Posts by Neil Petersen
Countries With More History of Migration Express Emotions Differently
The United States is a country of immigrants. Throughout its history, it has been a society that gathers people from a diverse range of cultures. So what does that mean for the country’s culture today? For one thing, it apparently means that people in the United States smile more, laugh more, and generally exaggerate expressions…
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3 Reasons People Procrastinate at Bedtime
It’s possible to procrastinate on almost anything, and that includes going to sleep. You feel the urge to fit just one more activity in before you call it a night, and before you know it your bedtime is far behind you. To learn more about why people end up going to bed later than they…
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Ability to Feel Awe May Drive Scientific Thinking
Thinking scientifically involves putting forward logical explanations and dispassionately considering the evidence. But underlying scientific inquiry might be a more profound emotion: awe. Evidence for this idea comes from a study published this month in the journal Cognitive Science. The study, by researchers at University of California, Berkeley, found that a more scientific way of…
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Being Especially Scrupulous Could Raise Risk for Hoarding
Ever bought something and then never gotten around to using it? Most of us don’t like that feeling. We naturally don’t want to see things go to waste. For some of us, though, the feeling is stronger than others. So a team of researchers came up with a questionnaire for measuring material scrupulosity, which they…
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Brain Connectivity Is Different in People Who Are Happy With Their Lives
Does the brain of someone who’s satisfied with the way their life is going look obviously different than the brain of someone who’s not? Possibly so. A new study by researchers in China has found different patterns of brain connectivity that relate to people’s subjective well-being, which measures the way they feel about their lives.…
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The Personality of a Team Player
If you’re looking for someone who is good at teamwork, your ideal candidate is probably extraverted, agreeable and conscientious – but not too extraverted, agreeable or conscientious, according to a new study. The study was, fittingly, a collaboration between researchers in Romania, the Netherlands and Singapore. In it, the researchers examined the personality traits associated…
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5 Traits of Highly Resilient People
Intuitively, we all understand the idea of resilience. We have dozens of one-liners we can draw on to summarize what it means to be resilient in trite terms: It’s not about how many times you get knocked down but how many times you get back up. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.…
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Making Workplaces Less Sedentary
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a study where people were asked to stand up during work meetings. The results of the study suggested that one factor contributing to the unhealthy amount of time people often spend sitting at work is the social expectation that everyone should sit in certain situations, like meetings. So…
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Why Caring Too Much About Power Leads to Unhappiness
Some things in life, like building genuine connections with other people or having a job you love, can lead to an ongoing sense of happiness. Other things, like chasing power and money, can make you feel good in the short-term but have more complicated long-term psychological consequences. This idea is common in the folk wisdom…
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Tracking People’s Fear of Death Over Time
How do people’s experiences in life shape their expectations surrounding death? One way of shedding light on that question is by following how people’s fear of death changes over time. Some researchers have hypothesized that people become gradually more fearless about death as they get older. This idea makes a certain intuitive sense: as we…
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