The meaning of the Naughty Boy - La La La ft. Sam Smith

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_La_La_%28Naughty_Boy_song%29#Meaning

According to Ian Pons Jewell,[5] the music video, which hints at "The Wizard of Oz", is about an oral Bolivian legend dating to the early 20th century, which concerns a boy who fled from his abusive home and found a stray dog that accompanied him since then.

After living on the streets for undefined amount of time he discovers that he has special talent of perceiving people's troubles, which he can heal by screaming, which is said to be as loud as an earthquake and a tornado. One day, he finds an old man who is being stoned by villagers while being taunted and ridiculed. By screaming, the boy resolves the situation and revives the old man's heart (in the video, by buying him a new heart).

Together, they meet a disfigured man who was abused, considered a leper by society. The disfigured man reveals that he is a prophet who was cursed by a demon (El Tio) because he didn't worship him anymore, and abandoned the society where the demon resided. El Tio is considered as the lord of the underworld, to whom mortal people offer gifts to him in order to be protected by him or to ease his anger.[6]

The prophet said anybody who could hear the demon would fall under his control. He told them the demon could be found in desert, where there once was a town in which people worshipped the demon and he cursed them to kill themselves.
Together they go to the place where the demon should reside. They arrive at a mine where the demon is supposed to be, but everybody with their hearing intact could be cursed by the demon, thus the boy had to face the demon alone and overvoice him with his scream to stop him from cursing others.

The video ends with an open end, considering that El Tio is the lord of the underworld who rules in the mines, which were of use for people for a prolonged period of time, whom miners sacrifice a llama from time to time to avoid from being cursed, the boy could be seen as a big sacrifice to redeem the miners from El Tio's undesirable influence.[7]

Let's be more open about the joy of sex

Promoting or at least discussing pleasure has been shown to increase consistent condom use and other forms of safer sex

• Doortje Braeken
• theguardian.com, Monday 29 April 2013 11.00 BST

The Kama Sutra is being used to spread safe sex messages in India. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex

It appears that sex is fun. This may not come as a surprise but, working in sexual health, one can easily become blind to that fact. To work in sexual and reproductive health and rights is to be drip-fed a diet of warnings, doom-laden data on violence, population and epidemics; no wonder we have forgotten a central truth about sex – namely that it is pleasurable.

The idea of pleasure and confidence in your sexual life is not a new concept for us at IPPF (the International Planned Parenthood Federation). In 1998, we enshrined the concept of respect and pleasure in our youth manifesto, based on core values of respect for diversity, informed choice and freedom of sexual expression and sexual enjoyment. And then more recently in Healthy, Happy and Hot – a young person's guide to rights, sexuality and living with HIV – where IPPF had the courage to suggest that young people living with HIV could also live healthy and sexually fulfilling lives.
Now it seems the development community has caught up. The discussion around the new sustainable development goals – replacing the millennium development goals – are forcing us to re-examine the issue of sexual health and rights as the key to alleviating poverty and empowering women.

There is growing evidence that promoting pleasure alongside safer sex messaging can increase the consistent use of condoms and other forms of safer sex. With this in mind, IPPF is beginning to reframe the debate on sexual rights, health in terms of pleasure and confidence.

This new, pleasure-positive approach couldn't have come at a more crucial time. There is now general agreement that sustainable goals for alleviating poverty and encouraging lasting development depend on empowering women. Women's ability to contribute to their communities and economies depends on empowerment, confidence and equality. Sexual confidence, negotiation, collaboration and pleasure are all pivotal in building gender equality and ending gender and sexual discrimination.

So sex confidence is empowering. It's not just about not getting pregnant or avoiding an STI (sexually transmitted infection), it's about being comfortable with yourself, feeling accepted and accepting your partner, treating the other person as a person and not a body. It's about being confident and enjoying our bodies, having fun and not being forced into having sex when we don't want to; about using education and information to reinforce positive messages about safer sex, so that people of all ages can enjoy it when they feel the time is right.

Western-led discussions of sexual health have majored on facts, dire data and warnings, and what not to do. We can help construct a sex-positive language by talking about sex in our homes and families. It doesn't have to be the "big talk" about sex; much better to start an open, ongoing topic. Evidence shows that if you talk to teenagers about sex and relationships, they'll feel less pressure to have sex, which means they're more likely to wait.
The reproductive health community needs to take some of the blame here, being curiously silent on the subject of pleasure. Last year's Family Planning Summit in London made no reference or mention of it. If pleasure is the goal of our sexual lives, discussion of pleasure is clearly key to encouraging safer behaviours.

