People suffering from complicated grief may have difficulty recalling specific events from their past or imagining specific events in the future, but not when those events involve the partner they lost, according to a new [...]
Author Archive | Association for Psychological Science
Diet, Parental Behavior, and Preschool Can Boost Children’s IQ
Supplementing children’s diets with fish oil, enrolling them in quality preschool, and engaging them in interactive reading all turn out to be effective ways to raise a young child’s intelligence, according to a new report [...]
Want to Ace That Interview? Make Sure Your Strongest Competition Is Interviewed On a Different Day
Whether an applicant receives a high or low score may have more to do with who else was interviewed that day than the overall strength of the applicant pool, according to new research published in Psychological [...]
Don’t read my lips! Body language trumps the face for conveying intense emotions
Be it triumph or crushing defeat, exhilaration or agony, body language more accurately conveys intense emotions, according to recent research that challenges the predominance of facial expressions as an indicator of how a person feels. [...]
Monkey See, Monkey Do: Visual Feedback Is Necessary for Imitating Facial Expressions
Studies of the chameleon effect confirm what salespeople, tricksters, and Lotharios have long known: Imitating another person’s postures and expressions is an important social lubricant. But how do we learn to imitate with any accuracy [...]
Optimal Circle of Friends Depends on Socioeconomic Conditions
Some people like to have a few close friends, while others prefer a wider social circle that is perhaps less deep. These preferences reflect people’s personalities and individual circumstances — but is one approach to [...]
Kicking fat? You may have withdrawals, depression
Even before obesity occurs, eating fatty and sugary foods causes chemical changes in the brain, meaning that going on a diet might feel similar to going through drug withdrawal, according to a study published today [...]
Feeling Disgust May Enhance Our Ability to Detect Impurities
Disgust – it’s an emotion we experience when we encounter things that are dirty, impure, or otherwise contaminated. From an evolutionary standpoint, experiencing the intense, visceral sense of revulsion that comes with disgust presumably helps [...]
Paradox of aging: The older we get, the better we feel?
Presently, there are about 40 million Americans over the age of 65, with the fastest-growing segment of the population over 80 years old. Traditionally, aging has been viewed as a period of progressive decline in [...]
Research Explores Markers of Depression From Childhood to Adulthood
Although several studies have followed the course of depression throughout the lifespan, the characteristics of depression at different developmental stages haven’t been clearly identified. New research published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the [...]
Worldwide happiness requires more personal income
For people living in both rich and poor countries, the average person’s happiness is based on a combination of individual wealth, possessions and optimism, according to an analysis of new worldwide survey findings published by [...]
Order of Psychiatric Diagnoses May Influence How Clinicians Identify Symptoms
The diagnostic system used by many mental health practitioners in the United States — known as theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — assumes that symptoms of two disorders that occur at the same time [...]
Teens in arts report depressive symptoms, study says
Teens who participate in after-school arts activities such as music, drama and painting are more likely to report feeling depressed or sad than students who are not involved in these programs, according to new research [...]
Embattled Childhoods May Be the Real Trauma for Soldiers With PTSD
New research on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in soldiers challenges popular assumptions about the origins and trajectory of PTSD, providing evidence that traumatic experiences in childhood – not combat – may predict which soldiers develop [...]
Wandering minds associated with aging cells
Scientific studies have suggested that a wandering mind indicates unhappiness, whereas a mind that is present in the moment indicates well-being. Now, a preliminary UCSF study suggests a possible link between mind wandering and aging, [...]
Exploring the Financial Costs of Sadness
Your emotions can certainly impact your decisions, but you might be surprised by the extent to which your emotions affect your pocketbook. New research from psychological scientist Jennifer Lerner of the Harvard Kennedy School of [...]
Early stress may sensitize girls’ brains for later anxiety
High levels of family stress in infancy are linked to differences in everyday brain function and anxiety in teenage girls, according to new results of a long-running population study by University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists. The [...]
When identity is tied to former employer, unemployed report higher well-being
Unemployed workers who continue to identify with their former employer report higher well-being even after being fired or laid off from the company, according to a study published Nov. 9 in the Journal of Managerial [...]
Self-Imagination Can Enhance Memory in Healthy and Memory-Impaired Individuals
There’s no question that our ability to remember informs our sense of self. Now research published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, provides new evidence that the relationship may [...]
Want to Influence Tax Policies? Choose Your Words Carefully
Income inequality has become a major topic of discussion over the last year and yet consensus on what (if anything) should be done about it seems elusive. New research published in Psychological Science, a journal [...]
Parenting and Temperament in Childhood Predict Later Political Ideology
Political mindsets are the product of an individual’s upbringing, life experiences, and environment. But are there specific experiences that lead a person to choose one political ideology over another? New research from psychological scientist R. [...]