A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
College students are really stressed out. If you’re a college student, you already know that. If you’re not a college student, just take a look at a study I wrote about a couple years ago in which three-quarters of students
Have you ever wondered if it would be possible to teach a rat to drive? Well, maybe not, but this is the kind of thing psychology researchers think about. In a new study, researchers at University of Richmond let rats
One of the counterintuitive ideas in psychology that has become popular lately is that our body language isn’t just an expression of our attitudes but can actually change those attitudes. A 2010 paper suggested, for example, that adopting more confident
Last week, I wrote about the health and mental health benefits of volunteering. Today brings us another study on the theme of helping others being a good way to help yourself. If all this talk about the benefits of helping
Being willing to share resources with each other is one of the things that keeps our society functioning. That’s why one of the lessons that we commonly teach children is how to share. Of course, to varying degrees, we all
Volunteering is an activity that seems to have as many benefits for the person doing it as for the people it’s intended to help. This seems to be true starting relatively early in life, with young adults who volunteer more
When students with psychiatric or substance use disorders arrive at college, they face additional obstacles that other students don’t. Supported education programs are an increasingly popular way to give these students tools that will help them manage these challenges and
Time is money, right? But in a literal sense, that’s not true. Time is time, and money is money. In fact, time might be more important than money, at least as far as happiness goes. A new study suggests that
When a person has more of something, there’s always the risk that they’ll decide the reason they have more is because they deserve more. That’s the most self-serving interpretation, but then again, people are pretty good at coming up with
Abstract art might seem random or lacking coherence at first glance, but psychologists are weighing in with evidence that there really is a method in the chaos. A new study suggests that people without any special artistic experience tend to
