Clinical Psychology
Social Anxiety May Disrupt Conversational Synchrony
Although people with high levels of social anxiety don’t necessarily leave as bad an impression as they think, there is some evidence that those without social anxiety receive more favorable assessments overall when meeting new people. As the authors of a recent study point out, this is the irony of social anxiety: being afraid of…
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Are Today’s Teenagers the Most Bored Ever?
Today’s teenagers have an abundance of digital diversions and instant gratifications at their disposal. Yet for this richness of entertainment options, adolescents in recent years might be more bored than their historical predecessors, at least according to a newly published study. The study surveyed over 100,000 eighth-, tenth- and twelfth-graders between the years 2008 and…
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Stress Beliefs Might Matter for Stress Response
People seem to have real differences in how we react to the stressful situations we inevitably encounter in everyday life. Given that stress is intertwined with mental and physical health, figuring out what interventions might help people respond to stress more constructively is a key topic for psychology researchers. A new study in Annals of…
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How 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…
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Self-Compassion, Self-Coldness and Seeking Help
There’s a good chance you’ve heard about self-compassion, which has been increasingly seen as important by psychologists in recent years. Even if you haven’t, you probably have some intuitive understanding of what it is and why it might be important for mental health. A related idea that’s less talked about is self-coldness. Where self-compassion is…
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4 Pressing Mental Health Needs College Students Have
College students are really stressed out. If you’re a college student, you already know that. If you’re not a college student, just take a look at a study I wrote about a couple years ago in which three-quarters of students surveyed had symptoms of psychological distress and over half had low self-esteem. Clearly, there’s a…
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Peer Coaching and Supported Education
When students with psychiatric or substance use disorders arrive at college, they face additional obstacles that other students don’t. Supported education programs are an increasingly popular way to give these students tools that will help them manage these challenges and get the most out of higher education. As the name suggests, supported education involves supporting…
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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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Testing Three Emotional Regulation Techniques
How do we manage difficult emotions and direct them in a positive direction? Psychologists have identified different strategies people use for emotional regulation, some of which seem to work better than others. Three of the strategies commonly mentioned are: Reappraisal: reframing a negative situation in a more positive way Acceptance: engaging with negative emotions and…
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When Therapy Helps With Social Anxiety
A type of therapy that is often recommended for social anxiety disorder is cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. In this type of therapy, people learn to challenge unhelpful thought patterns, create new behaviors, and respond to their emotions in more productive ways. As with any treatment, there is a range in how much CBT improves…
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