Between Your Ears is a column featuring some of the latest findings in brain and psychological research that will appear occasionally in Health.

You've often heard that having a good support system helps you through difficult times. But now, researchers at UCLA say that merely holding the photo of someone you love can reduce the pain you experience. Naomi Eisenberger and colleagues had college-age girls with long-term boyfriends hold their boyfriends' pictures while "heat stimuli" were applied to their forearms, and they experienced less pain than when they were looking at pictures of a stranger or a chair. "This changes our notion of how social support influences people," Dr. Eisenberger said. "Typically, we think that in order for social support to make us feel good, it has to be the kind of support that is very responsive to our emotional needs. Here, however, we are seeing that just a photo of one's significant other can have the same effect."

When the Boston Red Sox failed to win a World Series between 1920 and 2003, many fans blamed the "curse" of the team having traded Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. But when the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, "no one credited the ghost of Ted Williams," says Carey Morewedge, a social and decision sciences professor at Carnegie Mellon University. "They attributed those victories to the talent and skills of the ballplayers." Dr. Morewedge found this tendency held up in experimental gambling games he conducted. Even when the players were matched against a computer, they were more likely to believe that an unfriendly human was playing against them when they lost, and more likely to believe their own skill deserved the credit when they won.

"If an important file is deleted or their favorite team loses a game, people seem prone to believe that their computer is out to get them, that the referees were conspiring against their team, or that their team has been cursed," Dr. Morewedge said. "It is easier and more satisfying to think that we caught the swine flu, lost our savings or didn't get a promotion because another person was conspiring against us than to see those events as random or due to our own actions. But when files are easily found or their favorite team wins, people rarely attribute those events to such external influences," he said.

Virtual reality, where users see and hear computerized scenes, is being used increasingly to treat various phobias and mental disorders. Now, researchers at the GRAP Occupational Clinic in Quebec and the University of Quebec have found virtual reality can help some people kick smoking. People enrolled in an anti-smoking program were randomly assigned to use virtual reality to either grasp virtual balls, or crush virtual cigarettes Anti-smoking programs typically have low success rates, and this one was no exception. But the group that did the ball exercise had an abstinence rate after 12 weeks of only 2 percent, while those who crushed the fake cigarettes had a 15 percent abstinence rate.

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