The generation of young people we want to reach with safer sex messages are inundated by the language and drama of love in films, song lyrics and soaps, yet most formal education literature has all the eroticism of a car manual. Between the medicalised world of sexual health and the commercialised world of the sex industry, we have lost sight of the messy, emotionally-charged reality of sex.
We need to find a more positive way of looking at sex that promotes sexual pleasure, not as a side-issue but as a way to re-engage with our audience – a chance to make our messages about sexual rights sexual and safety more effective.
The Pleasure Project has started the ball rolling by mapping initiatives around the world that use pleasure as the primary motivation for promoting sexual health, including working with Catholic churches in South Africa to improve sex among married couples and using the Kama Sutra to spread safe sex messages in India.

There's a long way to go. A report in the Lancet noted obstacles to condom use including the extra effort needed, embarrassment and the perception of reduced pleasure.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has issued a call to develop "the next generation of condom that significantly preserves or enhances pleasure, in order to improve uptake and regular use".
The community and governments are waking up to the fact that recognising and promoting pleasure and confidence in sex is vital to achieving development goals. That's undoubtedly good news, but, meanwhile, let's not forget that it's something to be sought and celebrated as an end in its self.

Doortje Braeken is IPPF's senior adviser on adolescents and young people, responsible for co-ordinating programmes in 26 countries implementing a rights-based approach to youth friendly services and comprehensive sexuality education.

The 12 Cognitive Biases That Prevent You From Being Rational

The human brain is capable of 10¹⁶ processes per second, which makes it far more powerful than any computer currently in existence. But that doesn't mean our brains don't have major limitations. The lowly calculator can do math thousands of times better than we can, and our memories are often less than useless — plus, we're subject to cognitive biases, those annoying glitches in our thinking that cause us to make questionable decisions and reach erroneous conclusions. Here are a dozen of the most common and pernicious cognitive biases that you need to know about.

Before we start, it's important to distinguish between cognitive biases and logical fallacies. A logical fallacy is an error in logical argumentation (e.g. ad hominem attacks, slippery slopes, circular arguments, appeal to force, etc.). A cognitive bias, on the other hand, is a genuine deficiency or limitation in our thinking — a flaw in judgment that arises from errors of memory, social attribution, and miscalculations (such as statistical errors or a false sense of probability).

Some social psychologists believe our cognitive biases help us process information more efficiently, especially in dangerous situations. Still, they lead us to make grave mistakes. We may be prone to such errors in judgment, but at least we can be aware of them. Here are some important ones to keep in mind.

Confirmation Bias

We love to agree with people who agree with us. It's why we only visit websites that express our political opinions, and why we mostly hang around people who hold similar views and tastes. We tend to be put off by individuals, groups, and news sources that make us feel uncomfortable or insecure about our views — what the behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner called cognitive dissonance. It's this preferential mode of behavior that leads to the confirmation bias — the often unconscious act of referencing only those perspectives that fuel our pre-existing views, while at the same time ignoring or dismissing opinions — no matter how valid — that threaten our world view. And paradoxically, the internet has only made this tendency even worse.

Ingroup Bias

Somewhat similar to the confirmation bias is the ingroup bias, a manifestation of our innate tribalistic tendencies. And strangely, much of this effect may have to do with oxytocin — the so-called "love molecule." This neurotransmitter, while helping us to forge tighter bonds with people in our ingroup, performs the exact opposite function for those on the outside — it makes us suspicious, fearful, and even disdainful of others. Ultimately, the ingroup bias causes us to overestimate the abilities and value of our immediate group at the expense of people we don't really know.

Gambler's Fallacy

It's called a fallacy, but it's more a glitch in our thinking. We tend to put a tremendous amount of weight on previous events, believing that they'll somehow influence future outcomes. The classic example is coin-tossing. After flipping heads, say, five consecutive times, our inclination is to predict an increase in likelihood that the next coin toss will be tails — that the odds must certainly be in the favor of heads. But in reality, the odds are still 50/50. As statisticians say, the outcomes in different tosses are statistically independent and the probability of any outcome is still 50%.

Relatedly, there's also the positive expectation bias — which often fuels gambling addictions. It's the sense that our luck has to eventually change and that good fortune is on the way. It also contribues to the "hot hand" misconception. Similarly, it's the same feeling we get when we start a new relationship that leads us to believe it will be better than the last one.

