A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
Researchers from University of Oxford and University College London have just published a new scale for measuring apathy. But who really cares, right? Whatever. Apathy is one of those basic emotions we all know about that still isn’t very well
We all know that we can’t choose when we fail, only how we react to failure when it does happen. But what’s less clear is why some people are better at brushing off mistakes than others. In a paper titled
Boredom research is a fairly popular area of study in psychology recently. It’s not to be confused with boring research because it can give us some interesting insights into how people work, which is one reason I’ve written about it
How’s this for a cruel paradox: the more you want to be happy, the less happy you become. I’m not just suggesting that idea as a thought experiment. According to some research, that’s actually how things work – actively trying
Does witnessing injustice makes your blood boil? Or if not your blood, then maybe your bilateral mid insular cortex? A new study from researchers at University of Bern has found that people who react more strongly to seeing injustice inflicted
Having trouble getting into the Thanksgiving spirit? No problem, science has some good excuses for why you aren’t feeling very grateful. One of them comes from research published this month in the journal Cognition & Emotion. It turns out that
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
