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	<title>Health &#38; FamilyCategory: Friendship &#124; Health &#38; Family &#124; TIME.com</title>
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	<description>A healthy balance of the mind, body and spirit</description>
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		<title>Health &#38; FamilyCategory: Friendship &#124; Health &#38; Family &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>How OkCupid Led an Organ Donor to Find the Teen with His Kidney</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/14/how-okcupid-led-an-organ-donor-to-find-the-teen-with-his-kidney/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/14/how-okcupid-led-an-organ-donor-to-find-the-teen-with-his-kidney/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Feb 2013 17:00:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bonnie Rochman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Love & Relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dating]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kidney donation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kidney donor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[live donor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OkCupid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[organ donation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[organ donors]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Seattle Children's Hospital]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[transplant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University of Washington]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=80244</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This is a Valentine’s Day tale that involves a love connection of one kind and ends with a match of an entirely different sort. Like most good love stories, it involves a man and a woman. But there is also a mom and her teenage daughter and that girl’s unique relationship with a man she had never met. On Aug. 29, at the University of Washington, a 40-year-old man named Quinn Ottoway from Tacoma, Wash., donated his kidney, just because. “When I die,” says Ottoway, who is unemployed with a masters in sociology, “I want my life to have mattered.” A few miles away at Seattle Children’s Hospital, 14-year-old Kendahl Buck received that kidney. Kendahl, from Anaconda, Mont., is obsessed with The Hunger Games. She plays basketball and volleyball, or she did until February of last year when nephronophthisis, a genetic disease that was destroying her kidneys, left her too weak. In accordance with strict organ donation protocol, the process was anonymous. Ottoway had requested that his kidney go to a child but had no way of knowing if his wish would be fulfilled. Kendahl was told only that her kidney had come from a man. The rules exist to protect both donor and recipient, so that neither person feels pressured to share an experience that they may prefer remain private. About a month after a transplant, families may begin the process of reaching out to one another. The donor may write a letter, which is funneled through the hospital that performed the surgery. The recipient is then asked whether she wants to be contacted; recipients can also initiate the process by writing letters of their own. Only if both parties agree that they want to be put in touch is communication allowed. (MORE: Facebook Status Update: Organ Donor) It’s unusual for donors and recipients to meet, but sometimes the strange coincidences of modern-day life intervene. Ottoway, it turns out, isn’t just a man of enormous generosity. At the time, he was also a man in search of romance. He’d<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=80244&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Friendship</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/love-relationships/friendship/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/2012-11-07-13-04-48-resize.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">2012-11-07 13.04.48.resize</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">brochman</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>So Much for Qualifications: Employers Hire People They Like</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/12/10/so-much-for-qualifications-employers-hire-people-they-like/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/12/10/so-much-for-qualifications-employers-hire-people-they-like/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:00:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Belinda Luscombe</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Love & Relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Work & Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[American Sociological Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[banks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[graduates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hiring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ivy League]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kellogg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lauren Rivera]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[law firms]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[recruitment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=75290</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ever wondered how recruitment folks at elite law, banking and management consultant firms choose between all those Ivy League graduates who arrive at their doorsteps bearing dangerously high-GPA degrees? Those with the best skill set? Those with the greatest level of commitment? Those with the most impressive hair?  If an interesting new study is to be believed, they choose the ones they like. The study, published in the American Sociological Review, looked at the interview and hiring techniques of the three high-paying professions —first year JDs can expect to make about $175K a year—to tease out how much cultural cues influence who gets those plum jobs. The researcher, Lauren Rivera assistant professor of management and organization at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, conducted 120 interviews with job interviewers to figure out what criteria they use. Read More:  Happy Teens Grow Up to Be Wealthier Too Hiring practices are important because, as all job seekers are all too well aware, the first position is always the toughest one to land. Once a young lawyer already has a few years under his or her belt at Tony, Tony, Tony &#38; Titan law firm, other doors swing open more easily.  