A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
We live in a society that is obsessed with celebrities. But if you have concerns that idolizing someone you’ve never met might not go hand-in-hand with good mental health, you could be on to something. People differ in the extent
Snapping a selfie might seem like the most frivolous, inconsequential act. But on a deeper level, selfies are potentially tied up with questions of how we see our bodies and present ourselves to others. Posting a selfie to social media
It’s a familiar pattern now: first, someone says something offensive online. Then their ill-advised social media post goes viral, subjecting them to trial by Twitter and Facebook. Paradoxically, because the consequences of viral outrage can come to seem out of
You’ve probably been warned not to venture into the comments section on YouTube. But a group of researchers in the United States and Canada threw caution into the wind for the sake of science, looking at a total of 774,939
Perhaps you’ve experienced a jolt of discomfort after realizing you’ve left home without your smartphone. How will I find where I’m going without Google Maps? What if someone needs to get in touch with me? For some, that unpleasant feeling
Mental health treatment, like everything else, is increasingly going online. People are seeking out more information about mental health on the internet, and researchers are experimenting with new types of therapy that can be done virtually. Those darn millennials, wanting
Creativity can be thought of as a process of breaking down walls between different ideas. Now, a team of researchers in China and the United States have taken that metaphor to entirely new levels by showing that breaking down walls
Here’s a shocking finding: going on the Internet might correlate with good mental health. And if you don’t find that shocking, you probably don’t spend enough time on the Internet. That finding is from a recent study that tracked the
“Phubbing” may be a made-up word, but the phenomenon it describes is very real. The verb to phub was originally coined as part of a marketing campaign for the Macquarie Dictionary, and it describes the behavior of snubbing someone in
Your choice in usernames could impact how people perceive your online persona. In particular, some usernames seem to be inherently more trustworthy than others, even when additional information about the person behind the username is available. That’s according to a
