General Psychology

Psychologists are experimenting with an admittedly rather materialistic approach to treating phobias: bribing people to confront their fears. In a recently published study, researchers in Germany investigated whether monetary incentives could overwrite avoidant behaviors rooted in fear. The researchers recruited a group of 84 people with either high or low fear of spiders. The participants…

Maybe you’ve heard this one: there’s a runaway trolley car headed toward a fork in the tracks. Standing on one set of tracks, oblivious to the trolley car careening out of control, is a group of five people. On the other set of tracks, also oblivious, is a single person. If you stand by and…

There are many different reasons someone might choose to retire or not retire at a particular point in their life. Which means that there are also many different ways the decision to retire can affect someone’s mental health. Still, psychologists have looked to see if there are any broad patterns in what retirement means for…

Some people seem to be unfailingly upbeat, no matter what life throws their way. Ever wonder what the outlook on life is that all these people have in common? One answer that’s been proposed is what psychologists call the positive cognitive triad. These are three traits that, together, make for a more positive approach to…

Do you have a good awareness of what defines your personality and the personalities of others? Are you able to predict how different people will react in a given situation based on their personality? If so, you might score high on what psychologists call personal intelligence. You might be thinking that personal intelligence sounds similar…

If I asked you to paint a picture that captured the emotion of happiness, dark blue probably isn’t the first color of paint you would reach for. In fact, I’d guess that more likely than not, your painting would be heavy on bright colors like yellow and orange. Instinctively, certain colors tend to conjure up…

Over the course of their teenage and young adult years, people tend to face all kinds of challenging and stressful situations. How teens and young adults cope with the problems and new experiences they encounter may be key to their mental health. The idea that there might be a link between the coping strategies people…

Bad experiences at work don’t always stay in the workplace. They can follow you home when the workday is done. Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that a new study suggests the key to resilience in the face of workplace negativity could be how you spend your free time. The study, which was a collaboration between…

You might expect that more attractive people would have an edge in life. And in general, you’d probably be right: an analysis by researchers at the London School of Economics has found, for example, that attractive people tend to earn more than unattractive people. But there’s a pretty significant catch. The same analysis identified another…

Where does your body end and the external world begin? Your brain is calibrated to always be thinking about that question. If it wasn’t, you would be constantly bumping into things, and navigating the physical world would be difficult. But different people draw the borders around their bodies in slightly different places. Just like people…