Moreover, since pay in the legal, banking and management consultant sector can get stratospherically high, the job interview for that first position is ground zero for income inequality. It could be argued that those 45 minutes are when society decides who&#8217;s going to be the 1% of the future. Finding a successful employee is not an exact science, but it&#8217;s one of the key arts of management. Hiring the wrong person is an expensive mistake. And, yes, many of the candidates who apply for the elite jobs have had superior educations and worked really hard; that&#8217;s what gets them into the room. So what&#8217;s the secret sauce? As Rivera puts it in the study, &#8220;Employers sought candidates who were not only competent but also culturally similar to themselves.&#8221; This is not so surprising; a firm&#8217;s culture is important. It&#8217;s how one<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=75290&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Work &amp; Life</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/family-parenting/work-life-family-parenting/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">blandnotblond</media:title>
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		<title>Want to Lose Weight? A Coach or a Buddy Can Help</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/31/want-to-lose-weight-a-coach-or-a-buddy-can-help/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/31/want-to-lose-weight-a-coach-or-a-buddy-can-help/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 31 Jul 2012 13:45:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Laura Blue</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Diet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Diet & Fitness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Exercise]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Love & Relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obesity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[buddy system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coach]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dieting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[weight loss]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=65090</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Perhaps the biggest barrier to weight loss — whether you join a commercial plan or forge your own path — is simply sticking with it. Fortunately, there is a trick that may help, a new study finds: Enlist a coach. And it doesn&#8217;t have to cost you a fortune either. Even a friend will do, even if it&#8217;s someone who also struggles with weight. That&#8217;s the finding of a new pilot project from the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center at the Miriam Hospital in Rhode Island. The pilot was small, with just 44 study participants. But it found that when assigned to a health coach — whether a behavior specialist or merely a peer (another study participant) — the would-be weight-losers shed 9% of their body weight on average over 24 weeks, an unusually big success for a weight-loss program. The study did not have a true control group, and the study authors say their results should be considered only preliminary. Still those researchers are optimistic. &#8220;Our study suggests health coaches may not only yield impressive weight loss outcomes, but that lay — or peer — health coaching may be particularly promising as a cost-effective obesity treatment strategy,&#8221; Tricia Leahey, the lead study author, told reporters. Her findings are published in the journal Obesity. It&#8217;s not hard to understand why coaching would work. Anyone can eat well for a couple days and do a brief exercise routine. But maintaining that schedule day in, day out, keeping up with regular exercise and watching what you eat not just for a few meals, but for a lifetime, can be hard work. Even in clinical weight-loss studies it&#8217;s not unusual for half of all participants to give up. When you&#8217;re short of cash, short of time or short of energy, it&#8217;s easy to let your healthy lifestyle slip. When you fail, you may think you just lack willpower. But a good weight-management coach — like any kind of coach — can help you break down performance and pinpoint specific areas for improvement.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=65090&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Diet</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/diet-fitness/diet-diet-fitness/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/buddy.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">buddy</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/a069e8b4ff0dc386def0882f71bbfee6?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Laura Blue</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Science of Animal Friendships: How Beasts Can Be BFFs</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/09/the-science-of-animal-friendships-how-beasts-can-be-bffs/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/09/the-science-of-animal-friendships-how-beasts-can-be-bffs/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:01:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Family & Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[baboons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chimps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dolphins]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[horses]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reciprocal altruism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rhesus monkeys]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=53166</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It can be a humbling time to be a Homo sapiens — or at least a vain Homo sapiens. As the planet’s reigning species, we’ve lost count of all of the remarkable abilities we possess that elevate us above the other beasts — language, tool use, empathy, arithmetics. The problem is, the more closely evolutionary biologists study animals, the more they discover that at least some nonhuman species exhibit the very same talents, even if in a rudimentary way. Ah, but of course, humans still own friendship. Animals might be capable of companionship, caretaking and loyalty to the herd, flock or pride, but surely that’s just biology at work. They protect kin to protect their genes. They do