Posts by Neil Petersen

It’s hard to overstate how much difference the right teacher can make in students’ confidence and engagement. Many people know this to be true from anecdotal experience, and now there’s a study out to back this idea up with some hard evidence. In the study, researchers from Harvard Graduate School of Education and Brown University…

Intuitively, it might seem like sticking to a regular exercise routine is nothing more than a battle of willpower. This would suggest that people who are somewhat lacking in the self-control department are doomed to forever be out of shape. A recent study, however, suggests that while high levels of self-control help with keeping up…

Why do people snack between meals? Because they’re hungry, maybe. But you know psychologists are going to dig a little deeper than that. Several studies have revealed a range of psychological factors in why people snack, what they snack on, and how much they snack. Most recently, a study published in Psychology & Health examined…

If you’ve ever wondered what exactly people are looking to accomplish by flaunting their wealth with fancy cars and expensive clothes, you’re not alone. In fact, several psychology researchers have asked this same question – and come up with at least a few answers. Most recently, an international group of researchers published a study looking…

If you want to have good relationships with other people, it helps to have a good relationship with yourself first. That might sound a little corny, but I’ve got some science to back it up. Recently, researchers from City University of New York and University of California, Berkeley published a study looking at how people’s…

Rumination, repetitively playing over negative thoughts, has been consistently associated with mental health problems. Among children, for example, rumination on anger-provoking situations has been linked to both aggression and depression. Rumination has also been proposed as a path from being bullied to becoming depressed – children who are victims of bullying tend to ruminate on…

It might be overstating the case to say that you are what you eat. But what you eat could reveal subtle statistical differences about you. At least, that’s what a new study, Examining the “Veggie” Personality, from researchers in Germany suggests. Published in the journal Appetite (yum!), the research looked at differences between vegetarians and…

Anxiety runs in families, partly because it has a genetic component. But genetics aren’t the whole story. Without realizing it, anxious parents can transmit anxiety to their children by modeling anxious behaviors and teaching their children to be fearful of the world around them. Recently, a team of child psychologists from the Netherlands published a…

Next time you see a watch advertisement, check out what time the watch reads. Chances are it’ll be 10:10. So is there something special about 10:10? Why do people selling watches always choose to set watches to this time before showcasing them? That’s what a group of researchers recently asked in a study published under…