When learning a foreign language, most people fall back on traditional methods: reading, writing, listening and repeating. But if you also gesture with your arms while studying, you can remember the vocabulary better, even months later. Linking a word to brain areas responsible for movement strengthens the memory of its meaning. This is the conclusion a research …
Could attending live theater make you a more empathetic person? Researchers recently found that after one live performance, theatergoers were more empathetic toward the issues and people portrayed in a play. And that empathy made them more likely to donate to charity. “Attending theater could be a vital way to build psychological skills, especially empathy,” says Steve Rathje, a …
A Surprising Reason Why You Should Attend Live Theater Read More »
Arthur C. Brooks: When you teach happiness, like I do, one of the biggest questions that people have initially: What is it? I mean, we all think we know what happiness is until you think about it. A lot of people, they assume that happiness is a feeling. A better definition of happiness is: It’s like …
Bargaining in an open-air market. Making trades at a sports memorabilia show. Monitoring price changes on a ride-sharing app. Every day, people in real-world marketplaces make choices using decision-making biases similar to those explored by psychological scientists in laboratory settings. And field experiments in such contexts “can serve an invaluable intellectual role alongside traditional laboratory research,” John List proposed in a recent review in Current Directions in Psychological Science. Moreover, “fundamental tenets in economics, such as the law of demand, might …
Economic Field Experiments Complement Understanding of Judgment Bias Read More »
Young children seem uniquely, insatiably, marvelously curious, even at risk of life and limb. You might think that this drive to explore helps children to learn so much so quickly. But is it really true that children explore more than grown-ups and that this helps them to learn? It’s not easy to test this idea …
The emails are piling up, unread. Deadlines are blown. Once jovial video calls are now tense. You suspect burnout. The feeling is an increasingly common one. In a September survey of nearly 700 professionals by consulting firm Korn Ferry, 89% said they were suffering from burnout. Some workers are leaving their jobs as a result. Others are moving to …
“How we feelin’ out there tonight?” Bo Burnham asks an imaginary audience during his comedy special Inside, which he self-filmed from a single room over the course of a year. “Heh, haha, yeahhhhh,” he says to himself. “I am not feeling good.” Following the special’s release this past May, TikTok users pounced on the clip. The sound …
Few choices are more important than whether to have children, and psychologists and other social scientists have worked to figure out what having kids means for happiness. Some of the most prominent scholars in the field have argued that if you want to be happy, it’s best to be childless. Others have pushed back, pointing …
What Becoming a Parent Really Does to Your Happiness Read More »
For many months during the pandemic, Jason Henderson felt lower than perhaps at any other period of his life. The 37-year-old was living in a basement apartment, newly divorced, recovering from back surgery and struggling with depression so crippling he had suicidal thoughts. A friend from an online men’s support group told the Vancouver, B.C., …
For Many Men, Apps Can Be ‘an Important Gateway to Mental Health’ Read More »
In exciting news, the Health Resources and Services In exciting news, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) announced that Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System (PCSAS)-accredited psychology programs are eligible to apply for HRSA’s Graduate Psychology Education (or GPE) program. This program provides funding for these programs—up to $450,000 annually per grant—to train doctoral health psychology students, interns, …