Posts by Neil Petersen
Focus on Short-Term Benefits for Motivation to Exercise
Exercise might prolong your lifespan and cut your risk of dementia later in life, but focusing on these long-term benefits isn’t necessarily enough to motivate a regular exercise routine. In fact, recent research suggests that being more physically active goes hand-in-hand with emphasizing exercise’s short-term benefits. In a series of four experiments, researchers studied people’s…
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News Flash: The News Is Making You Less Happy
Breaking news, this just in! According to reports we’re getting, uh, it seems that the news might be messing with your mental health. And by reports, I mean a study just published in the British Journal of Psychology. The study, titled Is the News Making Us Unhappy? The Influence on Daily News Exposure on Emotional…
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Teens With Anxiety Disorders Tell Their Life Stories Differently
Our mental health is often tied up in how we see the relationship between the past, present and future. For that reason, how we tell our life stories can say something about our psychological state. A couple years ago, for example, I wrote about how people who draw more connections between different phases of their…
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Absolutist Language Can Predict Anxiety, Depression and Suicidal Ideation
The internet has given psychologists new opportunities to study subtle differences in the way people use language, and whether those differences can predict which people are most at risk for mental health conditions. Last year, for example, researchers found that the language in people’s Facebook posts could predict their depression risk. In that study, language…
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Can Implicit Bias Training Make College Admissions Fairer?
Last week, the ugly and absurd side of the United States’ college admissions process burst into public view. Charges were filed against 50 people from wealthy families across the countries, who were accused of paying hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to bribe their way into selective private schools. The world of elite…
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Perfectionism Has Been Rising Over Time
Millennials get accused of all sorts of things. Narcissism is a common one. That idea fell apart when scientists took a closer look at it. But here’s a charge that might stick: perfectionism. It turns out that levels of perfectionism have been rising over time. A recent meta-analysis aggregated data from studies in which over…
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Can a Game Fight Mental Health Stigma?
For the progress we’ve made in mental health awareness, there’s still plenty of stigma lingering around. Stigma can be overt, such as in believing that people with mental health conditions are dangerous or should be separated from society. It can also be more subtle, such as in being reluctant to interact with people who have…
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3 Quick Positive Thinking Exercises
It’s easy enough to say that the key to happiness is being able to focus on the good things in life. But how to actually do that? There may not be a simple answer, but researchers from Harvard Medical School have identified three quick exercises that will help. In different ways, these exercises seem to…
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The Psychology of Choosing a Seat
You walk into a crowded café. There are two empty seats. Which one do you choose? There are a surprising number of psychological considerations that can go into this choice. If you’re like me, you’re probably going to choose the seat that is the furthest from everyone else in the café. Call me antisocial, but…
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Optimism Predicts Healthy Aging
If you expect that the future holds good things, you might be right. It’s a common idea that optimism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and psychology research has tended to back up a link between positive expectations and positive outcomes. The latest example comes from a study by researchers at Harvard, looking at the role…
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