Posts by Neil Petersen

It’s easy to think of eating healthy as a long game. Sure, it’s more work now, but it’ll pay off years down the road. But a new study published in PLoS One is suggesting that if you eat your broccoli and have an apple a day, you could see psychological benefits in less than two…

Want to sharpen your cognitive abilities? Maybe try taking up hip hop dance. According to a new study, gaining experience in hip hop dance may improve certain social and cognitive skills. The idea for the research came from previous work showing that developing expertise in a given area can sharpen the mind more generally. For…

It’s a common assumption that shy children are more likely to have mental health problems as adults, so a group of researchers from McMaster University decided to put that idea to the test. After all, scientists are in the business of questioning common assumptions. What the researchers found was that the picture is a little…

Who is most at risk for engaging in binge eating, or compulsive overeating? Two articles published in the January edition of the journal Eating Behaviors are shedding light on this question. The first, by researchers from Canada, homes in on the link between binge eating and perfectionism. Previous research has suggested a connection between the…

Are online friendships “real” friendships? It’s reasonable to suspect that online friendships would share some benefits of face-to-face friendships but not others, and several studies have put that idea to the test. One study published last year by researchers from UC San Diego, Northeastern University, Harvard University, Yale University and … Facebook suggests that online…

Last week I wrote about why you should consider leaving your work at work. This week brings us a study about times when you might want to think about leaving your work, period. In a systematic meta-review of previous studies looking at the relationship between work and mental health, researchers narrowed in on specific kinds…

Who doesn’t like a good medical drama? TV shows make the medical treatment process dramatic, exciting and uncertain – just what you want when you sit down to watch television. Not necessarily what you want if you’re actually a patient, though! A new study published in European Surgical Research has found that people become more…

From work emails popping up on your smartphone to events from your day replaying themselves in your head, there are dozens of little ways your job can follow you home. But research suggests that you might want to think twice about letting your work-related worries edge their way into your free time. Psychologists call the…

How much do you really know about swearing? Or if that question is too broad, here’s a more specific one: how many swear words can you name? This second question is one that psychologists sometimes ask study participants. Researchers call the number of taboo words someone can summon up one’s “swearing fluency,” and investigating people’s…

It’s no secret that your childhood experiences affect how you relate to the world as an adult. We’re still learning the specifics about how exactly the former shapes the latter, though. Recently, a team of Japanese researchers published a study looking at whether the way children bond with their parents influences how anxious they are…