A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
Parents are a useful resource for teenagers to learn about sex and sexual health. Of course, that doesn’t mean teens are going to go out of their way to engage their parents in discussions about sex. A new study from
We all like a fairytale love story, but psychologists are just as interested in stories about marriages that fall apart. That much is clear from a study I wrote about last year, in which researchers surveyed a couple thousand residents
Children have a lot to learn, and one of the ways they meet that formidable challenge is by imitating others. They’ll imitate the good things see. They’ll imitate the bad things they see. As I’ve written about before, they’ll even
“Phubbing” is an invented word for a phenomenon we all know to be quite real: the act of snubbing someone by burying your face in a smartphone. Psychologists have previously tied phubbing to worse mental health and less social connectedness.
For centuries, parents have been trying to cajole their children into eating broccoli. Now scientists are here to help. Techniques for convincing children to up their fruit and vegetable consumption are sometimes called “nudges.” Researchers have been investigating these techniques
Sometimes it’s temping just to tell children whatever they want to hear. Even for parents who preach the value of honesty, a little lie here or there can seem acceptable if it gets the desired behavior from children. According to
When you were a kid, maybe you read The Little Engine That Could, a story about a modest train locomotive whose persistence pays off. One possible reason for this story’s popularity is that many parents see persistence as a core
How can parents help shy toddlers become more at ease in social situations? A new study suggests that a combination of warmth and gentle prompting to engage socially might be the answer. The study involved 55 toddlers between 21 and
Conversations with adults are a key way that children build cognitive skills. And if you’re looking for something to talk about with the young children in your life, new research suggests a topic of conversation that seems to be especially
When it comes to the basic psychological needs of adolescence, we often talk about things like becoming more independent and developing a sense of identity. A new paper argues that teenagers have another fundamental psychological need we don’t talk about
