A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
Sex differences are a tricky topic for psychology researchers. It’s unclear to what extent the brains of men and women work differently. On top of that, it’s hard to tell whether any differences that exist have an underlying biological cause,
How many digits can you remember at once? Psychologists refer to this as a digit span test. For example, I might give you a number like 59368572 and ask you to repeat it back to me. Typically, people can hold
There are plenty of things we could be doing to improve students outcomes. Training teachers more thoroughly, giving schools more funding to work with, teaching students effective study strategies. But the impact of these interventions will be limited if students
Who are you and what’s your life story? Answering one of these questions might tell you a lot about the other. People have a tendency to create stories out of things. Seeing our lives as having themes and narrative arcs
We can all probably agree that we’d like for the world to be a fair place. What’s harder to agree on is whether the world actually is fair. Although it’s a basic truth that “life isn’t fair,” people differ in
You might have a certain picture of what a “millennial” looks like. Plugged into social media, snapping selfies, entitled, self-absorbed. In short, narcissistic. The narcissistic millennial is a trope that many journalists have taken and run with. For example, one
Let’s talk about creativity, man. In 2012, residents of Washington state voted to make recreational marijuana illegal. This year, researchers from Washington State University published a study aiming to clarify the relationship between marijuana and creativity. Is there a connection
Terrorist attacks perpetrated by people acting alone come seemingly out of nowhere, but they have the potential to cause devastating loss. Recently, a group of researchers from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom analyzed 55 cases of terrorist attacks committed
One of the most important things people learn in college may be … how to learn. It’s hard to learn anything, obviously, if you don’t know how to learn. OK, I’m simplifying things a bit. Everyone knows how to learn
It looks like we may be able to add a less extreme stress response to the list of benefits associated with physical activity. A new study published in the journal Anxiety, Stress and Coping suggests that exercise may take some
