Adults
Envy Might Drive Some of Social Media’s Mental Health Effects
Social media has facilitated both new ways of connecting with others and new ways of tallying how our lives stack up against theirs. In the twenty-first century, keeping up with the Joneses has become keeping up with the hundreds of people on your Facebook feed. Several previous studies have suggested that comparing yourself with others…
Read More4 Factors That Link Stress to a Decline in Work Ability
Some amount of stress is often a part of work, but too much stress can start to interfere with people’s ability to get their work done. An important question is under what conditions stress begins to derail people’s work lives. Understanding that might help with knowing what strategies people can use to cope with stress…
Read MoreThe Tweets That Go With a Quarter-Life Crisis
From getting married to buying homes, millennials are accused of doing everything later. But that’s not true when it comes to having life crises. As the rise of the term “quarter-life” crisis suggests, having life crises is something millennials seem willing to do early and often. So what do you do when you want to…
Read MoreDrinking Alone Can Be a Warning Sign in Young People
One of the things about alcohol is that where and how you consume it matters a great deal. Having a beer with a friend? Generally a fun and healthy thing to do. Having a beer while driving? A horrible idea. Having a beer while surfing the internet? Better, but still probably not advisable. Who you…
Read MoreWhy Gun Owners Are Happier (Hint: It’s Probably Not the Guns)
Decades of psychology researchers has converged on the conclusion that the key to happiness is … owning a gun? Not quite. But as the authors of a new study on happiness and gun ownership point out, there has been plenty of speculation in that vein going back to when the Beatles released their song Happiness…
Read MoreTwo Ways to Use Social Media
In my last post, I talked about how children in neighborhoods with faster internet apparently evaluate their lives more negatively. That study is one of several that has explored a possible link between internet use and mental health risk. One thing to keep in mind when we talk about “internet use,” however, is that there…
Read MoreHow Narcissism Changes From Young Adulthood to Middle Age
Once a narcissist always a narcissist? That is, more or less, the question that researchers asked in a study that tracked people’s levels of narcissism from age 18 to 41. Although we sometimes talk about “narcissists” as if they’re a separate group of people, psychologists usually measure narcissism as a personality trait that everyone has…
Read MoreDo Children Beat Adults at the Game of Concentration?
If there’s a game that’s equally challenging for players of all ages, it would be Concentration. In case you’re not familiar, the game goes like this: lay all the cards in a deck face-down in a grid. Every turn, you get to flip over two cards. If they’re matching cards of the same color (e.g.,…
Read MorePhysical 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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