The initials of your name may influence where you choose to work, new research suggests.

While it sounds like a joke, a well-known psychological theory called the name-letter effect maintains that a person’s behavior may be influenced by his or her name.

As my colleague Stephanie Rosenbloom reported earlier this year, “people like the letters in their own names (particularly their initials) better than other letters of the alphabet.” Read more…

Want to know what’s really going on in your own head? The mental health Web site PsychCentral offers a list of the best online psychology tests. Some of these are used to collect data for research experiments, while others are skill tests or quizzes that offer personal insights. Here are a few of the best.

1. The Stroop Test. A fun test that measures how fast and flexible a thinker you are by using color-coded words.

2. The Worst Sounds. Grab your headset and take this online sound test to find out which sounds bother you the most. You’ll hear snoring, crying babies and nails on the chalkboard.

3. Personality Test. Check out the “I Just Get Myself” personality test. It comprises just 40 easy questions but delivers a surprisingly insightful (at least I thought so) assessment of your personality traits.

4. Memory Test. After a series of numbers appears on the screen, click on a keypad to test your memory.

5. Reaction to Faces. This test allows you to rate your preference for different facial characteristics. Another test, PerceptionLab, measures your reaction to different faces.

6. Personal Biases. Test your implicit biases about race and other issues.

And for even more insight, take PsychCentral’s own Sanity Score quiz, which is designed to assess aspects of your mental health, including your risk for depression, anxiety and other emotional disorders.

For additional tests and more information about online psychology assessments, read the full PsychCentral article by clicking here.

A popular e-mail going around features a spinning dancer that has been touted as a test of whether you are right-brained and creative or left-brained and logical. If you see the dancer spinning clockwise, the story goes, you are using more of your right brain, and if you see it moving counterclockwise, you are more of a left-brained person.

Clockwise or counterclockwise?But while the dancer does indeed reflect the brain savvy of its creator, Japanese Web designer Nobuyuki Kayahara, it is not a brain test. Read more…

Working with farm animals may boost coping skills. (James Estrin/The New York Times)

Caring for farm animals appears to offer a therapeutic benefit for people with mental illness, according to new research.

Earlier studies with cats and dogs have shown that animal-human interaction can decrease stress and improve self-confidence and social competence. But less is known about whether working with other types of animals offers any benefits to those struggling with anxiety or other psychiatric disorders. Even so, the use of farms to promote mental health is increasing in Europe and the United States, as various treatment programs offer so-called “green” care, which includes time in community gardens and on farms as a form of therapy. Read more…

Paranoia is far more common in the general population than previously thought, a new study shows.

Paranoia loves company. (Jonathan Fickies for The New York Times)

Feeling paranoid means harboring unreasonable suspicions of people and situations. A person who is paranoid might hear people laughing in the next room and assume the group is laughing at him or view a casual glance from a stranger as a threat.

Now an unusual study, highlighted on the mental health Web site PsychCentral, has used virtual reality to study people’s reactions to everyday situations. In the study, 200 volunteers who were representative of the general population wore virtual reality headsets that let them ride a London subway for four minutes. They walked around the virtual train car, where they encountered computerized images of other riders. The virtual images, called avatars, read the paper or occasionally looked around, sometimes smiling at or meeting the gaze of the volunteer. Read more…

Britney Spears (Dan Steinberg/Associated Press)

Even pop stars have a right to medical privacy.

The University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center where singer Britney Spears was hospitalized earlier this year is firing at least 13 employees and suspending six others for peeking into the star’s confidential medical records, The Los Angeles Times reports.

The newspaper also says six doctors face disciplinary action for peeking at Ms. Spears’s computerized records related to her recent stay there for psychiatric evaluation. Read more…

The midlife crisis, a time of self-doubt and turmoil familiar to many in their 40s and 50s, is often viewed as a phenomenon of Western culture. But new research suggests that people all over the world are miserable in middle age.

Those are the surprising findings from a worldwide study of two million people from 80 countries. The researchers, economists Andrew Oswald from the University of Warwick in England and David Blanchflower from Dartmouth College in the United States, found that happiness levels followed a U-shaped curve, with happiness higher towards the start and end of our lives. Across cultures, they found, depression and unhappiness typically strike people in midlife.