Post-Purchase Rationalization

Remember that time you bought something totally unnecessary, faulty, or overly expense, and then you rationalized the purchase to such an extent that you convinced yourself it was a great idea all along? Yeah, that's post-purchase rationalization in action — a kind of built-in mechanism that makes us feel better after we make crappy decisions, especially at the cash register. Also known as Buyer's Stockholm Syndrome, it's a way of subconsciously justifying our purchases — especially expensive ones. Social psychologists say it stems from the principle of commitment, our psychological desire to stay consistent and avoid a state of cognitive dissonance.

Neglecting Probability

Very few of us have a problem getting into a car and going for a drive, but many of us experience great trepidation about stepping inside an airplane and flying at 35,000 feet. Flying, quite obviously, is a wholly unnatural and seemingly hazardous activity. Yet virtually all of us know and acknowledge the fact that the probability of dying in an auto accident is significantlygreater than getting killed in a plane crash — but our brains won't release us from this crystal clear logic (statistically, we have a 1 in 84 chance of dying in a vehicular accident, as compared to a 1 in 5,000 chance of dying in an plane crash [other sources indicate odds as high as 1 in 20,000]). It's the same phenomenon that makes us worry about getting killed in an act of terrorism as opposed to something far more probable, like falling down the stairs or accidental poisoning.

This is what the social psychologist Cass Sunstein calls probability neglect — our inability to properly grasp a proper sense of peril and risk — which often leads us to overstate the risks of relatively harmless activities, while forcing us to overrate more dangerous ones.

Observational Selection Bias

This is that effect of suddenly noticing things we didn't notice that much before — but we wrongly assume that the frequency has increased. A perfect example is what happens after we buy a new car and we inexplicably start to see the same car virtually everywhere. A similar effect happens to pregnant women who suddenly notice a lot of other pregnant women around them. Or it could be a unique number or song. It's not that these things are appearing more frequently, it's that we've (for whatever reason) selected the item in our mind, and in turn, are noticing it more often. Trouble is, most people don't recognize this as a selectional bias, and actually believe these items or events are happening with increased frequency — which can be a very disconcerting feeling. It's also a cognitive bias that contributes to the feeling that the appearance of certain things or events couldn't possibly be a coincidence (even though it is).

Status-Quo Bias

We humans tend to be apprehensive of change, which often leads us to make choices that guarantee that things remain the same, or change as little as possible. Needless to say, this has ramifications in everything from politics to economics. We like to stick to our routines, political parties, and our favorite meals at restaurants. Part of the perniciousness of this bias is the unwarranted assumption that another choice will be inferior or make things worse. The status-quo bias can be summed with the saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" — an adage that fuels our conservative tendencies. And in fact, some commentators say this is why the U.S. hasn't been able to enact universal health care, despite the fact that most individuals support the idea of reform.

Negativity Bias

People tend to pay more attention to bad news — and it's not just because we're morbid. Social scientists theorize that it's on account of our selective attention and that, given the choice, we perceive negative news as being more important or profound. We also tend to give more credibility to bad news, perhaps because we're suspicious (or bored) of proclamations to the contrary. More evolutionarily, heeding bad news may be more adaptive than ignoring good news (e.g. "saber tooth tigers suck" vs. "this berry tastes good"). Today, we run the risk of dwelling on negativity at the expense of genuinely good news. Steven Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, argues that crime, violence, war, and other injustices are steadily declining, yet most people would argue that things are getting worse — what is a perfect example of the negativity bias at work.

Bandwagon Effect

Though we're often unconscious of it, we love to go with the flow of the crowd. When the masses start to pick a winner or a favorite, that's when our individualized brains start to shut down and enter into a kind of "groupthink" or hivemind mentality. But it doesn't have to be a large crowd or the whims of an entire nation; it can include small groups, like a family or even a small group of office co-workers. The bandwagon effect is what often causes behaviors, social norms, and memes to propagate among groups of individuals — regardless of the evidence or motives in support. This is why opinion polls are often maligned, as they can steer the perspectives of individuals accordingly. Much of this bias has to do with our built-in desire to fit in and conform, as famously demonstrated by the Asch Conformity Experiments.

Projection Bias

As individuals trapped inside our own minds 24/7, it's often difficult for us to project outside the bounds of our own consciousness and preferences. We tend to assume that most people think just like us — though there may be no justification for it. This cognitive shortcoming often leads to a related effect known as the false consensus bias where we tend to believe that people not only think like us, but that they also agree with us. It's a bias where we overestimate how typical and normal we are, and assume that a consensus exists on matters when there may be none. Moreover, it can also create the effect where the members of a radical or fringe group assume that more people on the outside agree with them than is the case. Or the exaggerated confidence one has when predicting the winner of an election or sports match.

