Behavioral Psychology
When Teachers Procrastinate
Students aren’t the only ones who put off doing schoolwork. Every exam that a student procrastinates on studying for is also an exam that a teacher can procrastinate on grading. A recent study dived into the topic of teacher procrastination by interviewing 27 teachers in Germany. Of those, 16 teachers said they had a problem…
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Rats From Enriched Environments Make Better Drivers
Have you ever wondered if it would be possible to teach a rat to drive? Well, maybe not, but this is the kind of thing psychology researchers think about. In a new study, researchers at University of Richmond let rats take to the road in special “rat-operated vehicles.” As part of the experiment, the rats…
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Choice of Plate Can Help Children Eat Their Vegetables
For centuries, parents have been trying to cajole their children into eating broccoli. Now scientists are here to help. Techniques for convincing children to up their fruit and vegetable consumption are sometimes called “nudges.” Researchers have been investigating these techniques in recent years and found that, in general, nudges do have the ability to influence…
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What Socializing and Drinking Today Mean for Mood Tomorrow
Socializing and consuming alcohol are two activities that often go together. Both also have the potential to alter your mood – so it can be hard to untangle whether you’re feeling the effects of one or the other! For psychology researchers, this complicates the question of studying how socializing and drinking change people’s moods. Things…
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What Are the Effects of Distracted Walking?
I’ve written on here before about the psychology of driving and the psychology of biking. So it seems only fair that I dedicate a post to one of the most common forms of urban transportation: walking! Walking may not require a license, but it can take just as much vigilance as driving a car. There…
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The Importance of Disconnecting from Work
You might think that an ideal worker is one who’s always thinking about their job, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, taking your work home with you at night, whether literally or inside your head, might be a recipe for burnout. Along these lines, a new study suggests that people who…
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A 20-Minute Procedure Can Change People’s Everyday Risk Preferences
One of the interesting findings in recent psychology research is that relatively simple procedures can temporarily alter people’s brain activity and behaviors. A recent study demonstrated this in terms of people’s propensity for risky actions. The researchers who ran the study used a technique known as transcranial direct-current stimulation, or more conveniently tDCS. This involves…
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Where Do Pointing Gestures Come From?
Pointing is a basic type of human communication. Before they start talking, babies start pointing. A pointing gesture can mean different things, such as “look at that?” or “what is that?” or “I want that!” There’s something fundamental about these uses of pointing. Even apes use pointing for multiple functions such as drawing someone’s attention…
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Why You Shouldn’t Drink and Click
Alcohol is something that doesn’t go with certain activities. Driving is the most obvious example. And it turns out that browsing the internet may be another one. A new paper titled Combined Use of Alcohol and the Internet: Associated Features suggests that people who drink while using the internet are setting themselves up for regrets.…
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Are Video Games Linked to Aggression? Researchers Can’t Agree
Whether violent video games go hand-in-hand with violence in real life seems like exactly the kind of question we should send over to the psychology researchers. And psychology researchers do have an answer. Actually, they have several different answers that contradict each other. First, I’ll give you the results of the most recent study published…
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