidence and theoretical rationales support the adequacy and appropriateness of conclusions drawn from some form of assessment (APA).
- Representativeness “indicate that a sample mirrors a population and reflects all essential properties of the population in a correct way” (Statistica).
The rationale for taking validity, reliability, and representativeness into account, is to avoid type 1 and 2 errors (and of course, many other errors).
“A type I error is a false positive, rejecting a null hypothesis that is correct. A type II error is a false negative, a failure to reject a null hypothesis that is false” (Rothman, 2010).Studies using these proper measures, e.g. the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS; Straus, 1979; Straus et al. 1996) shows the following pattern:
- Physical violence - women account for slightly more than half of occurrences and injuries.
- Lethal violence - equally unlikely (0.0000005) to affect children, men or women (Liem och Koenraadt, 2008). Psychological violence (relationship aggression) - typically female.
- Psychological violence (relational aggressiveness) includes parental alienation is typically a female behavior.
Listen to Dr Elizabeth Bates: Intimate Partner Violence (34 minuter).
Ergo. Domestic violence is typically a female phenomenon.
What happens at home, especially at an early age, affects children's emotional and social adjustment, which in turn will affect what will happen with school performance (Ardila, 2008, Ardila et al. 2018; Adornetti, 2016; Barkley, 2001; Baumrind, 1966; Coolidge and Wynn, 2018; Gopnik, 2016; Hart och Risley, 1995); children who grow up with both parents or the father have better emotional and social adjustment, as well as cognitive development, compared to children who grow up with a single mother (Baker et al. 2020; Farran och Formby, 2011; LaFlamme et al. 2012; Olsson, 2022; Rolle et al. 2019; Sethna, 2017; Vieno et al. 2009, 2014; Österberg, 2004).
In Finland:
- women's relational aggressiveness is the biggest challenge to deal with (Helsingfors police, April, 2022).
-
Finnish school children fail reading comprehension and numeracy (the Ministry of education and culture, May, 2022).
- 40% of Finnish school kids are victims of psychological violence at home (Estlander, November, 2023).
Typ 1 and 2 errors are not isolated to intimate partner violence. Studies on other complex matters, like nutrition and health, or ADHD, show that researchers fall victim to type 1 and 2 errors. And maybe they are connected?
In the 1950s, or maybe even earlier, saturated fat became a threat to health. That's because of a proposition that saturated fat raises serum cholesterol, and by doing that, some people claimed, would increased the risk of contracting a heart disease - the diet-heart hypothesis (Malmros, 1950; Teicholz, 2023). Because Finland was part of the Seven countries study which assessed the diet-heart hypothesis, the Institute of Welfare and Health has been keen to continue to promote the diet-heart hypothesis (THL, 2022). Note. Sweden was not part of the Seven Countries Study.
But studies using proper measures have rejected the diet-heart hypothesis (Howard et al. 2006; Ramsden et al. 2016). It's also common knowledge that we need to consume saturated fats to produce myelin, a white fat which makes transfer between nerve cells in the brain possible (Mayo CLinic, 2016).
“The central origin of myelin took a little longer due to the special configuration of oligodendrocyte distanced from the axon, but in 1962 the Bunges established the definitive proof that oligodendrocyte secretes myelin. The era of myelin biology had begun. In 1973 Norton devised a method to purify myelin which launched the modern molecular era” (Boullerne, 2017).
“An oligodendrocyte is a type of neuroglia found in the CNS that aids synaptic transmission by producing myelin, a protective sheath surrounding nerve fiber axons (Domingues et al., 2016)” (Science Direct, overview).The consequence: Despite Finland and Sweden having very similar biology, cardiovascular diseases and Alzheimer's diseases are 50% and 100% more prevalent in Finland compared to Sweden.
A third example is attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD):
“a behavioral syndrome characterized by the persistent presence of six or more symptoms involving (a) inattention (e.g., failure to complete tasks or listen carefully, difficulty in concentrating, distractibility) or (b) impulsivity or hyperactivity (e.g., blurting out answers; impatience; restlessness; fidgeting; difficulty in organizing work, taking turns, or staying seated; excessive talking; running about; climbing on things). The symptoms, which impair social, academic, or occupational functioning, start to appear before the age of 7 and are observed in more than one setting. ADHD has been given a variety of names over the years, including the still commonly used attention-deficit disorder (ADD)” (APA).Translated into normal language, ADHD corresponds to lacking emotional and social adjustment, which are two fundamentals of something called the Executive Functions (Ardila, 2008, Ardila et al. 2018; Adornetti, 2016; Barkley, 2001; Coolidge and Wynn, 2018; ).
There's an ongoing discussion about ADHD, partly about what the concept is - psychiatric or psychological, partly about prevalence (Österberg, 2014, 2023 a b, 2024 a b c d e f (In Swedish)).
