Psychology News

  • Saturday, May 18, 2013

    Happiness is the best medicine

    We’ve all experienced downward spirals, in which dark emotions lead to destructive behavior that damages our health, strains our relationships, and leaves us feeling even worse than when we started. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an uplifting equivalent to that destructive chain of events? Read more

  • Saturday, May 18, 2013

    Which ear your listen to your phone on can determine which side of the brain you use predominantly

    If you’re a left-brain thinker, chances are you use your right hand to hold your cell phone up to your right ear, according to a newly published study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The study – to appear online in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery – shows a strong correlation between brain dominance and the ear used to listen to a cell phone. More than 70% of ... Read more

  • Saturday, May 18, 2013

    Understanding How Color Is Perceived in the Brain

    Scientists have examined the effects of language on categorical color perception — the idea that color perception is affected by how it is described in language — with behavioral research. Meanwhile, other scholars have looked into this phenomenon using neuroimaging techniques in an attempt to get a better look at the neural processes underlying these results. Read more

  • Friday, May 17, 2013

    Brain Stimulation may be a fast and painless way to better mental arithmetic

    In the future, if you want to improve your ability to manipulate numbers in your head, you might just plug yourself in. So say researchers who report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 16 on studies of a harmless form of brain stimulation applied to an area known to be important for math ability. "With just five days of cognitive training and noninvasive, painless brain stimulation, we were able to bring about ... Read more

  • Friday, May 17, 2013

    Mice, Men, and Fate

    Almost fifteen years ago, in a book called “Chance, Development, and Aging,” the gerontologists Caleb Finch and Thomas Kirkwood described a truly elegant study of biology: a batch of roundworms, all genetically identical, raised on identical diets of agar. Despite having identical genetics and near-identical environments, some worms lived far longer than others. The lesson? The classical equation of “life = nature + nurture” had left out chance. Read more

  • Friday, May 17, 2013

    Bach to the blues, our emotions match music to colors

    Whether we’re listening to Bach or the blues, our brains are wired to make music-color connections depending on how the melodies make us feel, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley. For instance, Mozart’s jaunty Flute Concerto No. 1 in G major is most often associated with bright yellow and orange, whereas his dour Requiem in D minor is more likely to be linked to dark, bluish gray. Read more

  • Thursday, May 16, 2013

    ‘Good Vibrations’! Brain Ultrasound Improves Mood

    Non-invasive brain stimulation techniques aimed at mental and neurological conditions include transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for depression, and transcranial direct current (electrical) stimulation (tDCS), shown to improve memory. Transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) has also shown promise. Ultrasound consists of mechanical vibrations, like sound, but with frequencies far greater than the upper limit of human ... Read more

  • Thursday, May 16, 2013

    How to Help Other People Change Their Habits

    Say I want my partner to stop cracking his knuckles or get my daughter to put down her mobile phone at meal times or start someone else exercising: how do I do that? It's not something I cover in the book, which focuses mainly on how habits work, how much of our everyday lives they influence and how to change your own personal habits. Read more

  • Thursday, May 16, 2013

    Advertising Product Results ? Put Product and Result Images Closer Together

    Consumers believe a product is more effective when images of the product and its desired outcome are placed closer together in advertisements, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. “Merely changing the spatial proximity between the image of a product and its desired effect in an advertisement influences judgment of product effectiveness. Consumers tend to judge the product to be more effective when ... Read more

  • Wednesday, May 15, 2013

    Relationship Troubles? Some Sad Music Might Help You Feel Better

    Consumers experiencing relationship problems are more likely to prefer aesthetic experiences that reflect their negative mood, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. “Emotional experiences of aesthetic products are important to our happiness and well-being. Music, movies, paintings, or novels that are compatible with our current mood and feelings, akin to an empathic friend, are more appreciated when ... Read more

  • Wednesday, May 15, 2013

    Male Testosterone Levels Increase When Victorious in Competition Against Rivals, but Not Friends

    Sporting events can bring a community together, such as when the Louisville Cardinals won the NCAA championship and University of Louisville campus was filled with camaraderie. They also can fuel bitter rivalries, such as the long-standing animosity between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs. A new University of Missouri study has found that testosterone levels during ... Read more

  • Wednesday, May 15, 2013

    Teaching the Brain to Calm Itself

    Estimates of combat-related Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in U.S. veterans since the Vietnam War ranges from approximately 2& to 17%. Additional studies of combat veterans of more recent wars places the range of Iraq War returnees who suffer from PTSD between 4% and 17%. Currently, there is no one form of treatment that has been found effective in combating this disorder, but can the brain somehow be encouraged to calm itself down? Read more

