Cognitive epidemiology
Emotion and cognition and their relationships is a classic question within psychology. Increased knowledge about these basic entities in psychology is of importance also for other disciplines e.g. neuroscience and more direct applied areas.
Bo Melins group investigate causal relationships between cognitive and emotional abilities in relations to health and e.g. acquired social positions later in life. Bo Melins group is also interested in how these abilities relates to social mobility. Bo Melin has a long history and ongoing projects that relates to stress, work and health within a biopsychosocial frame.
Bo Melins group have shown that cognitive ability (or outcome from psychometric IQ test) is a strong predictor for various types of health outcomes and mortality. Cognitive ability was a pronounced predictor of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease (CVD)-mortality, mortality from violent causes, and alcohol-related mortality. Bo Melins group were among the first to obtain the striking finding of a pronounced gradient in mortality risk across all IQ score groups. Adjustment for socioeconomic position attenuated the increased risk somewhat. Except for the finding of a pronounced gradient other research groups have found similar findings in smaller and less representative samples. In conclusion, Bo Melins groups studies have shown that IQ test score measured in late adolescence was a significant predictor of all-cause, as well as cause-specific (CVD and injuries), mortality during 30 years of follow-up. The risk increased from high to low IQ test score results for all outcomes. After control for poverty we could show that poverty had only a small impact on the relationship between IQ scores and death. Although the gradient still were significantly pronounced after control for p