The former is due to the fact that ADHD is consistent with lack of emotional and social adjustment, which form during the 3-4 years of living and where the father relation plays a crucial role. The latter is due to the fact that the amount of diagnoses are much higher compared to the expected amount of diagnoses. It seems that psychiatrists - a medical doctor (an M.D. or D.O.) who specializes in mental health, including substance use disorders - in general, fall victim of false positive (type 2 error).
Between 1969 and 1972, David Rosenhan, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, conducted an interesting experiment on the validity of psychiatric treatment.
“Eight sane people gained secret admission to 12 different hospitals. Their diagnosis experiences constitute that data of the first part of the article; the remainder is devoted to a description of their experiences in psychiatric institutions” ... “In order to generalize the findings, admission into a variety of hospitals was sought” (p 28).
“Immediately upon admission to the psychiatric ward, the pseudopatient ceased simulating any symptoms of abnormality. In some cases, there was a brief period of mind nervousness and anxiety, since none of the pseudopatients really believed that they would be admitted so easily. Indeed, their shared fear was that they would be immediately exposed as frauds and greatly encompassed” (p. 29).
“Finally, it cannot be said the failure to recognize the pseudopatients' sanity was due to the fact that they were not behaving sanely” ...“It was quite common for the patients to "detect” the pseudopatients' sanity” ... “Failure to detect sanity during the course of hospitalization may be due to the fact that physicians operate with a strong bias towards what statisticians call the type 2 error. That is to say that physicians are more inclined to call a healthy patient sick (a false positive, Type 2) than a sick person healthy (a false negative, Type 1). (p. 30).To test if tendency towards Type 2 diagnosing could be reversed, Dr. Rosenhan arranged another experiment at a hospital whose staff had heard these findings but doubted the [Type 2] outcome.
“The staff was informed that at some time during the following 3 months, one or more pseudopatients would attempt to be admitted into the psychiatric hospital. Each staff member was asked to rate each patient who presented himself at admissions or on the ward according to the likelihood that the patient was a pseudopatient” (p. 31).Judgments were obtained in 193 admitted patients.
“Forty-one patients were alleged, with confidence, to be pseudopatients by at least one member of the staff. Twenty-three were considered suspects by at least one psychiatrist. Nineteen were suspected by one psychiatrist and one other staff member. Actually, no genuine pseudopatient presented himself (at least from my group) during this period” (p. 31).Dr Rosenhan:
“From the one viewpoint, these data are hardly surprising, for it has long been known that elements are given meaning by the context in which they occur” (p. 31).Rosenhal report how hospital staff characterize people, in this case a pseudopatient who had a normal life, with an improving relationship to his father, a close and warm relationship with his wife, where friction was minimal, as having:
“a long history of considerable ambivalence in close relationships, which begins in early childhood. A warm relationship with his mother cools during his adolescence. A distant relatuonship with his father is becoming very intense. Affective stability is absent. His attempt to control emotionality with his wife and children are punctuated by angry outbursts and, in the case of the children, spankings.” (p. 32).Rosenhan:
“One tacit characteristic of psychiatric diagnosis is that it locates the sources of aberration with the individual and only rarely with the complex of stimuli that surrounds him” (p. 33).Rosenhan point to hierarchy as one big obstacle:
“Those with most power have least to do with patients, and those with least power are most involved with them” (p. 35).Paper from which the quotes where taken; original paper: Rosenhan (1973); copy of the original paper.
Conclusion. Method is key when assessing complex things like psychological phenomena or nutrition. And it seems that things have gone very wrong with things like domestic violence, diet-heart hypothesis, and ADHD. It's not that the proper measures don't exist, it's more like some people (NYTKIS), and people working at government authority (Finnish THL and Food authority), refuse to accept them. This may be due to natural stupidity, that we as a species prefer information which are prototypical, available, or just easy to access. But there also seems to be a common denominator, or common source of variation, to them all - malnutrition. Women are known to be hangry, that is, just lose it if their blood sugar drops. But women in general also seem also to be on a diet, that is, avoiding foods that they believe will make them look less fit. And when government authorities keep reiterating that fat is bad, women follow their narrative. But avoiding fat, inhibits the mind to operative in a proper way. That may be the reason why so many Finnish women are relationally aggressive in the home environment, and why so many (40%) Finnish school kids suffer from psychological violence at home, and then fail reading comprehension and numeracy.
Does anyone even want to see the elephant in the room?
Here are two lists of >127 female perpetrators of domestic violence:
Kvinnor (ofta mammor) med mentala utmaningar (n>76) och aggressioner - en lista med historiska och aktuella händelser
Kvinnor (ofta mammor) som dödar (n=72), inklusive fall där socialtjänsten isolerat dem med barnen (offren)
Nutrition:
Nutrition psychology. Meat, fat, and health. The case for Continued Influence bias.
Nutrition psychology. Dementia (Alzheimer's disease). The case for intermittent fasting
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