… Simply trying to zone out is particularly ineffective when you’re waiting for significant news, said Kate Sweeny, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, who studies the difficulty of waiting. So as much as the TV might call out to you when you’re desperate to be distracted, it’s probably not going […]

What potential do everyday devices, like smartwatches, have in transforming the management and treatment of eating disorders?  In this episode, Under the Cortex explores how commonly used technology, such as heart rate monitors and step counters, can be used to understand binge-eating episodes. APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum interviews Qinxin Shi from the University of

Quick Take During exposure therapy, patients face their fears to build new, positive associations with situations they find threatening.  Researchers may need to integrate competing theories of how exposure therapy works—including the inhibitory learning theory, the emotional processing theory, and the self-efficacy theory—to achieve better treatment outcomes for patients.  Exposure therapy helps patients challenge their

When Emma Hayes, the U.S. women’s national soccer team coach, kept the starters in the lineup over a grueling stretch of successive 90-minute Olympic soccer games in France, murmurs rose that the team was on its way to an exit, ousted by exhaustion. … How we perceive discomfort and negative emotions affects our experience of

While the holiday season is often a time rich with cheer, sentiment, love and family connections, it can also be a painful reminder of what once was or what many other people have but you don’t. … In such a transition, there’s no requirement to have the holidays look or feel the same as they always have,

When a task isn’t urgent, it’s easy to keep procrastinating. Scheduling a doctor’s appointment or dusting your bookshelf can end up sitting on a to-do list for days, even weeks, despite taking only a few minutes to complete. … Procrastinating on small responsibilities doesn’t mean you’re lazy, says Joseph Ferrari, a psychology professor at DePaul University in

Doctors have long taken for granted a devil’s bargain: Relieving intense pain, such as that caused by surgery and traumatic injury, risks inducing the sort of pleasure that could leave patients addicted. Opioids are among the most powerful, if not the most powerful, pain medications ever known, but for many years they have been a source of

Location: Grenoble, FranceSubmission Deadline: 1 February 2025 Submissions are now open for the 10th Consortium of European Research on Emotion (CERE) Conference, hosted by Université Grenoble Alpes on 16–18 July 2025. CERE serves as a leading platform for showcasing cutting-edge research on emotion, fostering interdisciplinary exchange across Europe and beyond. The consortium encourages contributions from

With exams over and schoolies celebrations wrapping up, the countdown is on for year 12s to find out how they performed — and whether they’ll get into their dream university courses. Students will receive their Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) in mid-December, with a number between 0 and 99.95 indicating how their marks compared to

If you want to increase your happiness and well-being, spend your money, time or energy on someone else. Research consistently finds that acts of altruism, such as donating money, volunteering or giving blood, benefit both the receiver and the giver — even when the giver does not expect anything in return. “Finding joy in helping