The Current Moment Bias

We humans have a really hard time imagining ourselves in the future and altering our behaviors and expectations accordingly. Most of us would rather experience pleasure in the current moment, while leaving the pain for later. This is a bias that is of particular concern to economists (i.e. our unwillingness to not overspend and save money) and health practitioners. Indeed, a 1998 study showed that, when making food choices for the coming week, 74% of participants chose fruit. But when the food choice was for the current day, 70% chose chocolate.

Anchoring Effect

Also known as the relativity trap, this is the tendency we have to compare and contrast only a limited set of items. It's called the anchoring effect because we tend to fixate on a value or number that in turn gets compared to everything else. The classic example is an item at the store that's on sale; we tend to see (and value) the difference in price, but not the overall price itself. This is why some restaurant menus feature very expensive entrees, while also including more (apparently) reasonably priced ones. It's also why, when given a choice, we tend to pick the middle option — not too expensive, and not too cheap.

Images: Lightspring/Shutterstock, Tsyhun/Shutterstock, Yuri Arcurs/Shutterstock, Everett Collection/Shutterstock, Frank Wasserfuehrer/Shutterstock, George Dvorsky, Barry Gutierrez and Ed Andrieski/AP, Daniel Padavona/Shutterstock, wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.

DSM-5 Released: The Big Changes By JOHN M. GROHOL, PSY.D.

DSM-5 Released: The Big Changes

By JOHN M. GROHOL, PSY.D. 

The DSM-5 was officially released today. We will be covering it in the weeks to come here on the blog and over atPsych Central Professional in a series of upcoming articles detailing the major changes.
In the meantime, here is an overview of the big changes. We sat in on a conference call that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) had in order to introduce the new version of the diagnostic reference manual used primarily by clinicians in the U.S. to diagnose mental disorders. It is called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and is now in its fifth major revision (DSM-5).
James Scully, Jr., MD, CEO of the APA, kicked off the call by remarking that the DSM-5 will be a “critical guidebook for clinicians” — a theme echoed by the other speakers on the call.

Why has it taken on such a large “role [both] in society as well as medicine?” he asked. Dr. Scully believes it’s because of the prevalence of mental disorders in general, touching most people’s lives (or someone we know).
The APA has published three separate drafts of the manual on their website, and in doing so received over 13,000 comments from 2010 – 2012, as well as thousands of emails and letters. Every single comment was read and evaluated. This was an unprecedented scale of openness and transparency never before seen in the revision of a diagnostic manual.
“The manual is first and foremost a guidebook for clinicians,” reiterated David Kupfer, M.D., DSM-5 task force chair, who walked us through the major changes detailed below.

1. Three major sections of the DSM-5

I. Introduction and clear information on how to use the DSM.
II. Provides information and categorical diagnoses.
III. Section III provides self-assessment tools, as well as categories that require more research.

2. Section II – Disorders

Organization of chapters is designed to demonstrate how disorders are related to one another.
Throughout the entire manual, disorders are framed in age, gender, developmental characteristics.
Multi-axial system has been eliminated. “Removes artificial distinctions” between medical and mental disorders.
DSM-5 has approximately the same number of conditions as DSM-IV.

3. The Big Changes in Specific Disorders

Autism
There is now a single condition called autism spectrum disorder, which incorporates 4 previous separate disorders. As the APA states:

ASD now encompasses the previous DSM-IV autistic disorder (autism), Asperger’s disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified.
ASD is characterized by 1) deficits in social communication and social interaction and 2) restricted repetitive behaviors, interests, and activities (RRBs). Because both components are required for diagnosis of ASD, social communication disorder is diagnosed if no RRBs are present.

Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder
Childhood bipolar disorder has a new name — “intended to address issues of over-diagnosis and over-treatment of bipolar disorder in children.” This can be diagnosed in children up to age 18 years who exhibit persistent irritability and frequent episodes of extreme behavioral dyscontrol (e.g., they are out of control).
ADHD
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been modified somewhat, especially to emphasize that this disorder can continue into adulthood. The one “big” change (if you can call it that) is that you can be diagnosed with ADHD as an adult if you meet one less symptom than if you are a child.
While that weakens the criteria marginally for adults, the criteria are also strengthened at the same time. For instance, the cross-situational requirement has been strengthened to “several” symptoms in each setting (you can’t be diagnosed with ADHD if it only happens in one setting, such as at work).
The criteria were also relaxed a bit as the symptoms now have to had appeared before age 12, instead of before age 7.
Bereavement Exclusion Removal
In the DSM-IV, if you were grieving the loss of a loved one, technically you couldn’t be diagnosed with major depression disorder in the first 2 months of your grief. (I’m not sure where this arbitrary 2 month figure came from, because it certainly reflects no reality or research.). This exclusion was removed in the DSM-5. Here are the reasons they gave:

