A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
Well, no kidding! Of course people who are more sensitive to rejection are going to get depressed more easily – I don’t need a study to tell you that! But here’s the interesting part: not all people who are sensitive
Max Eastman once wrote that “a smile is the universal welcome,” but it turns out the universal welcome might not be so universal. Although previous research has suggested that smiling can make you look more attractive, approachable and competent, these
Having a sense of who you are and what matters to you can make a lot of things easier. One way to solidify this sense of self is to reflect on your personal values or to do things that reinforce
One of the things that keeps mental illness stigma alive is that many psychiatric terms are widely misused. For example, many people still think “schizophrenia” refers to having multiple personalities or that being “psychotic” is about being violent. In many
What does it mean to own something? It depends what society you’re in. In Western culture, ownership is strongly linked to ideas about individualism and personal identity. But the same isn’t necessarily true in other cultures, and it turns out
Oxytocin, sometimes called the “love hormone,” plays a key role in human bonding. It’s involved in trust, empathy, romantic attachment and other pro-social emotions and states of mind. Interestingly, oxytocin isn’t just important for humans. It also appears to affect
Sometimes the best way to prepare for the future is to get stuck in the past. Nostalgia is the quintessential bittersweet emotion, but as far as the science is concerned, the sweet seems to outweigh the bitter. Several studies have
There are a lot of statistics that can tell you how bad the 2008 financial crisis was. In the US, unemployment almost doubled. More than half the country saw their total wealth go down. The average person was working a
What makes employees loyal to their employer? Competitive salaries? Lavish benefits? OK, those things definitely don’t hurt. But some new research suggests that trust also plays an important role. The study, a collaboration between researchers from Peking University’s psychology department
When we hear someone talk, we don’t just listen to their words. We combine what they’re saying with their body language and any other information we have to put together a fuller picture of what’s being communicated. The same thing