  • Tuesday, May 14, 2013

    Exercise for Depression – A Gold Standard Therapy

    Depression has become a common medical issue worldwide. Conventional treatments, generally, have not been effective in preventing recurrence of this condition. SSRIs can take months to provide a beneficial effect. Adverse side effects of antidepressant medications are a further concern, based on individual physical and mental health status. Additionally, in order to achieve remission, the most depressed patients require two ... Read more

  • Tuesday, May 14, 2013

    Brain study shows body clocks of depressed people are altered at cell level

    Every cell in our bodies runs on a 24-hour clock, tuned to the night-day, light-dark cycles that have ruled us since the dawn of humanity. The brain acts as timekeeper, keeping the cellular clock in sync with the outside world so that it can govern our appetites, sleep, moods and much more. But new research shows that the clock may be broken in the brains of people with depression -- even at the level of the gene activity ... Read more

  • Tuesday, May 14, 2013

    “All I Really Want to Do Is Sleep”

    A recent article in NYTimes [1] declared that the rising rate of suicides among our baby boomer generation now made suicides, by raw numbers alone, a bigger killer than motor vehicle accidents! Researchers quoted within the article pointed to complex reasons like the economic downturn over the past decade, the widespread availability of opioid drugs like oxycodone, and changes in marriage, social isolation and family roles. Then I scrolled down, as I always do, to peruse ... Read more

  • Monday, May 13, 2013

    How Positive Emotions Lead to Better Health

    New research suggests that meditation or any other mood-enhancing activity can serve as a nutrient for the human body. We’ve all experienced downward spirals, in which dark emotions lead to destructive behavior that damages our health, strains our relationships, and leaves us feeling even worse than when we started. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an uplifting equivalent to that destructive chain of events? Read more

  • Monday, May 13, 2013

    Study finds brain system for emotional self-control

    Different brain areas are activated when we choose for ourselves to suppress an emotion, compared to situations where we are instructed to inhibit an emotion, according a new study from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Ghent University. In this study, published in Brain Structure and Function, the researchers scanned the brains of healthy participants and found that key brain systems were activated when ... Read more

  • Monday, May 13, 2013

    Perform Better Under Stress Using Self-Affirmation

    In a burgeoning series of experiments which use self-affirmation exercise, participants are then asked to write a paragraph or two on why this characteristic or value is so important to them. Sometimes they also think about a specific time or story that is illustrative. Read more

  • Saturday, May 11, 2013

    Markets Erode Moral Values

    Many people express objections against child labor, exploitation of the workforce or meat production involving cruelty against animals. At the same time, however, people ignore their own moral standards when acting as market participants, searching for the cheapest electronics, fashion or food. Thus, markets reduce moral concerns. Prof. Dr. Armin Falk from the University of Bonn and Prof. Dr. Nora Szech from the University of Bamberg, both economists, have shown in an ... Read more

  • Saturday, May 11, 2013

    Power Up: The Performance Benefits of a Simple Mental Exercise

    "Have successful professionals always been successful? Take Francesca Gino. An Associate Professor at Harvard, she is considered by many to be a superstar. But things did not always look so bright for her: two years in a row she gave job talks at a number of top 10 schools and universities, but got no offers from those schools. Yet, in 2009, everything suddenly turned up roses; she got offers from Harvard, Wharton, Berkeley, ... Read more

  • Saturday, May 11, 2013

    After the breakup in a digital world: Purging social media memories

    The era is long gone when a romantic breakup meant ripped-up photos and burned love letters. Today, digital photos and emails can be quickly deleted but the proliferation of social media has made forgetting a bigger chore. What about the ubiquitous digital records of a once beloved that lurk on Facebook, tumblr, and flicker? Read more

  • Friday, May 10, 2013

    Study uncovers the key to brand affinity and brand aversion for brands like Apple and Manchester United

    Why do brands such as Manchester United and Apple capture hearts and minds? When consumers feel a strong emotional attachment to a brand, there is seemingly nothing we would not do–from paying more for it to defending it against detractors. For all the millions of dollars spent on advertising and other efforts, however, consumers rarely feel an affinity for brands. So how do ... Read more

  • Friday, May 10, 2013

    Children aren't scared by nasty dentist visits, but by what they think of them

    The Greek Stoic Epictetus wrote that "Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them." A new study involving 185 children and teenagers, 88 fathers and 97 mothers shows how this same principle applies to children's fear of the dentist. This is an important topic because many children avoid the dentist out of fear, and around half of dentally anxious adults trace their fears to childhood. Read more