The first is to remove the implication that bereavement typically lasts only 2 months when both physicians and grief counselors recognize that the duration is more commonly 1–2 years. Second, bereavement is recognized as a severe psychosocial stressor that can precipitate a major depressive episode in a vulnerable individual, generally beginning soon after the loss. When major depressive disorder occurs in the context of bereavement, it adds an additional risk for suffering, feelings of worthlessness, suicidal ideation, poorer somatic health, worse interpersonal and work functioning, and an increased risk for persistent complex bereavement disorder, which is now described with explicit criteria in Conditions for Further Study in DSM-5 Section III. Third, bereavement-related major depression is most likely to occur in individuals with past personal and family histories of major depressive episodes. It is genetically influenced and is associated with similar personality characteristics, patterns of comorbidity, and risks of chronicity and/or recurrence as non–bereavement-related major depressive episodes. Finally, the depressive symptoms associated with bereavement-related depression respond to the same psychosocial and medication treatments as non–bereavement-related depression. In the criteria for major depressive disorder, a detailed footnote has replaced the more simplistic DSM-IV exclusion to aid clinicians in making the critical distinction between the symptoms characteristic of bereavement and those of a major depressive episode.

PTSD
More attention is now paid to behavioral symptoms that accompany PTSD in the DSM-5. It now includes four primary major symptom clusters:

• Reexperiencing
• Arousal
• Avoidance
• Persistent negative alterations in cognitions and mood

“Posttraumatic stress disorder is now developmentally sensitive in that diagnostic thresholds have been lowered for children and adolescents. Furthermore, separate criteria have been added for children age 6 years or younger with this disorder.”
Major and Mild Neurocognitive Disorder
Major Neurocognitive Disorder now subsumes dementia and the amenstic disorder.
But a new disorder, Mild Neurocognitive Disorder, was also added. “There was concern we may have added a disorder that wasn’t ‘important’ enough.”
“The impact of the decline was noticeable, but clinicians lacked a diagnosis to give patients,” noted Dr. Kupfer. There were two reasons for this change: “(1) Opportunity for early detection. The earlier the better for patients with these symptoms. (2) It also encourages an early effective treatment plan, ” before dementia sets in.
Other New & Notable Disorders
Both binge eating disorder and premenstrual dysphoric disorder and now official, “real” diagnoses in the DSM-5 (they were not prior to this, although still commonly diagnosed by clinicians). Hoarding disorder is also now recognized as a real disorder, separate from OCD, “which reflects persistent difficulty dis-carding or parting with possessions due to a perceived need to save the items and distress associated with discarding them. Hoarding disorder may have unique neurobiological correlates, is associated with significant impairment, and may respond to clinical intervention.”

Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, President-Elect of the APA reminded us that the DSM-5 is not a pop-psychology book intended for consumers: “[It is] a guide, an aide to assist clinicians to … help facilitate treatment.”
The APA also noted that a large number of sessions — 21 — will be dedicated to the DSM-5 this weekend at the APA’s annual meeting.
Commenting on the swirling controversy regarding the DSM-5, that perhaps the diagnostic system isn’t good enough, Dr. Lieberman said, “It can’t create the knowledge, it reflects the current state of our knowledge.”
“We can’t keep waiting for such breakthroughs,” (in reference to biomarkers and laboratory tests). “Clinicians and patients need the DSM-5 now.
Critics have accused the DSM-5 of lowering diagnostic thresholds across the board, making it far easier for a person to be diagnosed with a mental disorder. Lieberman disagrees, however: “How [the DSM-5] is applied reflects critical practice… it’s not necessarily because of the criteria [themselves]. It’s because of the way the criteria are applied.”

Escapism

Escapism is mental diversion by means of entertainment or recreation, as an "escape" from the perceived unpleasant or banal aspects of daily life. It can also be used as a term to define the actionspeople take to help relieve persisting feelings of depression or general sadness.

History 

Entire industries have sprung up to foster a growing tendency of people to remove themselves from the rigors of daily life.[citation needed] Many activities that are normal parts of a healthy existence (e.g., eating, sleeping, exercise, sexual activity) can also become avenues of escapism when taken to extremes or out of proper context. In the context of being taken to an extreme, the word "escapism" carries a negative connotation, suggesting that escapists are unhappy, with an inability or unwillingness to connect meaningfully with the world.

