General Psychology

What do we worry about when we worry? More often than not, the future. Ruminating about what tomorrow holds is a familiar activity for people with anxiety. A logical question, then, is whether teaching people techniques for taking a step back from worries about the future can help with anxiety disorders. And that’s exactly the…

With prolonged sitting being blamed as a culprit in heart disease and early death, medical professionals are increasingly pointing to standing at work as a practical step that people can take to improve their health. But what happens when an individual decides they’re going to stand in a work environment where sitting is the norm?…

How are you feeling right now? And how do you wish you were feeling? Not everyone gives the same answer to that second question. Different people value different emotional states. Some people seek out high-arousal emotional states like excitement and enthusiasm while others strive for low-arousal states like calmness, relaxation and peacefulness. Psychologists call the…

Do you feel younger than your age? If so, you might be right. Like other parts of the body, the brain ages. Certain regions shrink with time. And as with other types of aging, the speed of this process varies from one individual to the next. Hence the idea that a given person can have…

Remember nap time in kindergarten? I hated it. I didn’t see the point of lying down and doing nothing. Nap time in high school on the other hand? I would have been down for that. As it turns out, a lot of teens could probably benefit from some midday shuteye. A variety of studies show…

Money can’t buy happiness, but not having enough money can sure get in the way of it. Which raises the possibility: maybe you can improve people’s mental health simply by handing them some cash. In a recent study, researchers in Italy, the United States and Zambia put that idea to the test. They did so…

The outward changes that come with age are the most obvious. What’s happening in people’s minds is more of a black box. There’s no direct information we have on the content of people’s thoughts without actually asking. So a group of researchers in Canada and the United States decided to do just that: ask people…

How important was your home state in the course of United States history? Probably not as important as you think it was. A new study published in Psychological Science suggests that Americans have an inflated sense of the role their home states played in American history. The researchers arrived at this conclusion by asking 2,898…

Is living next to a park a recipe for happiness? Intuitively, it makes sense that easier access to nature could improve mental health. To some extent, the scientific findings are in line with the idea that being near green space (nature) and blue space (water) can mean a boost in mental health. But the debate…

“Money never sleeps,” says Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street. Technically correct. But there’s a related point he never mentions: never sleeping costs money. This idea seems to go against the ideal of working more and sleeping less that’s prevalent in our productivity-obsessed culture. Fortune 500 CEOs and high-profile politicians brag about how little…