Psychology

A new tool will make it easier for clinicians and researchers to measure digital media addiction as new technologies emerge.

While anger and aggression are instinctive behaviors found across many species, leaving these emotions unchecked can lead to conflict and violence. In a recent study, researchers demonstrated that neuronal-glial interactions in the cerebellum determine the degree of aggression exhibited by mice. This suggests that future therapeutic methods could adjust glial activity in the cerebellum to help reduce unwanted aggression.

In a world grappling with deep-seated division and social upheaval, empathy has become more critical than ever. But science suggests when it comes to evoking empathy, our imagination is more powerful than we previously thought. A new study reveals how the different ways to experience empathy affect our willingness to help others.

Communities can prosper by providing attentive education and social services to their youngest residents -- but the challenge is for leaders to work together, according to scientists.

When it comes to self-discipline, psychological research traditionally focuses on individual responsibility. Some researchers believe this is too short-sighted. Self-discipline doesn't work without effective regulation.

Skin-to-skin contact between parent and infant during the first hours after a very premature birth helps develop the child's social skills. The study also shows that fathers may play a more important role than previous research has shown.

Debunking, 'prebunking,' nudging and teaching digital literacy are several of the more effective ways to counter misinformation, according to a new report.

Researchers have discovered that a part of the brain associated with working memory and multisensory integrationmay also play an important role in how the brain processes social cues. Previous research has shown that neurons in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) integrate faces and voices -- but new researchshows that neurons in the VLPFC play a role in processing both the identity of the 'speaker' and the expression conveyed by facial gestures and vocalizations.

Whether infants at five months of age look mostly at faces or non-social objects such as cars or mobile phones is largely determined by genes. The findings suggest that there is a biological basis for how infants create their unique visual experiences and which things they learn most about.

A new study zooming in on how smartphones influence our photography habits found Australians aged 20 to 40 years old take more selfies than teenagers and older Australians.

Hikikomori is a pathology characterized by social withdrawal for a period exceeding six months. While first defined in Japan, the pathology is growing globally. To help better assess individuals for Hikikomori, researchers developed the the Hikikomori Diagnostic Evaluation, or HiDE, a diagnostic tool to be a guide on collecting information on the growing pathology.

Psychologists are using EEG to research what games reveal about our ability to cooperate.

Researchers have used an AI-based approach to uncover underlying patterns among the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, termed social determinants of health (SDoH), and then linked each pattern to children's health outcomes. Compared with traditional approaches, the strategy, in principle, provides a more objective and comprehensive picture of potential social factors that affect child health, which in turn, can enable better targeted interventions.

As possibilities have changed and technology has advanced, memories and nostalgia are now a significant part of our use of social media.

Researchers incorporate language ideologies, along with the impact of interaction between individuals with opposing preferences, on the language shift process. The team chose a quantitative approach based on a society in which only one language with two varieties, the standard and the vernacular, existed. The resulting mathematical model can predict the conditions that allow for the coexistence of different languages, presenting a comprehensive view of how language varieties are distributed within societies.

A surprising thing happened when researchers began exploring whether early-life stress compounds the effects of a childhood head injury on health and behavior later in life: In an animal study, stress changed the activation level of many more genes in the brain than were changed by a bump to the head.

There is a general understanding that pets have a positive impact on one's well-being. A new study found that although pet owners reported pets improving their lives, there was not a reliable association between pet ownership and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Roughly two decades ago, a community-wide reckoning emerged concerning the credibility of published literature in the social-behavioral sciences, especially psychology.Several large scale studies attempted to reproduce previously published findings to no avail or to a much lesser magnitude, sending the credibility of the findings -- and future studies in social-behavioral sciences -- into question.

Invoking a sense of guilt -- a common tool used by advertisers, fundraisers and overbearing parents everywhere -- can backfire if it explicitly holds a person responsible for another's suffering, a meta-analysis of studies revealed. While guilt is widely used to try and persuade people to act, research has been mixed on its effectiveness in spurring behavior change. This analysis found that overall guilt had only a small persuasive effect, which is in line with previous research.

Researchers discovered the cerebellum coordinates the brain network essential for social recognition memory.

A new study finds that solitary time does not closely correlate with feelings of loneliness -- unless a person spends 75% of their time alone.

While there are a number of studies demonstrating that dog therapy programs can improve a person's social and emotional wellbeing, many typically have a disproportionate number of female participants. Recent research evaluated if there are gender differences in wellbeing by setting up separate dog therapy sessions for those who identified as female, male and gender diverse participants.

While often perceived as a negative emotion, anger can also be a powerful motivator for people to achieve challenging goals in their lives, according to new research.

Adult listening abilities are critical to the ability to understand children's early linguistic efforts, according to new research.

A holistic transformation is needed for the planet to accommodate people's pursuit of well-being. A new study explores a Theory of Planetary Social Pedagogy as a driver of a transformative process based on a learning society.

In a mouse study designed to explore the impact of marijuana's major psychoactive compound, THC, on teenage brains, researchers say they found changes to the structure of microglia, which are specialized brain immune cells, that may worsen a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia.

Married couples and long-term romantic partners typically engage in a variety of behaviors that sustain and nourish the relationship. These actions promote higher levels of commitment, which benefits couples' physical and psychological health. A new study looks at how such relationship maintenance behaviors interact with satisfaction and commitment.

When given the choice to learn how their actions will affect someone else, 40% of people will choose ignorance, often in order to have an excuse to act selfishly, according to new research.

People judge members of their own circles more harshly than they judge individuals from other groups for the same transgressions, new research has found.

Why do we dream? A product of our brain's neurophysiology, dreaming is a complex experience that can take on many emotional tones and simulate reality to varying degrees. As a result, there is still no clear answer to this question. A study compared the dreams of two forager communities, in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with those of individuals living in Europe and North America. It showed that the first two groups produced more threatening, but also more cathartic and socially-oriented dreams than the Western groups. These results show how strong are the links between the socio-cultural environment and the function of dreams.