However, there are some who challenge the idea that escapism is fundamentally and exclusively negative. For instance, J. R. R. Tolkien, responding to the Anglo-Saxon academic debate on escapism in the 1930s, wrote in his essay "On Fairy-Stories" that escapism had an element of emancipation in its attempt to figure a different reality. C. S. Lewis was also fond of humorously remarking that the usual enemies of escape were jailers. Some social critics warn of attempts by the powers that control society to provide means of escapism instead of actually bettering the condition of the people. For example, Karl Marx wrote about religion as being the "opium of the people". Escapist societies appear often in literature. The Time Machine depicts the Eloi, a lackadaisical, insouciant race of the future, and the horror their happy lifestyle belies. The novel subtly criticizes capitalism, or at least classism, as a means of escape. Escapist societies are common in dystopian novels; for example, in Fahrenheit 451 society uses television and "seashell radios" to escape a life with strict regulations and the threat of the forthcoming war. In science fiction media escapism is often depicted as an extension of social evolution, as society becomes detached from physical reality and processing into a virtual one, examples include the virtual world of OZ in 2009 Japanese animated science fiction Summer Wars and the game "Society" in the 2009 American science fiction film Gamer. Drugs cause some forms of escapism which can occur when certain performance enhancing drugs are taken which make the participant forget the reality of where they are or what they are meant to be doing. This is highly illegal because it can make users act strangely and do unpredictable things.

German social philosopher Ernst Bloch wrote that utopias and images of fulfilment, however regressive they might be, also included an impetus for a radical social change. According to Bloch, social justice could not be realized without seeing things fundamentally differently. Something that is mere "daydreaming" or "escapism" from the viewpoint of a technological-rational society might be a seed for a new and more humane social order, as it can be seen as an "immature, but honest substitute for revolution".

The Norwegian psychologist Frode Stenseng has presented a dualistic model of escapism in relation to different types of activity engagements. He discusses the paradox that the flow state (Csikszentmihalyi) resembles psychological states obtainable through actions such as drug abuse, sexual masochism, and suicide ideation (Baumeister). Accordingly, he deduces that the state of escape can have both positive and negative meanings and outcomes. Stenseng argues that there exists two forms of escapism with different affective outcomes dependent on the motivational focus that lays behind the immersion in the activity. Escapism in the form of self-suppression stems from motives to run away from unpleasant thoughts, self-perceptions, and emotions, whereas self-expansion stems from motives to gain positive experiences through the activity and to discover new aspects of self. Stenseng has developed the Escape scale to measure self-suppression and self-expansion in people´s favorite activities, such as sports, arts, and gaming. Empirical investigations of the model have shown that (1) the two dimensions are distinctively different with regards to affective outcomes, (2) that some individuals are more prone to engage through one type of escapism, and (3) that situational levels of well-being affects the type of escapism that becomes dominant at a specific time.

I wanna go back to heaven!

But swimming in your water* is something spiritual
Ooh!
I'm born again every time you spend the night
Ooh!

'Cause your sex takes me to paradise
Yeah, your sex takes me to paradise
And it shows, yeah, yeah, yeah

'Cause you make me feel like I've been locked out of heaven
For too long, for too long
Yeah, you make me feel like I've been locked out of heaven
For too long, for too long

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Ooh!
Oh, yeah, yeah,
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Ooh!

You bring me to my knees, you make me testify
You can make a sinner change his ways
Open up your gates 'cause I can't wait to see the light
And right there is where I wanna stay

'Cause your sex takes me to paradise
Yeah, your sex takes me to paradise
And it shows, yeah, yeah, yeah

'Cause you make me feel like I've been locked out of heaven
For too long, for too long
Yeah, you make me feel like I've been locked out of heaven
For too long, for too long

Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah
Can I just stay here?
Spend the rest of my days here?
Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah
Can't I just stay here?
Spend the rest of my days here?

'Cause you make me feel like I've been locked out of heaven
For too long, for too long
Yeah, you make me feel like I've been locked out of heaven
For too long, for too long

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Ooh!
Oh, yeah, yeah,
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Ooh!

5 Scientific Explanations for Your Sexual Perversions

The thing about our sexual preferences is that we just accept them -- of course guys like boobs, and couples like kissing. Well ... why? Why don't we rub armpits instead? Why do so many people have foot fetishes? There has to be a reason.

And while maybe we can't explain your thing with puppets, science does have a few ideas about the other stuff we're into.

#5. Foot Fetishes Kept Us Free of STDs

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Looking to warn your kid away from sexually transmitted diseases? Try encouraging him to lust after feet. No, that isn't an excerpt from our parenting guide, So You're Stuck With a Baby: Tips for Making It Interesting. It's actually a sound theory based on some pretty badass science.

