A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
Sometimes people don’t accept “good enough,” and they pursue perfection with counterproductive, or even disastrous, results. This phenomenon is so common that we have multiple sayings warning us not to fix what ain’t broke and not to gild the lily.
A finding that comes up again and again in psychology research is that people feel better when they take prosocial actions, which is why helping others is one of the best ways of helping yourself. The ability to derive happiness
From Zoom happy hours to remote learning, one thing most of us have discovered this year is that doing something “virtually” isn’t always as good as the real, in-person thing. But does that hold true for therapy? Even before the
Embracing the pain might be make the pain less painful. That’s more or less the takeaway from a new study, detailed in a paper in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. In the study, researchers attached thermodes, or devices that can
Do you find your hand regularly creeping up toward your head, despite recent advice from public health experts to keep your fingers and your face firmly separated? If so, you’re not alone. Even trivial habits like touching your face can
From posttraumatic stress to sleep disturbances, recent studies have begun to confirm that the coronavirus pandemic has brought a range of mental health consequences. Now, an analysis of data from the US Census Bureau provides what appears to be some
Think of a card, any card… I can tell you what card it’s probably not. It’s probably not the three of diamonds. After all, there’s just a 1 in 52 chance that you’d pick that card. And in an experiment
When the people around us behave in ways we don’t want, there are a variety of ways we might choose to react. The most direct is to confront them about their behavior. More subtle methods might be gossiping about them
Some day soon, the Olympic Games may have video games on the schedule. “But video games aren’t a real sport,” you cry. And yet, besides the obvious analogy between video games and traditional sports in terms of competitive skill, a
Do you ever wake up in the night and worry about what the future might hold? Well, if you’re an optimist, maybe not. A new study published in the Journal of Sleep Research indicates that viewing the world through rose-colored
