Martin Voracek (born 1966 in Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian psychologist and Professor of Psychological Research Methods - Research Synthesis in the University of Vienna's Faculty of Psychology. [1] He is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Individual Differences . [2]
Voracek has researched many different topics in the field of psychology, [3] including the relationship between IQ and suicide rates, [4] [5] and the association between the digit ratio of a heterosexual man and the number of sexual partners he has had. [6] One of his best-known studies, published in 2002, found that female centerfold models in Playboy had become less representative of the general population since the 1950s. The same study also found that more recent models tend to look much less curvy and more androgynous than did previous models. [7] [8] [9]
A copycat suicide is defined as an emulation of another suicide that the person attempting suicide knows about either from local knowledge or due to accounts or depictions of the original suicide on television and in other media. The publicized suicide serves as a trigger, in the absence of protective factors, for the next suicide by a susceptible or suggestible person. This is referred to as suicide contagion.
Carlo Giuliani was an Italian anti-globalization protester who was shot dead while attacking a Carabinieri van with a fire extinguisher, by an officer who was inside the van, during the anti-globalization riots outside the July 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, Italy making his the first death during an anti-globalization demonstration since the movement's rise from the 1999 Seattle WTO protests.
The Mozart effect is the theory that listening to the music of Mozart may temporarily boost scores on one portion of an IQ test. Popular science versions of the theory make the claim that "listening to Mozart makes you smarter" or that early childhood exposure to classical music has a beneficial effect on mental development.
Jocelyn "Jackie" Lane is a former actress and model of the 1950s and 1960s. She was married to Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg.
Joseph Nicolosi was an American clinical psychologist who advocated and practised "reparative therapy", a form of the pseudoscientific treatment of conversion therapy that he claimed could help people overcome or mitigate their homosexual desires and replace them with heterosexual ones. Nicolosi was a founder and president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Medical institutions warn that conversion therapy is ineffective and may be harmful, and that there is no evidence that sexual orientation can be changed by such treatments.
Hyperthymesia, also known as hyperthymestic syndrome or highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), is a condition that leads people to be able to remember an abnormally large number of their life experiences in vivid detail. It is extraordinarily rare, with only 61 people in the world having been diagnosed with the condition as of 2021.
The Orwell Prize, based at University College London, is a British prize for political writing. The Prize is awarded by The Orwell Foundation, an independent charity governed by a board of trustees. Four prizes are awarded each year: one each for a fiction and non-fiction book on politics, one for journalism and one for "Exposing Britain's Social Evils" ; between 2009 and 2012, a fifth prize was awarded for blogging. In each case, the winner is the short-listed entry which comes closest to George Orwell's own ambition to "make political writing into an art".
The Klimt University of Vienna Ceiling Paintings, also known as the Faculty Paintings, were a series of paintings made by Gustav Klimt for the ceiling of the University of Vienna's Great Hall between the years of 1900–1907. In 1894, Klimt was commissioned to paint the ceiling. Upon presenting his paintings, Philosophy, Medicine and Jurisprudence, Klimt came under attack for 'pornography' and 'perverted excess' in the paintings. None of the paintings would go on display in the university.
Sir Simon Charles Wessely is a British psychiatrist. He is Regius Professor of Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London and head of its department of psychological medicine, vice dean for academic psychiatry, teaching and training at the Institute of Psychiatry, as well as Director of the King's Centre for Military Health Research. He is also honorary consultant psychiatrist at King's College Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital, as well as civilian consultant advisor in psychiatry to the British Army. He was knighted in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to military healthcare and to psychological medicine. From 2014 to 2017, he was the elected president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
David Abraham is a British media executive, who is the former chief executive of Channel 4 Television Corporation. In 1997 he co-founded the creative agency St. Luke's. Abraham then went on to senior creative roles at Discovery Communications in the UK and the US before becoming CEO of UKTV in 2007 and then CEO of Channel 4 from 2010 to 2017. In 2018, Abraham co-founded Wonderhood Studios where he is now Group CEO.
Social media and suicide is a phenomenon concerning social media's influence on suicide behavior. Suicide is one of the top leading causes of death worldwide, and as of 2020, the third leading cause of death in those aged 15–24. According to the Center for disease control, suicide accounts for 21.5 percent of deaths, and is the second leading cause of death among adolecents. Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States accounting for 45,979 deaths in 2020. Suicide rates increased by 30 percent from 2000-2018 and declined in 2019 and 2020. Despite suicide prevention programs, therapy, and pharmacological treatments, the suicide rate is constantly growing worldwide. Suicide has been identified not only as an individual phenomenon, but also as being influenced by social and environmental factors. There is growing evidence that online activity have influenced suicide-related behavior. The use of social media throughout the 21st century has grown exponentially. There are a variety of sources that are accessible to the public in various forms. Sites include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok and more. These platforms were intended to allow people to connect in a virtual way, but can lead to cyberbullying, insecurity, emotional distress, and ultimately suicide.
Anton K. Formann was an Austrian research psychologist, statistician, and psychometrician. He is renowned for his contributions to item response theory, latent class analysis, the measurement of change, mixture models, categorical data analysis, and quantitative methods for research synthesis (meta-analysis).
Patricia Mary Greenhalgh is a British professor of primary health care and a practising general practitioner.
Jelte Michiel "J.M." Wicherts is a Dutch psychologist and professor in the Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Tilburg University. His research interests include biases in decision making, as well as scientific misconduct and reproducibility. He has also researched group differences in IQ scores and the Flynn effect.
Christina Pagel is a German-British mathematician and professor of operational research at University College London (UCL) within UCL's Clinical Operational Research Unit (CORU), which applies operational research, data analysis and mathematical modelling to topics in healthcare. She was Director of UCL CORU from 2017 to 2022 and is currently Vice President of the UK Operational Research Society. She also co-leads, alongside Rebecca Shipley, UCL's CHIMERA research hub which analyses data from critically ill hospital patients.
Jennifer Dixon, CBE, MBChB, FRCP, FFPH, is the chief executive of the Health Foundation, a large independent charity in the United Kingdom. Her work has been recognised by several national and international bodies for her significant impact in driving national health policy making.
Sowmya Wijayambal Arulampalam, known as Wiji Arulampalam, is an economist and professor at the department of economics in the University of Warwick. Arulampalam is the 152nd most cited female economist in the world according to the RePEc/IDEAS ranking.
Lea Waters is an Australian psychologist, speaker, author and researcher. She is a psychology professor at the University of Melbourne and was the founding director of the Centre for Positive Psychology in the University of Melbourne. In addition, she has affiliate positions at University of Michigan and sits on the Science Board of The University of California and Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. Her main areas of research are positive psychology, organisational psychology, education, leadership and parenting.
Ian Willmore, is a British activist who played a leading role in defending the independence of the civil service in the 1980s. He also campaigned for legislation to ban smoking in public places and standardised packaging of tobacco products.
Tom Pilkington was a professor of medicine at St. George's Hospital, London, who specialised in metabolic medicine. His work on jejuno-ileal bypass operations contributed to the development of the surgical management of severe obesity. He was mentor to Patrick Vallance and Peter Kopelman.