Feet are the most fetishized body part out there. There's no obvious reason why -- it's not like, say, a leather fetish, where everyone can look at Catwoman and say, "Yeah, I get that." You can't have sex with feet, and even if you could, would you want to? A lot of fungus lives there.

Condoms won't help, and lube just makes it worse.

Well, scientists wanted to know why, so they started digging. First of all, how did it get started? There are several theories, including one from an expert who says that sensation in the feet and genitals both transmit to the same area of the brain, so there could be some accidental crossover there. But why would it persist through thousands of years of evolution? The answer appears to be disease.

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And the tireless efforts of certain visionary directors.

Researchers collected history's records of foot-lust and compared it with the greatest STD outbreaks of the last thousand years: gonorrhea (the 13th century), syphilis (the 16th century, with an encore in the 19th century) and AIDS (the break-dancing years up to now). Scientists learned two things. The first was a greater appreciation for antibiotics, and the second was that foot fetishes are most prevalent in times of disease.

In other words, when our genitals know it's too dangerous to go outside, we start fantasizing about toes and bunions and the way sneakers smell. To test this theory, an intrepid band of sex researchers looked at the prevalence of feet in eight major pornographic publications from 1965 to 1994. Then they made a graph, because graphs are what get scientists off.

Discover Magazine
You're welcome. Now clean yourselves up.

It's worth noting that a general obsession with feet also correlated with periods of greater female power, as if women themselves were taking away the usual goodies and substituting the third filthiest part of their bodies instead, just to show men what was what.

#4. Oral Sex Helps Prevent Miscarriages

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The nice thing about oral sex is all of it. No one gets pregnant, people who are virgins can stay virgins when they do it and according to the '90s, it doesn't technically count as sexual relations. Win-win-WIN. So it's easy to see why humans and animals and all things with genitals engage in oral sex in the first place. What's not so obvious is the evolutionary value of the act. It doesn't pass on the genes. And what do women get out of going downtown, other than an occasional free pass later on in the month?

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"Let me and my entire extended family visiting for the week explain after you cut the grass."

If Dr. Gustaaf Dekker is to be believed, she gets the benefit of safer future pregnancies ... but only if she swallows.

Among other things, there are unique proteins in every man's sperm, and the more "familiar" a woman is with her partner's semen, the more likely her uterus is to accept it when it's time to procreate. And according to science, or this scientist, anyway, the very best way to get familiar with your future mate's manseed is to digest it.

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Man gravy is good with beef and is best used as a garnish.

Dekker also found that pregnant women who practiced oral sex were less likely to have preeclampsia, a condition where the woman's immune system rejects her own placenta, presumably because she's less likely to recognize the fetus as a foreigner. Dekker puts it this way:

"If there's repeated exposure to that signal then eventually when the woman conceives, her cells will say, 'We know that guy, he's been around a long time, we'll allow the pregnancy to continue.'"

"He got a good job? He law abidin'? He better be."

Here's a hint to teenage boys everywhere: This is not the message you want to pass on to your girlfriend in the back seat of your car.

#3. Multiple Orgasms Exist to Encourage Freaky Group Sex

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We've previously speculated that the female orgasm was strictly a leftover of evolution, that the clitoris is wired to feel good during sex because it's really a pre-penis. But there are other theories about the purpose of the female orgasm out there as well. Such as the one about how orgasms are merely an award for getting freaky with multiple partners. And why would a woman want multiple partners? So none of them would murder her babies.

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"I want what every girl wants: a man who gets confused enough by orgasms that he forgets to kill my children."

According to one anthropologist, and also anyone with sexual experience, the female climax is a completely different animal from the male's. For one thing, it's harder to achieve. And for another, lots of women can have lots of them at once ... just over and over again. Men can't do that.

So Dr. Sarah Hrdy speculates that the orgasm was once an incentive for women to keep on mating once their first, or second, or third partner was done with his business. Because if she mated with lots of guys at once, none of them would know who had fathered her children. Which meant that killing off your rival's kids was impossible -- because they could be your kids. You Game of Thrones fans know what we're talking about here.

"No, his sociopathy is from his mother's side."

Dr. Orgasm's theory is backed up by observations in the animal kingdom. Langur monkeys are relatively (for monkeys) monogamous, and dominant males are all about infanticide in order to secure their rank as alpha male, and also to make the mom stop producing milk so she can mate again. And also because adult langur monkeys are monsters.

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"You know what part of a baby monkey tastes best? The tears."