favors for unrelated individuals because they expect a favor in return — a clinical transaction known as reciprocal altruism. What’s missing is the true generosity, communication, long-term commitment and sacrifice that defines human friendship, right? Wrong — and a growing field of science, which we report in this week&#8217;s TIME cover story (available to subscribers here), is turning up all kinds of extraordinary proof. PHOTOS: A Peek Behind the Cover Story Take the pair of wild chimps known as Hare and Ellington, unrelated males who would hunt together, share food and hoot in communication over great distances when they were separated. A favor done by Hare today might not be returned by Ellington for months — far longer than the quick quid pro quo of reciprocal altruism. The favor was, well, just a favor. And then, too, there was the deep period of what could only be described as mourning that Hare went through when Ellington died. Or take the three old female dolphins in Sarasota Bay — Nicklo, Squiggy and Black Tip Double Dip, who would spend hours, indeed whole days, swimming, playing and resting in one another’s close company. The trio would hunt fish together too — which can be nothing but a feeding tactic, since dolphins that cooperate better eat better as well. But it was the serene Golden<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=53166&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Friendship</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/love-relationships/friendship/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/600_hl_animalfriendships_0208.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Holiday Identity Crisis? Kids Celebrating Hanukkah in a Santa-Crazed World</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/21/holiday-identity-crisis-kids-celebrating-hannukah-in-a-santa-crazed-world/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/21/holiday-identity-crisis-kids-celebrating-hannukah-in-a-santa-crazed-world/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:00:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bonnie Rochman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Childhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Family & Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chanukah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christmas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christmas tree]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hanukkah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jewish children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[preschool]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=49907</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It’s that time of year when preschoolers churn out painting after painting of Christmas trees and stockings. But never did I think a child of mine would bring home that genre of artwork. Because we’re Jewish — and not the kind of post-modernist Jews who erect Christmas trees so their kids don’t feel left out — menorahs are more our style. My older two children attended Jewish preschool, which so successfully insulated them from Christmas-mania that my middle daughter, a month shy of her fourth birthday, once decisively identified a display of chocolate Santas as Noah, that guy from the Ark. In a piece I wrote about that episode for The New York Times’ Motherlode blog, I commented, “It’s not in my nature to allow my kids to wander this world deluded. But in this instance, I didn’t have the heart to correct her. Why should I? She’ll learn on her own soon enough.” Three years and a cross-country move later, my youngest, who’s now about the same age as her older sister was when she confused one bearded guy for another, is enrolled in a fabulous secular preschool. Their big message is one of inclusion, which means they teach everything. The kids decorate Christmas trees and stockings, but they also spin dreidels and make menorahs. The holiday of Kwanzaa gets its due too. As a result, my youngest knows far more about Christmas and Santa than her older siblings did at her age. She proclaims that her favorite song is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a composition which my grandfather liked to fondly recall a little me belting out one Sabbath morning at his synagogue. (I wasn’t a graduate of Jewish preschool either.) Meanwhile, her 4-year-old friends learn about her heritage and traditions. It seems that everyone’s better off for it. As I often tell my kids, life would be a whole lot more boring if everyone looked and acted the same. Differences are to be celebrated, not sublimated. MORE: Study: Religious Folks Have a Sunnier Outlook In actuality, it feels like<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=49907&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Culture</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/love-relationships/culture/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/img_4033_4-resize1.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">brochman</media:title>
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		<title>How Being Socially Connected May Sap Your Empathy</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/28/how-being-socially-connected-may-sap-your-empathy/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/28/how-being-socially-connected-may-sap-your-empathy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Oct 2011 09:00:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Family & Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Addiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bonds]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[empathy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[people with addiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[people with disabilities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social support]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[torture]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=45810</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Feeling socially connected is good for you, both physically and mentally, but in a paradox, it may also make you less empathetic to the plight of others. Numerous studies have established that having lots of social support is associated with longevity and better psychological health, but past studies have also hinted that there&#8217;s something about the chemistry of connection that inclines people toward unkindness — particularly toward