A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
Part of what defines a friendship is what that friendship is founded on. For people to be friends, something has to connect them, but the nature of that connection is different from one friendship to the next. In many cases,
If you feel like social distancing is keeping you awake at night, you could be right. A new survey of 1,310 adults in Italy during the country’s total lockdown points to a range of effects that lockdown might have for
Boredom is an emotion that can be as much about what you aren’t doing as what you are. We tend to think that the less we do, the more bored we get. But a new study published in the journal
We’re only in May, but it’s never too late to start thinking about your New Year’s resolutions, right? After all, 2020 probably can’t be over soon enough! For those contemplating a January self-improvement kick, a new study offers some food
With a constant stream of news about coronavirus, it’s easy to overlook the disconcerting news that continues to come out regularly about another global crisis: climate change. Most recently, a study was released suggesting that the number of extreme heat
The new way of life brought about by the current pandemic has many people rethinking their long-term plans, and that may include reevaluating their desire to have children. According to a new study in the Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and
In a general sense, life looks the same for all of us: stuff happens to us. We learn from that stuff, sometimes. We get older. Ideally, we have a sense that there’s some progression to our lives. Learning from our
If there’s an upside to adversity, it might be greater empathy for others. That idea makes a certain intuitive sense to us, and there’s some evidence to support it. Take, for example, a 2016 study published in the journal Emotion.
Virtual reality technology has created a possibility for entirely new types of therapy. An interesting angle psychology researchers have been exploring for the past several years is how people’s experiences in virtual reality can change their attitudes and behaviors in
Social media has facilitated both new ways of connecting with others and new ways of tallying how our lives stack up against theirs. In the twenty-first century, keeping up with the Joneses has become keeping up with the hundreds of
