Posts by Neil Petersen

The outward changes that come with age are the most obvious. What’s happening in people’s minds is more of a black box. There’s no direct information we have on the content of people’s thoughts without actually asking. So a group of researchers in Canada and the United States decided to do just that: ask people…

How important was your home state in the course of United States history? Probably not as important as you think it was. A new study published in Psychological Science suggests that Americans have an inflated sense of the role their home states played in American history. The researchers arrived at this conclusion by asking 2,898…

Is living next to a park a recipe for happiness? Intuitively, it makes sense that easier access to nature could improve mental health. To some extent, the scientific findings are in line with the idea that being near green space (nature) and blue space (water) can mean a boost in mental health. But the debate…

“Money never sleeps,” says Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street. Technically correct. But there’s a related point he never mentions: never sleeping costs money. This idea seems to go against the ideal of working more and sleeping less that’s prevalent in our productivity-obsessed culture. Fortune 500 CEOs and high-profile politicians brag about how little…

If you’re like most people, chances are you’d rather have a partner who listens to what you have to say. Listening is an important ingredient to healthy relationships, and a new study highlights at least one reason why this may be the case. The study, by researchers in Switzerland, the United States and Germany, was…

You’ve probably been warned not to venture into the comments section on YouTube. But a group of researchers in the United States and Canada threw caution into the wind for the sake of science, looking at a total of 774,939 comments posted on the TEDx and TED-Ed YouTube channels. In their study, the researchers used…

Different people respond to stressful situations in different ways. To some extent, the coping strategies people use in dealing with negative events predict how those events will impact their mental health. Psychologists have found that certain coping strategies seem to work better than others. An example of a coping strategy that doesn’t appear to work…

Perhaps you’ve experienced a jolt of discomfort after realizing you’ve left home without your smartphone. How will I find where I’m going without Google Maps? What if someone needs to get in touch with me? For some, that unpleasant feeling can spiral into sheer panic. Psychologists refer to an extreme fear of being deprived of…

If you’re looking for a scientifically tested, step-by-step formula for becoming happier, this is probably as close as you’re going to get. That makes me sound like I’m hawking copies of a self-help book. But I’m actually just talking about a recent paper by researchers at University of Oxford, published in the Journal of Social…