stigmatized groups like those with disabilities or addictions. The researchers of the new study wanted to explore this issue further by looking at how people who had a strong sense of social support would behave toward those outside their circle. Specifically, the researchers sought to examine whether feelings of connectedness led to increased tendencies to dehumanize others. &#8220;By &#8216;dehumanization,&#8217; we mean the failure to consider another person as having a mind,&#8221; says lead author Adam Waytz, assistant professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, explaining that the idea of &#8220;mind&#8221; includes the capacity to feel pain and pleasure, as well as to plan and intend. MORE: Why Kids Bully: Because They&#8217;re Popular In one experiment, the researchers randomly assigned 38 participants to write essays: some were asked to write about a time they felt supported by a loved one; others were instructed to write about a person whom they see in daily life but don&#8217;t interact with, like someone they see in the hall at school or work. Afterward, the volunteers were asked to evaluate their perceptions of four different groups: rich people, middle class people, those with drug addictions and disabled people. The evaluations had to do with different aspects of mind that they were asked to attribute to the average group member, such as how capable the person would be of &#8220;engaging in a great deal of thought&#8221; or &#8220;doing things on purpose.&#8221; The participants who had written about feeling supported were more likely to dehumanize the addicted and disabled people, lowering their rankings of various aspects of mind by about one point on a 7-point scale. In<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=45810&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/28/how-being-socially-connected-may-sap-your-empathy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Friendship</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/love-relationships/friendship/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/hl_friends_1027.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/hl_friends_1027.jpg?w=240" />
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/0a5ac57e99124922fa628492ad3db6b2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
		</media:content>
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		<item>
		<title>Friends Like Me: Why Diverse Groups May Lead to Similar Friends</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2011/09/30/why-a-more-diverse-environment-may-lead-to-a-blander-group-of-friends/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2011/09/30/why-a-more-diverse-environment-may-lead-to-a-blander-group-of-friends/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:36:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Belinda Luscombe</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Family & Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Friendship]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=43859</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Logic would suggest that the more diverse a society or group of people is, the more diverse the friendships within that group would be. Isn&#8217;t this, after all, why we move to big cities and attend large universities and join Facebook? But a new study finds that the opposite is actually the case. Researchers at Wellesley College and the University of Kansas wanted to test whether having a larger pool of potential buddies would lead to greater diversity among groups of friends. So they looked at the friendship patterns at two types of universities — the 25,000-student University of Kansas in Lawrence, compared with four small colleges, averaging about 1,000 students each, scattered throughout Kansas. &#8220;One might imagine that a small homogeneous community will lead people to form relationships with others much like themselves, compared to a larger eclectic mix of people,&#8221; the researchers write in the journal Group Processes and Intergroup Relations. &#8220;We predict that the size and diversity of an environment will have exactly the opposite effect.&#8221; (Italics theirs.) MORE: Friends With Benefits: Being Highly Social Cuts Dementia Risk by 70% And indeed that&#8217;s what they found. At the University of Kansas, students tended to have friends who mirrored their beliefs, values, attitudes and personalities more closely than those at smaller colleges. But, on the other hand, students at smaller colleges tended to foster closer relationships with their friends, even though they were less similar. The authors suggest that these effects are due to greater social mobility: that is, the more people there are, the easier is it is to make new friends and then move to another social group if it doesn&#8217;t work out. So people continue to sift through the various social groups and seek out friends who are like them in increasingly fine-grained ways. Sociologist have shown that this granularity can extend as far as physical appearance, or even having the same first letter in your name. If people don&#8217;t have as many choices, they tend to form stronger bonds with the friends they have.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=43859&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://healthland.time.com/2011/09/30/why-a-more-diverse-environment-may-lead-to-a-blander-group-of-friends/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
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	<primary_category>Friendship</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/love-relationships/friendship/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/dv1013021.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">blandnotblond</media:title>
