General Psychology
Knocking Down Walls in Virtual Reality Can Boost Creativity
Creativity can be thought of as a process of breaking down walls between different ideas. Now, a team of researchers in China and the United States have taken that metaphor to entirely new levels by showing that breaking down walls in virtual reality can make people more creative in real life. In their experiment, the…
Read MoreClinton Voters Still Haven’t Recovered Psychologically
The outcome of the 2016 election was a shock for many. And apparently, some Clinton voters still haven’t gotten over that shock psychologically. If you don’t believe me, just check out a recent study published in the journal Emotion. In the study, the researchers tracked three groups of voters in the United States: Trump voters,…
Read MoreCraving as Part of Gaming Addiction
Can one person be addicted to video games the way another person might be addicted to a drug? Psychologists agree that it’s possible to be addicted to behaviors like gambling. There’s still some some debate, though, over whether gaming addiction is similar to other behavioral addictions or whether it’s some other kind of psychological phenomenon.…
Read MoreResponse to Everyday Stress Predicts Health a Decade Later
Whether you dwell on relatively minor, everyday stressful situations could foreshadow what the future holds when it comes to your physical health. That’s the eye-catching, and possibly somewhat stressful, finding from a study just published in the journal Psychological Science. In the study, researchers from University of California, Irvine and Pennsylvania State University asked 1,155…
Read MoreHow Body Odor Can Predict Your Politics
A team of researchers from Sweden and Italy have taken a new angle on understanding the rise of Donald Trump: body odor. Wait, what? There’s a logic here, although it’s not obvious at first whiff. As the researchers point out, how we react to smells has played an important role in how we choose who…
Read MoreHow Heritable Is Mental Illness?
You’ve probably already heard that genes play a role in mental illness. If you have a particular psychiatric condition, your children are also more likely to have that condition. But how much do genes matter? Are genes destiny when it comes to mental illness? Researchers talk about the “heritability” of different conditions, which is what…
Read MoreWhy Does a “Positive Orientation” Matter?
Have you noticed that some people seem to be unfailingly positive about everything that happens to them? If you’re like me, you can’t help but be a little jealous of these people. As you should be! Psychology research indicates that just generally being a positive person has several advantages. More on that in a minute.…
Read MoreSeeking Happiness Can Mean Losing Time
If you set out to find happiness, you might just end up losing time. Don’t take my word for it – ask the researchers who this month published a study titled Vanishing Time in the Pursuit of Happiness. It’s counterintuitive that actively seeking happiness might have negative effects, but it’s not an idea that’s completely…
Read MoreThe Brains of Chocolate Cravers
As you read this post, try not to think about how good a bar of milk chocolate would taste right now. Many people find that it’s quite easy to get visions of chocolate stuck in their head. In fact, the authors of a recent study in the journal Appetite suggest that chocolate is “the most…
Read MoreThe Science of Helicopter Parenting
Hover mothers, helicopter parents. Call them whatever you want: we’ve all seen examples of parents who closely monitor their children’s lives – sometimes even as their children stop being children and head off to college. Parenting is always a topic that’s promising ground for psychologists. “So tell me about your parents.” Maybe it’s no surprise,…
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