  • Friday, May 10, 2013

    Experience leads to the growth of new brain cells

    he adult brain continues to grow with the challenges that it faces; its changes are linked to the development of personality and behavior. But what is the link between individual experience and brain structure? Why do identical twins not resemble each other perfectly even when they grew up together? To shed light on these questions, the scientists observed forty genetically identical mice that were kept in an enclosure ... Read more

  • Thursday, May 9, 2013

    What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

    Most of us are on the Internet on a daily basis and whether we like it or not, the Internet is affecting us. It changes how we think, how we work, and it even changes our brains. The creators of this video interviewed Nicholas Carr, the author of, "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains," about how the Internet is influencing us, our creativity, our thought processes, our ideas, and how we think. Read more

  • Thursday, May 9, 2013

    Why parents should leave their kids alone

    Many parents' reasons for using controlled crying can be summed up in one word: work. Parents who want "routines" are keen on controlled crying, says Gina Ford, a famous British advocate of the system, and she comments that babies who have been forced into a routine will later adapt easily to a school routine and, one presumes, be more malleable to a workforce system. Yet whenever I have spent time in indigenous communities, ... Read more

  • Thursday, May 9, 2013

    Early Math and Reading Ability Linked to Job and Income in Adulthood

    Math and reading ability at age 7 may be linked with socioeconomic status several decades later, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The childhood abilities predict socioeconomic status in adulthood over and above associations with intelligence, education, and socioeconomic status in childhood. In light of ongoing debates about the impact that ... Read more

  • Wednesday, May 8, 2013

    Study: Meditation Improves Memory, Attention

    Students who did about an hour of "mindfulness training" for eight days subsequently did better on the GRE as well as tests of working memory and mind-wandering. The Internet is probably destroying our attention spans and working memories, but companies still want employees who are able to "focus." Also, even though they are pretty minimally predictive of professional success, academic admissions departments still seem to ... Read more

  • Wednesday, May 8, 2013

    When Women Sell Themselves Short on Team Projects

    Working on a team is always a challenge, but a new study highlights a particular challenge to women: how much they credit themselves in a joint success. Women will devalue their contributions when working with men but not with other women, according to the new research. The study suggests yet another reason why women still tend to be under-represented at the highest echelons of many organizations. Read more

  • Wednesday, May 8, 2013

    Why your friends on Twitter are (probably) more interesting than you, and what to do about it

    Statistical logic means that your lover has probably had more sexual partners than you. Similarly, at the gym, most of the other users train more frequently than you. And your friends have more friends than you do - this last observation was labelled the "friendship paradox" by sociologist Scott Feld. It's a fact because popular people get counted in more people's tallies of how ... Read more


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    Recent Psychology Topics

    • May 14, 2013

      Swim Yourself Happy?

        It’s well known that exercise is an effective treatment for depression, but recent research has enabled psychiatrists to give guidance on precisely how much exercise is enough exercise to give the desired results when treating depression. So how are therapists using exercise in their treatment regimes, and should they be using it more? Are there psychological benefits to exercise as well as biochemical ones, and can exercise help with addiction?

      Categories: Happiness

    • May 13, 2013

      Visual Journals To Lower Stress And Heal The Mind

        The power of art to transform people’s lives is well known. Art has been used as a breakthrough technique to reach a patient’s deepest fears, and their most closely guarded emotions. By representing emotions wordlessly, a barrier is lowered, allowing patients to express things that they cannot bring themselves to say, either due to the pain it would evoke, or because of shame. Visual journals are the latest way for those undergoing addiction or psychiatric treatment to find a route through their pain, and here we look at the way these journals can be used to combat stress.

      Categories: Stress Management

    • May 2, 2013

      Living A Life ... Or NonLife?

      The first thing I noticed about Tom was his large frame and piercing eyes. He had come to call me on my mobile phone a few hours ago. And now, we were in a hotel, drinking coffee, and eventually past the pleasantries.He reached for the marrow of his purpose for meeting me. “I need help for managing my wife,” he said. “She cannot agree any longer that she remain my wife while I ...

      Categories: Addictions, Attachment Issues, Infidelity

    • May 1, 2013

      Solitude Therapy

      Each of us is alone. In our human existence, aloneness is an inevitable fact of life. We entered this world alone. We will exit this world alone.I've discovered in my life and in the life of others that how we embrace our aloneness determines whether it will be toxic or nourishing.Toxic aloneness is produced by internalized shame. Unprocessed "original pain." Old baggage, unfinished ...

