A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
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
As I’ve written about before, people give gifts for a range of reasons – sometimes simply to do something nice, sometimes because they want to influence others. A new study from researchers in Italy sheds light on another function gifts
Teaching is a stressful job. From managing a classroom, to taking work home at night, to trying to adequately explain new concepts and keep pace with a curriculum at the same time, teachers have a lot of demands to juggle.
If your parents told you to always say your thank yous when you were growing up, chances are they understood on some intuitive level that these two simple words carry a lot of power. Now there’s some science to back
Many psychologists believe that gratitude is an especially powerful emotion. People who are more grateful tend to be happier, with higher emotional intelligence. They may also be more ethical, according to a new study. In a paper titled The Grateful
Psychologists increasingly believe gratitude to be a powerful emotion that can boost happiness and wellbeing. Gratitude is interesting not only because of its links to happiness but because it’s something we intentionally cultivate in our lives. One way of doing
“Thanks! I owe you!” Maybe you’ve said that when someone has done a favor for you. Feeling thankful and feeling like you owe someone are related to each other, but it turns out these two emotions aren’t quite the same.
People aren’t always good at predicting the impact their actions will have on themselves and others. I wrote about one example earlier this week, where introverts tended to be overly pessimistic about how much they’d enjoy social interactions. Another example
If you’re feeling thankful this Thanksgiving, you should be thankful that you’re feeling thankful. Being able to count your blessings is itself a blessing. That’s because psychology research has shown repeatedly that gratitude is associated with a range of good
Having trouble getting into the Thanksgiving spirit? No problem, science has some good excuses for why you aren’t feeling very grateful. One of them comes from research published this month in the journal Cognition & Emotion. It turns out that