But you don't find that behavior among macaques and chimpanzees, or at least not nearly as much. And sure enough, the difference is that macaques and chimpanzee females bone lots of different dudes. So, the female orgasm may very well be evolution's reward to women for hosting nasty ape sex parties.

#2. We Kiss to Get Close Enough to Detect Pheromones

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In this article, we explained the theory that kissing evolved as a way for women to expose themselves to cytomegalovirus so their future babies wouldn't get hit with a herpesesque disease in the womb. And man, is that the most unromantic explanation for kissing EVER. The good news is that there are other, less awful theories about smooching out there. One is that we've all got a secret sex nerve in our brains that compels us to swap spit.

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"My nose is telling me it's time to tongue your face-hole."

But first, some background. Everyone has 12 pairs of nerves jutting out of the brainstem, appropriately named Nerve I through Nerve XII. And most of them are regular sensory nerves, like the olfactory one and the optic one and the one that helps us see the dead. But in 1913, scientists discovered another nerve that everyone had missed before. "Nerve 0" (or, as we like to call it, Nerve Oooooh) sits at the base of our skulls, seemingly useless, like a third testicle on an already sterile old man. So it's not surprising that everyone kind of forgot about it.

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Although that doesn't make them shut up about it at parties.

So when scientists finally got around to figuring out what this nerve did, they discovered something funny. Even though it looked like an olfactory nerve, it was present in creatures that had long ago lost their sense of scent. Which means it must have some purpose in humans (and all other animals) besides making public transportation unpleasant. Shortly thereafter, scientists discovered that cutting this nerve caused mice to stop breeding.

It turns out Nerve 0 is directly connected to the regions of the brain associated with sex and gives your nose a direct, private highway to your genitals. Well, that's interesting. What could that be for?

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Stop having sex with those flowers and we'll tell you.

Scientists theorize that when you kiss someone, Nerve 0 picks up their pheromones and warns your body to start sending blood and good vibes down to your crotch as quickly as possible. It's important to note that Nerve 0 doesn't travel through your olfactory bulb at all, which means you can't actually smell any of the things your sex nerve is designed to pick up. And since our pheromones don't carry very well, getting close enough to kiss is basically the only way your Boning Nerve can do you any good.

And what kind of things does your brain learn by picking up pheromones this way? For one thing, it allows you to sneak a peek at your lover's immune system. People you're attracted to will tend to have been exposed to very different antibodies over the course of their lifetimes. This ensures that you have a lower chance of miscarriages and a higher chance of birthing superbabies with badass immune systems. It alsostops you from finding your relatives sexually viable, so let's give it a round of applause for preventing a lot of awkward family reunions.

#1. Big Boobs Exist Thanks to the Missionary Position

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Here's a question we bet you never asked yourself: Why do guys prefer big breasts? Don't say it's because it signals that a woman is more capable of nursing -- huge boobs serve no practical purpose for the delivery of milk. Well, according to one theory, it has to do with our ancestors preferring face-to-face sex.

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"I call them 'shock absorbers.'"

The humble "missionary position" has the unfair reputation of being the boring option for couples too tired to try anything too crazy. But out in the animal kingdom, that position is crazy -- face-to-face sex is something of a revelation for mammals. Our ape ancestors preferred a much less ... frontal method. But the pair bonding that occurs when couples look each other in the eye while doin' it is beneficial enough to humanity that evolution favored people who had face-first sex.

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Also our heads were getting much larger during this time, and that shit gets heavy.

In The Naked Ape, British zoologist and ethologist Desmond Morris proposed that the social benefits to our ancestors who liked missionary-style sex were great enough that evolution favored frontal features that mirrored the backside. Namely, giant breasts that mimic the bulbous buttocks of our great-to-the-power-of-500 grandmas. As Desmond put it:

"The protuberant, hemispherical breasts of the female must surely be copies of the fleshy buttocks, and the sharply defined red lips around the mouth must be copies of the red labia."

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The first time he shopped at the greengrocers, he had to lie down in a dark room for three days.

Of course, Desmond, they must be. And that means that big breasts exist purely to compel attention. In other words, evolution masterminded the single most successful advertising campaign in world history.

Robert Evans oversees the image captions at Cracked and has a blog where he writes letters on our messed-up justice system, illegal immigration, oil drilling and drug policy to the conservative parents of the world. If you'd like to hire him, he can be reached at revanswriter@gmail.com.

For more science behind human actions, check out 6 Obnoxious Old People Habits (Explained by Science) and 6 Factors That Secretly Influence Who You Have Sex With.

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