Before reading a new article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I never thought of a backup plan as something that might be motivating in itself. Surely all the benefit of a backup plan accrues when the main plan goes wrong and there's something to fall back on? While coming ...
Date Posted: February 16, 2013
GOUsing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) for before-and-after analysis, a team of researchers including a UC Santa Barbara graduate student discovered positive changes in brain activity in children with autism who received a particular ...
Feb 16
Categories: Autism spectrum disorders, Pivotal Response Treatment
GOIt should probably tell us something that the most frequently asked question on Google last year was “What is love?” Clearly, most of us are clueless on the matter; otherwise we wouldn’t be turning to algorithms for an explanation.
Which ...
Feb 16
GOTraditional brainstorming is inefficient but the process can be tweaked to produce more high quality ideas. For many years brainstorming has been a very popular way for groups to generate new ideas, especially in business.
This is despite the ...
Feb 15
GOCuddling, kissing and holding hands are the kinds of behavior you might expect to see this time of year. So why do the days that follow Valentine's Day mark the largest spike on the calendar for breakups?
Affectionate behavior is not all that it ...
Feb 15
Categories: Relationships & Marriage
GO During Ms Yee Yung Jen’s job interview last year, for the position of service crew at a fast-food restaurant, the first thing that her potential employers questioned her on was her declaration in the application form that she had “depression” ...
Feb 15
GOResearch shows that married people have better mental and physical health than their unmarried peers and are less likely to develop chronic conditions than their widowed or divorced counterparts. A University of Missouri expert says that people who ...
Feb 14
Categories: Relationships & Marriage
GOOne of the great things about being a regular unspoiled kid is that you hardly have any money.
While all your basic needs as a human being are met—food, shelter and so forth—the actual income of the average child is paltry. And, in some ways, ...
Feb 14
GOWhen it comes to having a lasting and fulfilling relationship, common wisdom says that feeling close to your romantic partner is paramount. But a new study finds that it's not how close you feel that matters most, it's whether you are as close as ...
Feb 14
Categories: Codependency / Dependency, Relationships & Marriage
GOA five-year multi-institutional study discovers giving and being unselfish not only helps others, but can also protect the health and prolong the lives of the altruistic.
The finding is the first to discover that providers of compassion reap ...
Feb 14
GOLike a sudden forest fire with no traceable origin, depression often flares up for no apparent reason. Sometimes, though, one can identify a catalyst—the lightning bolt that delivered the spark. On its own no single misfortune can fully explain ...
Feb 13
GOWe’ve heard the clichés: “It was love at first sight,” “It’s inner beauty that truly matters,” and “Opposites attract.”
But what’s really at work in selecting a romantic or sexual partner?
University of Notre Dame Sociologist ...
Feb 13
Categories: Relationships & Marriage
GONoah Muthler took his first state standardized test in third grade at the Spring Cove Elementary School in Roaring Spring, Pa. It was a miserable experience, said his mother, Kathleen Muthler. He was a good student in a program for gifted children. ...
Feb 13
GOI'll admit it. A few of the techniques for persuasion I've covered here on PsyBlog have been a little outlandish and impractical.
Things like swearing, talking in the right ear and pouring coffee down someone's throat. The studies are interesting ...
Feb 9
GOA study exploring the impact of early parental death has revealed the long-term damage and suffering that can be experienced by individuals in adult life if appropriate levels of support are not provided at the time of bereavement. The new research, ...
Feb 9
Categories: Child Development
GOWhen he was 30 years old, Louis Victor Leborgne lost the ability to speak—or speak in any matter that made any sort of sense. Upon being admitted to Bicêtre, a suburban Paris hospital that specialized in mental illness, he could utter only a ...
Feb 9
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