A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
Here’s an interesting study … about boredom. Lack of excitement might not seem like the most exciting research topic at first glance, but we all have a slightly different experience of boredom. Maybe you’re always fighting boredom. Maybe you aren’t
People use different coping strategies to deal with stressful events, and some people use coping strategies more than others. Three techniques for keeping perspective through the ups and downs of life that have been studied are: Mindfulness: Staying aware in
If you think psychologists don’t do enough research with practical applications, you’ve got another think coming. A team of researchers from Gettysburg College have just published a study on a topic we can all get behind: how to get the
Everyone would agree that being able to recover from setbacks is a good skill to have. But seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses might seem like a less obvious entry in the list of important life skills. Some research has
It’s a cliche to say that living in the present moment is the key to happiness. But like a lot of cliches, it might contain a kernel of scientific truth. Psychologists call how you relate to the past, present and
Even if we aren’t always aware of it, we all have tricks we use to manage our emotions on a day-to-day basis. One of these is that we engage in different activities that help us regulate our moods. When we’re
Envy gets a bad rap. I mean, let’s be real: being on a list of “seven deadly sins” isn’t good PR for anyone. Fortunately, psychologists aren’t always the types to judge a sin by its cover, and research into this
There’s often some cognitive dissonance involved in the act of eating meat. On one hand, you might like animals and not want any of them to suffer. On the other hand, you might really enjoy eating them. So how do
If I ask you to name a place you wish you were right now, work wouldn’t necessarily be the first thing to come to mind. But for some people, work can be a welcome distraction from the stresses of their
That might sound like a silly question. Of course having a mental illness is going to lower life satisfaction. But how much? Does having a mental illness doom you to never enjoying life? In a study published earlier this month,
