A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
There’s no formula for happiness, but something that apparently helps is not being too judgmental toward your own thoughts and feelings. A recent study from researchers in Spain highlights the role that this kind of acceptance plays in overall happiness.
Decades of psychology researchers has converged on the conclusion that the key to happiness is … owning a gun? Not quite. But as the authors of a new study on happiness and gun ownership point out, there has been plenty
Who wouldn’t want a faster internet connection? Kids who want to feel good about their lives, maybe. A new analysis of data from 6,300 children carried about by researchers at University of Sheffield has come up with the finding that
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.
It seems obvious that having fulfilling social interactions with other people makes a difference in how happy we are. Less obvious is what makes for fulfilling social interactions, and how that varies from one person to the next. When psychologists
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
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
Sometimes in life, being happy means looking at the big picture and not getting stuck on the details. Recently, a team of researchers tested that idea in a very literal way. Psychologists talk about global processing and local processing in
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
It’s easy enough to say that the key to happiness is being able to focus on the good things in life. But how to actually do that? There may not be a simple answer, but researchers from Harvard Medical School