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		<title>Friends With Benefits: Being Highly Social Cuts Dementia Risk by 70%</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/02/friends-with-benefits-being-highly-social-cuts-dementia-risk-by-70/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/02/friends-with-benefits-being-highly-social-cuts-dementia-risk-by-70/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 02 May 2011 19:15:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Family & Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alzheimer's]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dementia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[friends]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social network]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=32228</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Yet more evidence that friends and family are the best medicine: a new study finds that the most social seniors had a 70% reduction in the rate of cognitive decline, compared with their least social peers. The study followed 1,138 people for an average of five years. None of the participants, whose average age was 79.6, had dementia at the start of the study. Because the study followed people over time, starting from when they were mentally healthy, the findings shed light on the question of whether it&#8217;s early signs of dementia that cause social isolation, or whether it&#8217;s a lack of sociability that causes a greater risk of mental decline. &#8220;The problem was what came first, the chicken or the egg,&#8221; says lead author Bryan James, a postdoctoral fellow at the Rush Alzheimer&#8217;s Disease Center in Chicago. &#8220;We followed people for up to 12 to 14 years so we were able to look at not just changes in cognition but changes in social activity. That way we were able to see which preceded the other.&#8221; (More on Time.com: Feeling Alone Together: How Loneliness Spreads) To measure participants&#8217; levels of social activity, the researchers used a questionnaire that inquired about things like visits to relatives and friends; participation in activities such as bingo, sporting events, restaurant-going or volunteering; attendance at religious ceremonies; and active membership in groups like the Knights of Columbus. Responses to the questionnaire produced a numerical score of social activity. Each one-point increase on the social activity score was linked to a 47% drop in the rate of decline in cognitive function, the researchers found. An earlier study of the same group of elderly participants by the same researchers also found that each one-point increase in sociability reduced the risk of becoming physically disabled by 43%. &#8220;Not only is socializing linked to mental and thinking ability, it&#8217;s also about how well you live independently,&#8221; says James. (More on TIME.com: Friends Are Key to Health and Long Life) The researchers controlled for factors like personality and the size<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=32228&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Friendship</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/love-relationships/friendship/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/bestfriendssocialnetwork.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">bestfriendssocialnetwork</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/0a5ac57e99124922fa628492ad3db6b2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Study: How Well Do You Know Your Best Friend?</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/30/study-how-well-do-you-know-your-best-friend/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/30/study-how-well-do-you-know-your-best-friend/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Mar 2011 18:26:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Meredith Melnick</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Family & Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Friendship]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=29444</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How often do you fight with your best friend? Your answer is likely related to how well you know her &#8220;triggers&#8221; — the things that really set her off. For instance, do needy people or attention hogs annoy your friend? Does she think lying is ever okay? If you can answer these intimate questions about your closest friend, a new study in Psychological Science suggests, you probably fight with her less. And knowing such details leads to an overall closer, more rewarding relationship. Researchers recruited college students, who in turn recruited their friends, to fill out surveys that read a bit like a questionnaire for the &#8220;Newlywed Game.&#8221; The surveys offered lists of triggers (behaviors or characteristics of other people that are likely to annoy) like perfectionism, timidity, obliviousness and skepticism, and asked participants to describe how they would react when faced with them. They were also asked to predict how their friends would respond to people with those characteristics. The participants who were better able to predict their friends&#8217; reactions — an exercise that researchers referred to as an &#8220;if-then profile&#8221; — were also those who had less combative, less frustrating relationships, and ultimately more feelings of closeness with their friends. &#8220;It&#8217;s a more detailed way of understanding personality,&#8221; said Charity A. Friesen, a co-author and graduate student at Wilfrid Laurier University, in a statement. The researchers note that anyone, even a coworker or casual acquaintance, can create a list of adjectives to describe a person, like witty, athletic or technology-oriented. But only more intimate friends would be able to describe an &#8220;if-then profile.&#8221; For instance, &#8220;you might know the person is extroverted when they&#8217;re out with their friends but more introverted when they&#8217;re in a new situation,&#8221; said Friesen. It&#8217;s not news, but it&#8217;s a good reminder: when it comes to any kind of personal relationship, attentiveness can make all the difference.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=29444&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Friendship</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/love-relationships/friendship/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/bffcropped.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">meredithmelnick</media:title>
