Some people always know which way is north and how to get out of a building. Others can live in an apartment for years without knowing which side faces the street. Differences among people that include spatial skills, experience, and preferred strat…
Upper-class people have more educational opportunities, greater financial security, and better job prospects than people from lower social classes, but that doesn’t mean they’re more skilled at everything. A new study published in Psychological Scie…
How you think about your goals — whether it’s to improve yourself or to do better than others — can affect whether you reach those goals. Different kinds of goals can also have distinct effects on your relationships with people around you, accordi…
Most people are familiar with the concept that sentences have syntax. A verb, a subject, and an object come together in predictable patterns. But actions have syntax, too; when we watch someone else do something, we assemble their actions to mean so…
Little kids believe the darnedest things. For example, that a fat man in a red suit flies through the air on a sleigh pulled by reindeer. A new study on three-year-olds, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychologi…
Does thinking about time or money make you happier? A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people who are made to think about time plan to spend more of their time with the …
One in seven patients experience more pain, physical and emotional problems a year after surgery than before their operation and a quarter have less vitality. Those are the key findings of a research study of more than 400 patients published online …
Oxytocin (OT) is a hormone that plays an important role in social behavior — it has even been nicknamed “the love hormone” and “liquid trust.” Increased levels of OT have been associated with greater caring, generosity, and trust. But does OT incre…
New research findings on the ability of a fetus to recognize its mother’s voice and even distinguish it from other female voices confirms what scientists have speculated about for more than 20 years – that experiences in the womb help shape newborn preferences and behaviour. Dr. Barbara Kisilevsky, a Queen’s University professor of nursing along with a team of psychologists at Queen’s and obstetricians in Hangzhou, China, found that fetuses are capable of learning in the womb and can remember and recognize their mother’s voice before they are even born.