Psychology News

• Saturday, May 25, 2013

  Pay attention: How we focus and concentrate

  Scientists at Newcastle University have shed new light on how the brain tunes in to relevant information. Publishing in Neuron, the team reveal the interplay of brain chemicals which help us pay attention in work funded by the Wellcome Trust and BBSRC. Read more

• Saturday, May 25, 2013

  Girls Who Are Sexually Abused More Likely to Start Using Substances before Age 10

  Many studies have confirmed the link between childhood sexual abuse and substance-related problems in adulthood. But a new investigation finds that being raped or molested at a young age also makes young girls far more likely to start drinking or doing drugs during their preteen years. Read more

• Saturday, May 25, 2013

  New Study looks at people who hears voices but have normal Cognitive functions

  Researchers from the Bergen fMRI Group at the University of Bergen (UiB) are working on how to help schizophrenics, who hear voices. The way they do this is by studying people who also hear voices, but who do not suffer from a mental illness. For a five-year period, the group is studying the brain processes causing people to hear voices. A recent report published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience shows some of the group’s startling results. – We have found that the primary auditory cortex of healthy people who hear voices, responds less to outside stimulus than the corresponding area of the brain in people ... Read more

• Friday, May 24, 2013

  Brain Can Be Trained in Compassion, Study Shows

  Until now, little was scientifically known about the human potential to cultivate compassion — the emotional state of caring for people who are suffering in a way that motivates altruistic behavior. A new study by researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate. The report, published ... Read more

• Friday, May 24, 2013

  The Incredible Dating Power of a Guitar Case

  In France there's a psychologist, Professor Nicolas Gueguen, who roams the North-West, asking young women for their telephone numbers—or at least his research assistants and experimental confederates do. This isn't just to boost the national stereotype, but all in the name of science. Read more

• Friday, May 24, 2013

  Study shows that insomnia may cause dysfunction in emotional brain circuitry

  A new study provides neurobiological evidence for dysfunction in the neural circuitry underlying emotion regulation in people with insomnia, which may have implications for the risk relationship between insomnia and depression. “Insomnia has been consistently identified as a risk factor for depression,” said lead author Peter Franzen, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of ... Read more

• Thursday, May 23, 2013

  Aggressive behaviour linked specifically to secondhand smoke exposure in childhood

  Children who are exposed to secondhand smoke in early childhood are more likely to grow up to physically aggressive and antisocial, regardless of whether they were exposed during pregnancy or their parents have a history of being antisocial, according to Linda Pagani and Caroline Fitzpatrick of the University of Montreal and its affiliated CHU Sainte-Justine hospital. No study ... Read more

• Thursday, May 23, 2013

  You are less beautiful than you think

  In April 15, 2013, Dove launched a 3-minute video entitled “Dove Real Beauty Sketches.” The video achieved instant popularity and has been watched millions of times — a successful viral campaign which has been widely talked about. In the video, a small group of women are asked to describe their faces to a person whom they cannot see. The person is a forensic artist who is there to draw pictures of the women based on their verbal descriptions. A curtain separates the ... Read more

• Thursday, May 23, 2013

  New Study offers insight into how to best manage workaholics

  Workaholics tend to live in extremes, with great job satisfaction and creativity on the one hand and high levels of frustration and exhaustion on the other hand. Now, a new Florida State University study offers managers practical ways to help these employees stay healthy and effective on the job. Wayne Hochwarter, the Jim Moran Professor of Business Administration in Florida State’s College of Business, and research ... Read more

• Wednesday, May 22, 2013

  Practice makes perfect? Not so much

  Turns out, that old “practice makes perfect” adage may be overblown. New research led by Michigan State University’s Zach Hambrick finds that a copious amount of practice is not enough to explain why people differ in level of skill in two widely studied activities, chess and music. In other words, it takes more than hard work to become an expert. Hambrick, writing in the research journal Intelligence, said natural talent and other factors likely play a role in ... Read more

• Wednesday, May 22, 2013

  Stand by me: Close friendships appear to counteract genetic vulnerability to depression in girls, but not boys

  Publication of US psychiatry's updated diagnostic code has provoked renewed debate in recent weeks over the extent to which mental illness ought to be framed as a psychosocial or a biological problem. The answer of course is that it is both. A new Canadian study captures this interplay, showing how close friendships appear to mitigate the risk for girls whose genes mean they are ... Read more

• Wednesday, May 22, 2013

  1 in 10 teens using ‘study drugs,’ but parents aren’t paying attention

  As high schoolers prepare for final exams, teens nationwide may be tempted to use a “study drug” — a prescription stimulant or amphetamine — to gain an academic edge. But a new University of Michigan poll shows only one in 100 parents of teens 13-17 years old believes that their teen has used a study drug. Read more

• Tuesday, May 21, 2013

  Retirement 'harmful to health', study says

  Retirement has a detrimental impact on mental and physical health, a new study has found. The study, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank, found that retirement results in a "drastic decline in health" in the medium and long term. The IEA said the study suggests people should work for longer for health as well as economic reasons. Read more

• Tuesday, May 21, 2013

  First Long-Term Study Reveals Link Between Childhood ADHD and Obesity

  A new study conducted by researchers at the Child Study Center at NYU Langone Medical Center found men diagnosed as children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were twice as likely to be obese in a 33-year follow-up study compared to men who were not diagnosed with the condition. The study appears in the May 20 online edition of Pediatrics. Read more

• Tuesday, May 21, 2013

  Why Do Top Athletes Suddenly Develop “the Yips” - a Tendency to Choke under Pressure?

  A single short putt is necessary to win the tournament, but suddenly the golfer's hands cramp up, and the putt goes wide. According to several studies, as many as 48 percent of serious golfers have experienced such motor skill failures, known as the yips. It is most often used to describe golf-related errors, although the yips can strike athletes in any sport. Read more

• Monday, May 20, 2013

  Youth Who Have Their First Drink During Puberty Have Higher Levels of Later Drinking

  Research shows that the earlier the age at which youth take their first alcoholic drink, the greater the risk of developing alcohol problems. Thus, age at first drink (AFD) is generally considered a powerful predictor of progression to alcohol-related harm. A new study shows that individuals who have their first drink during puberty subsequently have higher drinking levels than ... Read more

• Monday, May 20, 2013

  Want to be happier and live longer? Protect green spaces

  A new study in Psychological Science reveals that the benefits of urban green space—and the more of it, the better—extend far beyond the purely ornamental. Increases in green space correspond to increases in happiness, decreases in depression, and a general bump to well-being and life satisfaction. While we may not be happier if we live in California, it seems like we certainly are if we live with access to extensive ... Read more

• Monday, May 20, 2013

  Thomas Insel: Toward a new understanding of mental illness

  Can we reduce deaths caused by depression and schizophrenia with early detection? Read more

• 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