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		<title>Why Kids Bully: Because They&#8217;re Popular</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2011/02/08/do-popular-kids-bully-more/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2011/02/08/do-popular-kids-bully-more/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Feb 2011 05:01:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Belinda Luscombe</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Family & Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boys]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bullies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[girls]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[high school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[research]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school hierarchy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=24925</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Mean kids, mothers tell their wounded young, behave that way because they have unhappy home lives, or feel inadequate, or don&#8217;t have enough friends or because they somehow lack empathy. But a new study suggests some mean kids actually behave that way simply because they can. Contrary to accepted ruffian-scholarship, the more popular a middle- or high-school kid becomes, the more central to the social network of the school, the more aggressive the behavior he or she engages in. At least, that was the case in North Carolina, where students from 19 middle and high schools were studied for 4.5 years by researchers at the University of California-Davis. Authors Robert Faris and Diane Felmlee interviewed public-school kids seven times over the course of their study, starting when the students were in grades 6, 7 and 8. They asked the students to name their friends and used the data to create friendship maps. They then asked the kids who was unkind to them and whom they picked on, and mapped out the pathways of aggression. (More on Time.com: The Tricky Politics of Tween Bullying) What they found was that only one-third of the students engaged in any bullying at all — physical force, taunts or gossip-spreading — but those who were moving up the school popularity chain bullied more as they went higher. Only when kids reached the very top 2% of the school&#8217;s social hierarchy or fell into the bottom 2% did their behavior change; these kids were the least aggressive. &#8220;Seemingly normal well-adjusted kids can be aggressive,&#8221; says Faris, whose results are published in the new issue of the American Sociological Review. &#8220;We found that status increases aggression.&#8221; While the authors are not ruling out psychological or background influences as underlying causes of the bullying, they believe that popularity is at least as important. &#8220;It&#8217;s one of the few times I can recall in social sciences where race and family background seem to make very little difference,&#8221; says Faris. &#8220;Those demographic and socioeconomic factors don&#8217;t seem to matter as<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=24925&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Friendship</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/love-relationships/friendship/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/hl_loser_0930.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">blandnotblond</media:title>
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		<title>Misery Has More Company Than You Think, Especially on Facebook</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/27/youre-not-alone-misery-has-more-company-than-you-think/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/27/youre-not-alone-misery-has-more-company-than-you-think/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Jan 2011 14:30:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Family & Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[college students]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[emotion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Facebook]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[freshman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[friends]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[isolation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[loneliness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[misery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[twitter]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=23748</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Have other people&#8217;s blithe Facebook updates ever made you feel like a total loser? Or have you ever felt that your best friend&#8217;s life is perfectly easy and joyful, while yours is nothing but struggle and anxiety? You&#8217;re not alone. Everybody has these experiences, finds an illuminating new study [PDF] from Stanford University, and they tend to exacerbate feelings of loneliness, isolation and dissatisfaction in an already alienating society. (More on Time.com: See photos of Facebook offices around the world) In a series of five experiments, the study— which was inspired by the Facebook envy experience though does not explicitly address it— identified several intersecting psychological factors that underlie the grass-is-greener phenomenon. The first two experiments showed that people consistently underestimate how often other people have negative emotions, while overestimating how often they have positive ones. First, the researchers asked 63 college freshmen to report the positive and negative experiences they had had in the previous two weeks. Participants also reported on whether or not they were alone when they had these experiences, and whether they tried to bury the bad stuff. Researchers found that 29% of students&#8217; bad experiences occurred in private, compared with 15% of the good ones. And 40% of the time, people deliberately concealed negative feelings. That helps explain why other people always seem like they&#8217;re having so much fun — they generally tend to be happier in social settings, and they usually don&#8217;t dwell on feelings of loneliness or depression when they&#8217;re out in a group. In contrast, many of our negative emotions are experienced alone, so we&#8217;re the only ones who see ourselves at our loneliest and most depressed. (More on Time.com: See photos of life inside Facebook&#8217;s headquarters) In the second study, 80 new freshmen were asked to estimate how often they thought other students had the negative experiences identified in the first study — including feeling homesick, receiving a low grade, getting dumped or feeling lonely — and how often they personally had these experiences. They were also asked to estimate the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=23748&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Friendship</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/love-relationships/friendship/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/fbookcropped.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Anti Government Protesters Take To The Streets In Cairo</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Friends with (Genetic) Benefits?