A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
You probably know that a little exercise can do a lot for your mood. And if you read the AllPsych blog often, you know that simply telling people not to exercise for a week reliably lowers their life satisfaction. Now,
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how giving children less autonomy puts them at higher risk for anxiety. Now a group of psychologists in Australia have proposed a solution to this problem: online interventions for overprotective parents. The researchers
A little more carrot and a little less stick may be the trick to maintaining a balanced diet, exercising more, and drinking less. That’s according to a new study from an international team of psychology researchers published in the journal
We sometimes have trouble figuring out how to compare our own experiences with those of other people. That much is obvious from the study I wrote about earlier this week in which people tended to underestimate how similar their emotional
As we go through life, we frequently find ourselves trying to guess what’s going on in other people’s minds. Our society runs smoothly partly because of people’s ability to infer each other’s perspectives. And when it doesn’t run smoothly, people’s
What’s one way to make a kid anxious? Give them less autonomy, apparently. A study of 88 children and adolescents between the ages of 6 and 17 has found that youth with higher levels of anxiety tend to report being
With TVs, videos and online content all around us, we often find ourselves having to block out different kinds of media. After all, with the information overload that’s possible in modern society, knowing when to ignore screens is the only
There’s something intuitively satisfying about the idea that we become less self-centered as we age. It fits with the image that “older” also means “wiser.” And according to a new study from researchers in Singapore, there may be some truth
For children, the mental health consequences of being teased about their weight may be more significant than the consequences of simply being overweight – that’s according to a new study from researchers in Germany. The study surveyed over a thousand
The possibility that there are people around us who more or less look and act like us but don’t feel empathy like us is enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies. What if we could make psychopaths feel like us too,
