Posts by Neil Petersen
Your Personality Might Have Implications for Your Cat’s Wellbeing
It’s well-known that parents’ personality characteristics can influence their children. But a new study suggests that the same might also be true of cat parents. In the study, researchers in the United Kingdom surveyed 3,331 cat owners. They asked the cat owners both about their own personality traits and about the health, wellbeing and behaviors…
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Subtle Linguistic Cues Can Discourage Young Girls From an Interest in Science
The language we use to talk about gender makes a difference. Last year, for example, I wrote about a study showing that previously being exposed to gender-neutral language affects how likely people are to assume that a “specialist” is male. But a new study suggests that even seemingly innocuous language that doesn’t directly reference gender…
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Talking About Their Future Selves Improves Preschoolers’ Cognitive Skills
Conversations with adults are a key way that children build cognitive skills. And if you’re looking for something to talk about with the young children in your life, new research suggests a topic of conversation that seems to be especially helpful in developing cognitive skills: the future. In a recently published study, researchers from Harvard…
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How Our Ability to Recognize Emotions Changes With Age
Being able to make an accurate guess at what the people around us are feeling is a skill that helps us get along with friends, family, partners and coworkers. Like other cognitive skills, it appears to be one that changes with age. To some degree, the ability to read other people’s emotions depends on experience.…
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Does Listening to Music Help With Cognitive Tasks? It Depends
If you’re like me, music is an indispensable part of your work routine. Then again, maybe you’re like some other people I know who need absolute silence in order to concentrate. It’s easy to see arguments both for and against listening to music while doing cognitive tasks. On one hand, some background music can stave…
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Physical Punishment, Childhood Maltreatment Linked to Antisocial Behaviors in Adulthood
Problematic behaviors in adulthood often have roots in childhood, and a new study of over 36,000 adults in the United States adds more evidence for that idea. In the study, researchers from University of Manitoba looked at whether the type of childhood someone has can predict how likely they are as adults to have symptoms…
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Are People Born With a Left-to-Right Number Line?
If I ask you where you’d put the number 4 in relation to the number 12, chances are you’d put 4 to the left and 12 to the right. Most adults have some form of a mental number line that starts with smaller numbers on the left and progresses to bigger numbers on the right.…
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Can You Measure Creativity Using Word Association?
One of the biggest obstacles to understanding creativity is figuring out how to define creativity in the first place. If I point to a random person on the street, is there a test that will tell me how creative that person is? Psychologists have proposed different ways of measuring creativity, for example by asking people…
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When Something Bad Happens, Tell a Joke?
If you use humor as a coping mechanism, you aren’t alone. And even if you are alone, you probably think it’s funny. A new study from researchers in Poland highlights humor’s power to help people shrug off stressful and unpleasant events. In the study, researchers asked 54 participants with remitted depression to view images that…
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Four Types of Bad Driving
All good drivers are alike, but every bad driver drives badly in their own way, to paraphrase Tolstoy. Now, a pair of psychologists from Louisiana State University have come up with a questionnaire for measuring the different ways people drive badly. In their research, the psychologists identified four main types of bad driving that occur…
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