The findings are important because other studies have suggested that psychological well-being stays relatively flat and consistent as people age, the researchers said. The latest report, to be published in Social Science & Medicine, analyzed information from several sources. Data was collected from 500,000 randomly sampled Americans and West Europeans from large surveys. The authors also analyzed data on the mental health levels of 16,000 Europeans, the depression and anxiety levels among a large sample of British citizens, and data from “The World Values Survey,” which provides samples of people in 80 countries.

The researchers found that for both British men and women, the probability of depression peaks around 44 years of age. In the United States, unhappiness peaks at around age 40 for women and 50 for men. Read more…

Hundreds of students sign up for Harvard’s most popular class, “Positive Psychology,” which has come to be known as the “happiness course.”

Now, Harvard plans to bring happiness to the masses, offering “Positive Psychology” as an online course beginning in February. The online version, offered through the Harvard Extension School, will feature recorded lectures from the daytime Harvard College course and can be taken for credit or noncredit. The class, taught by Tal Ben-Shahar, focuses on the psychological aspects of a fulfilling life, including topics such as happiness, self-esteem, empathy, friendship, love, achievement, creativity, music, spirituality and humor.

But happiness doesn’t come cheap. Those taking the course noncredit or for undergraduate credit must pay $700. Graduate credit costs $1,625. Students can register through February 3, or through February 10 by paying a late fee.

Dr. Ben-Shahar is the author of the book “Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment.” He was recently interviewed on “The Daily Show” by Jon Stewart, who joked that he was amazed that anyone could “get away with” teaching a course on happiness. (The full interview is posted below.) Read more…

An uplifting result of music therapy. (Alan Zale for The New York Times)

Many people find that music lifts their spirits. Now new research shows that music therapy — either listening to or creating music with a specially trained therapist — can be a useful treatment for depression.

The finding that music therapy offers a real clinical benefit to depression sufferers comes from a review by the Cochrane Collaboration, a not-for-profit group that reviews health care issues. Although there aren’t many credible studies of music therapy for depression, the reviewers found five randomized trials that studied the effects of music therapy. Some studies looked at the effects of providing music therapy to patients who were receiving drug treatment for depression. Others compared music therapy to traditional talk therapy. In four out of five of the trials, music therapy worked better at easing depression symptoms than therapies that did not employ music, the researchers found.

“The current studies indicate that music therapy may be able to improve mood and has low drop-out rates,” said lead author Anna Maratos, an arts therapist for the National Health Service in London. “While the evidence came from a few small studies, it suggests that this is an area that is well worth further investigation….We need to find out which forms have greatest effect.”

Ms. Maratos notes that music therapy might be particularly useful for adolescents who may reject a traditional form of counseling. Some older patients also may not be comfortable talking about their feelings, “but do tend to express themselves through song,” she said. Read more…

Most doctors and therapists won’t disclose the names of their patients, let alone comment on their mental states. Federal and state licensing rules typically forbid it.

Dr. Phil (Matt Sayles/Associated Press)

But TV therapist Phil McGraw, who recently visited frazzled pop star Britney Spears at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, not only confirmed the meeting to Entertainment Tonight, but said the diva was “in dire need of medical and psychological intervention.” Now the Internet is buzzing with questions about whether Dr. Phil, as he is known, violated Ms. Spears’s privacy.

But patient privacy guidelines are decided by state licensing boards and federal rules, experts said today, and none of these appears to apply to Dr. McGraw.

State medical ethics rules are not applicable, according to legal specialists, because Dr. McGraw is not a licensed therapist. He holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from North Texas State University and was licensed for 20 years in Texas, according to a spokeswoman at CBS, which airs his show. But he is no longer licensed in Texas, nor in California, where he now lives. Read more…

If you go to a mechanic, you tell the truth about what’s wrong with your car. When you go to the dentist, you’re clear about which tooth hurts.

But truth can be tougher with a therapist, notes psychologist John M. Grohol, in an essay on the PsychCentral Web site. Unlike aches and pains, the information you deliver to a therapist often involves your innermost thoughts and feelings or behavior you may not be proud of. Just as patients sometimes find it tough to disclose embarrassing personal health issues to a physician, patients also worry about confiding with their therapists, he notes.

“We’re embarrassed by what we need to say, and feel the doctor might pass some sort of judgment on us,” said Dr. Grohol. “Whether it’s a rational fear or not doesn’t really matter, does it? One of the reasons many people seek out psychotherapy in the first place is to help combat irrational thoughts and fears, so in that context, it makes sense many of us share this fear of being judged or embarrassed.”