      Categories: Adjusting to Change / Life Transitions, Adult psychological development

    • April 29, 2013

      Are you worth the money for therapy?

        There is this man who claims he has no money for therapy. He owns a car and condominium unit, smokes 3 packs of cigarettes a day, and dines out in expensive restaurants. If he sets aside funds even just by stopping smoking, he could afford to pay for his weekly personal therapy.Doctors always remind trauma victims that therapy costs. But not to be in therapy is way much, much more costly ...

      Categories: Happiness, Self-Care / Self Compassion

    • April 27, 2013

      Working Through Damaged Emotions

      Feelings are a crucial part of the inner life. When one is psychologically disturbed or traumatized, feelings become vulnerable. A person may lose touch of the reality of his feelings. He can be alienated from his feelings.Yet these feelings don't go away. They continue to appear or surface. Most commonly, damaged emotions take the form of emptiness, low self-esteem, shame, anger, confusion, ...

      Categories: Abuse / Abuse Survivor Issues, Emotional Abuse

    • April 23, 2013

      The Brain and Emotions

        I’m reminded of one of Dr. Sigmund Freud’s psychodynamic concepts, “ego defenses.” Ego defenses are inhibiting internal mechanisms that prevent us from “knowing” early emotional pain through rationalizing, analyzing, explaining away, minimizing, overgeneralization etc. Often, this early emotional pain is numbed out by the ego defenses. It’s acted ...

      Categories: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Intelligence

    • April 23, 2013

      How does Climate Change affect Obsessive Complusions?

      This new century has brought with it the topic of climate change as a constant in the news media. A controversial and complex topic, it involves discerning the potential contributions of solar radiation, continental drift, and greenhouse gas concentrations to the changing levels of vegetation, precipitation and sea ice. In this article we will discuss a group of volunteers who agreed to be ...

      Categories: Obsessions & Compulsions (OCD)

    • April 22, 2013

      What It Takes To Heal

      Healing can happen only in a climate of openness and truth.This is the tragedy of Mina. Mina was caught in adultery, one which traumatized her husband. Her need to deny or "stonewall" her wrongdoing prevented her personal, marital, and family healing. What's her primary wound? I believe it's not so much the affair as it is her insistence on her own innocence with the resulting ...

      Categories: Addictions, Attachment Issues, Couple Counseling

    • April 20, 2013

      Who Is A Psychotherapist?

      Who is a Psychotherapist? You may be unfamiliar with the term or who he or she is. In fact, lots have misconceptions about it. Two basic words: healer, helper. A psychotherapist is one who helps people heal and resolve their emotional, mental, behavioral, or relational problems that cause unhappiness or lack of freedom in life.  "Psycho" comes from the Greek root word ...

      Categories: Mental Health Professions

    • April 10, 2013

      Recovering from Trauma

      In Connecticut USA, a few months ago, about 20 children from an elementary school was massacred by a 20-year-old Adam who also killed his mother and himself.You know, I have a daughter - Angel - who is still in the elementary school. I've held her closer and tighter than before after knowing of this news. I began to think of important things I need to say to her while she's still young. ...

      Categories: Bereavement

    • April 7, 2013

      Laughter Therapy

      Do you know that an average toddler laughs about 200 times each day? And according to researchers of laughter, the toddler registers only 6 laughs a day by the time he reaches average adulthood. Tell me, where did the toddler lose 194 laughs?I have a theory. At least, for my self. I think I start losing them when I begun getting hard spankings at home. I think my laughs began to vanish when I ...

      Categories: Adult psychological development

    • April 4, 2013

      Helping you reconnect when your relationship is floundering

      With the stress of everyday life, it's not unusual for a couple to lose their emotional connection. Our relationship therapists cite a number of reasons why a couple loses connection and ends up hardy talking to each other. Whether it's a new baby, a stressful job, financial woes or difficult life events, ...

      Categories: Couple Counseling, Empathy, Marital Counseling, Men's Issues, Relationships & Marriage, Women's Issues

    • March 22, 2013

      Why it is hard to measure Emotional Intelligence?

      “The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control their emotions by the application of reason.” This quote by the 20th century writer Marya Mannes sums up has Western thought has subordinated emotion to intelligence since just after the time of Charles Darwin. Darwin touched on the importance of emotions when he argued that they play a role in the adaptation and thus ...

      Categories: Emotional Intelligence