</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/17/friends-with-genetic-benefits/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/17/friends-with-genetic-benefits/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Jan 2011 20:00:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Family & Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christakis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fowler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[friends]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genetics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=22834</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new study suggests that when it comes to certain genes, friends of a feather flock together—but with others, opposites attract. The research offers potential insight into subtle genetic influences that may affect how people become friends—which can have an enormous impact on later life choices. One gene that may link friends, for example, is also connected to the risk of alcoholism. “We live in a sea of genes,” says lead author James Fowler, professor of medical genetics and political science at the University of California-San Diego. “What happens to us may not depend only on our genes but on the genes of our friends.” (More on Time.com: Do Friends Make Your Amygdala Larger?) The study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used two large databases, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the Framingham Heart Study. It found similar correlations between two specific genes and the likelihood of individuals being friends in both data sets. Researchers controlled for other factors like simply living in the same region that could also account for the connections between friends. The first gene, DRD2, is involved in producing a type of dopamine receptor, and the researchers report that people with a variant linked with increased risk for alcoholism were more likely to be friends with each other. Those with the variant were 10% more likely to be pals than would be expected by chance. Since most of the participants in the adolescent database were just 14 at the time they were studied, it&#8217;s not likely that, for example, they met each other in bars, which might otherwise explain the connection. Although DRD2 has been the subject of other conflicting studies on its potential relationship to impulsivity or risk for ADHD, the alcoholism finding has been repeatedly replicated. The association makes sense, says Fowler, since it&#8217;s true that “if I&#8217;m more impulsive, I might choose to be with friends with others who are more impulsive.&#8221; Another way that such a gene might affect friendship is that impulsive<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=22834&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Friendship</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/love-relationships/friendship/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/coop.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">coop</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>How to Win Friends: Have a Big Amygdala?</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2010/12/28/how-to-win-friends-have-a-big-amygdala/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2010/12/28/how-to-win-friends-have-a-big-amygdala/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Dec 2010 18:10:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Family & Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[amygdala]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Autism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Depression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[friends]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social network]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[socializing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=20902</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Got a big social network? Then you probably have a large amygdala, according to a new study that found a connection between the size of this brain region and the number of social relationships a person has. The complexity of those relationships — as measured by the number of people who occupied multiple roles in a social network such as being simultaneously a friend and a co-worker — was also linked with amygdala size. The findings are in line with past animal studies that have shown that species with larger social groups have relatively larger amygdalas, when brain and body size are taken into account, compared with less social animals. &#8220;Our question was, could we see this variation within a single species?&#8221; says lead author Lisa Barrett, director of the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory at Northeastern University. (More on Time.com: Where Does Fear Come From? (Hint: It&#8217;s Not the Creepy Basement) Understanding the relationship between the size of an individual&#8217;s amygdala and his or her social relationships could help lead to treatments for a variety of conditions that involve difficulties with social connections, such as depression or autism. So what does the amygdala actually do? &#8220;[It's] strongly connected with almost every other structure in brain. In the past, people assumed it was really important for fear. Then they discovered it was actually important for all emotions. And it&#8217;s also important for social interaction and face recognition,&#8221; Barrett says. &#8220;The amygdala&#8217;s job in general is to signal to the rest of brain when something that you&#8217;re faced with is uncertain. For example, if you don&#8217;t know who someone is, and you are trying to identify them, whether it is a friend or a foe, the amygdala is probably playing a role in helping you to perform all of those tasks.&#8221; Barrett says it is commonly assumed that the size of a structure reflects its computational capacity, noting that if your larger amygdala easily allows you to identify people you&#8217;ve met before at a cocktail party, you will have a much easier<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=20902&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Friendship</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/love-relationships/friendship/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/307_brain.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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