If you do nothing else in therapy, says Dr. Grohol, learn to tell the truth.

“Your therapist won’t judge you, and they won’t be embarrassed by what you tell them,” he writes. “They won’t criticize you for not sharing this information with them sooner. All they will do is use it to find a way to better help you and help you move forward.”

For the full essay, click here.

Noreen Drucker teaches English as a second language to fifth graders at Fernbrook School in Randolph, N.J. (Dith Pran/The New York Times)

The stress of teaching is often blamed on rowdy students and unrealistic expectations from school officials. But new research suggests that parents may be the real culprit in teacher burnout.

The study, published this month in the psychology journal Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, surveyed 118 German schoolteachers who had been teaching for an average of 20 years. The questionnaires were designed to assess personality traits like perfectionism. They also measured the teachers’ level of burnout and their reactions to pressure from colleagues, students and parents. Although “burnout” is complex and different for every teacher, it’s usually defined as occurring when a teacher feels emotionally exhausted at the end of the day, appears cynical or uncaring about what happens to students and feels as if he or she has reached few personal goals.

Although perfectionism is often linked with job stress, teachers with perfectionist tendencies in this survey weren’t more likely to have burnout. But teachers who felt pressure to be perfect or experienced criticism for being imperfect were more likely to have burnout. Notably, the highest pressure to be perfect didn’t come from students or colleagues but from parents. Read more…

What is the real value of a gift? (Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi)

It’s that time of year when friends and family take part in that annual holiday ritual — debating the merits of the gift exchange.

After my recent blog post about holiday shopping, I was surprised how many readers wrote of their disdain for gift giving.

“I’ve been boycotting X/Cess (my nickname for Christmas) for several years now. I do not give gifts, I politely tell people not to give me Any More Stuff, and I do not decorate.” — Posted by Lorie.

“My husband and I do not exchange gifts, and it has been hard trying to convince our families not to give us gifts either….We are thinking of trying for children soon, and do not want our children to receive all the latest gadgets from their grandparents and six aunts and uncles twice a year. We don’t like the spirit of materialism it represents.” — Posted by Ellen.

Their comments inspired me to learn more about the psychology of gift giving. In my Well column in Science Times this week, I wrote about what social psychologists and other scientists say about the intangible value of gifts. While it’s reasonable to cut back on spending during the holidays, psychologists say that banning the gift exchange entirely is not the best solution. People who stop giving gifts may be missing out on an important connection with family and friends. Read more…

(From left: Robert Stolarik for The New York Times New York; Alan Zale for The New York Times; Owen Franken for The New York Times )

Every day, we are tested. Whether it’s a cookie tempting us from our diets or a warm bed coaxing us to sleep late, we are forced to decide between what we want to do and what we ought to do.

The ability to resist our impulses is commonly described as self-control or willpower. The elusive forces behind a person’s willpower have been the subject of increasing scrutiny by the scientific community trying to understand why some people overeat or abuse drugs and alcohol. What researchers are finding is that willpower is essentially a mental muscle, and certain physical and mental forces can weaken or strengthen our self-control.

Studies now show that self-control is a limited resource that may be strengthened by the foods we eat. Laughter and conjuring up powerful memories may also help boost a person’s self-control. And, some research suggests, we can improve self-control through practice, testing ourselves on small tasks in order to strengthen our willpower for bigger challenges.

“Learning self-control produces a wide range of positive outcomes,’’ said Roy Baumeister, a psychology professor at Florida State University who wrote about the issue in this month’s Current Directions in Psychological Science. “Kids do better in school, people do better at work. Look at just about any major category of problem that people are suffering from and odds are pretty good that self-control is implicated in some way.’’ Read more…

The holiday shopping buzz. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

For many people, the real joy of the holiday season comes from shopping, whether it’s getting to the store at 4 a.m. for the best bargains or finding that impossible-to-find holiday toy.

The pleasure you feel from every shopping victory is real. Shopping, like any new or exciting experience, activates the brain’s reward center, triggering the release of dopamine. That’s the same brain chemical released by drug use, gambling and other addictive behaviors.

“Most people report that shopping is fun and exciting, and they like seeing new products in the stores,” said University of Iowa psychiatry professor Dr. Donald Black, who earlier this year wrote a review article about shopping addiction. “The reality is that shopping is America’s No. 1 pastime and most people shop because it’s enjoyable to them.’’ Read more…