Feature Channels: Behavioral Science

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A new report explores the many ways psychology has contributed to, and continues to research, the science of living well.

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Say a deadly campus shooting occurs. It might seem sensible to offer everyone on campus psychological support to prevent psychological repercussions, including PTSD. However, a new review suggests the opposite.

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Reporters pursuing stories about the growing controversy over cell phone use while driving may want to consider talking to Steven Yantis, a psychology professor at The Johns Hopkins University.

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We've all experienced feeling sick following a particularly stressful time at work or school, but can stress actually make us sick? A new report reviews research investigating how stress can wreak havoc on our bodies and provides some suggestions to further our understanding of this connection.

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Why are some people smarter than others? A new article describes how certain aspects of brain structure and function help determine how easily we learn new things, and how learning capacity contributes to individual differences in intelligence.

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Education is on the cusp of a transformation because of recent scientific findings in neuroscience, psychology, and machine learning that are converging to create foundations for a new science of learning.

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How well do you know yourself? It's a question many of us struggle with, as we try to figure out how close we are to who we actually want to be. A new report describes theories behind self-knowledge, cites challenges to studying it, and offers ways we can get to know ourselves a little better.

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Ask middle-school students if they are popular or make friends easily, they likely will depend on social comparisons with their peers for an answer. Such reliance on the perceived opinions of others, or reflected self-appraisals, has long been assumed, but new evidence supporting this claim has now been found in the teen brain.

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According to a new report in Psychological Science, children's temperament may be due in part to a combination of a certain gene and a specific pattern of brain activity.

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Mothers of children with autism had higher levels of parenting-related stress and psychological distress than mothers of children with developmental delay. Children's problem behavior was associated with increases in both parenting-related stress and distress in both groups, but this relationship was stronger in moms of children with autism.

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Psychologists Joanne V. Wood and John W. Lee from the University of Waterloo, and W.Q. Elaine Perunovic from the University of New Brunswick, found that individuals with low self-esteem actually felt worse about themselves after repeating positive self-statements.

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In 2005, a surprising number of people stayed behind and rode out Hurricane Katrina. Stanford University psychologist Nicole Stephens and her colleagues compared the views of outside observers with the perspectives of the New Orleans residents who actually rode out Katrina.

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Organizational norms and social cues, not communication overload, are the strongest predictors of whether individuals use their laptops or smart phones to electronically multitask during a meeting, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.

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We swim in a sea of information, but filter out most of what we see or hear. New analysis of data from dozens of studies sheds new light on how we choose what we do and do not hear. The study found that while people tend to avoid information that contradicts what they already think or believe, certain factors can cause them to seek out, or at least consider, other points of view.

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A study of the behaviors elicited from the musical lyrics of common songs is showing that patriotic songs may make participants close-minded and prejudiced while songs like "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" may stimulate a pro-social response.

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A new study validates the controversial finding that the Implicit Association Test indicated that about 70 percent of those people who took a version of the test that measures racial attitudes have unconscious preference for white people compared to blacks. This compared with figures general under 20 percent for self-reported measures of race bias.

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Our tendency to see people and faces as individuals may explain why we are such experts at recognizing them, new research indicates. This approach can be learned and applied to other objects as well.

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These results reveal that we tend to view products that are grouped close together as being "contagious." It appears that if one of the products has a prominent good or bad quality, we will see that quality as spreading among other objects which are close by, a phenomenon known as the "group-contagion effect."

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Research led by a leading expert on the positive benefits of napping at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine suggests that Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep enhances creative problem-solving. The findings may have important implications for how sleep, specifically REM sleep, fosters the formation of associative networks in the brain.

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A new speed dating study finds that, regardless of gender, participants who rotated experienced greater romantic desire for and chemistry with their partners, compared to participants who sat throughout the event. The results suggest a fascinating alternative explanation for the sex difference in romantic selectivity.

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Why does dishing with a girlfriend do wonders for a woman's mood? A University of Michigan study has identified a likely reason: feeling emotionally close to a friend increases levels of the hormone progesterone, helping to boost well-being and reduce anxiety and stress.

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For more than a century, the notion that females are innately less capable than males at doing mathematics, especially at the highest levels, has persisted in even the loftiest circles.

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Spending hours taking a high-pressure aptitude test may make people feel mentally fatigued, but that fatigue doesn't necessarily lead to lower test scores, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. If anything, performance might actually improve on a longer test, the study found.

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University of Virginia psychologists and computer scientists have found that gender is less important than head motion in the nonverbal dynamics of human conversation.

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Helping middle school students with their homework may not be the best way to get them on the honor roll. But telling them how important academic performance is to their future job prospects and providing specific strategies to study and learn might clinch the grades, according to a research review.

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Many schools across the nation struggle in their efforts to deal with challenging behaviors. A new book co-authored by Kathleen Lane, associate professor of special education at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College of education and human development, aims to help schools develop a comprehensive strategy to identify and help students with behavior issues before violence erupts.

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"The findings show that trauma from a mother's past, which does not directly impact her pregnancy, will affect her offspring's emotional and social behavior. We should consider whether such effects occur in humans too," stated Prof. Micah Leshem who carried out the study.

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These results suggest that five-month-old infants are able to discriminate a solid from a similar-looking liquid, based on movement cues "” that is, according to how an object moved around in the container, the infants could predict if it will pour or tumble from the glass if it is upended.

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The results suggest that phonological constancy (recognizing words in different dialects) is already evident by 19 months of age, but is not yet present at 15 months.

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A new study suggests that a moderate dose of alcohol increases a person's mind wandering, while at the same time reducing the likelihood of noticing that one's mind has wandered.

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Babyface features had a clear influence on professional achievement, both perceived and real. Black CEOs were rated as being more babyfaced, and having warmer personalities, than whites. The more babyfaced the black CEO, the more he was also thought to earn.

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Though the economy shows signs of improvement, consumers will likely hang onto their new, thriftier spending behavior for the long-haul. Industries that survive will likely emerge from the crisis in a very different form.

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The left-side bias exhibited by the native Chinese reader volunteers in the second experiment suggests that since this effect does not appear to be face-specific, it may be a marker of general visual expertise.

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The results indicate that DY meditation allows practitioners to access greater levels of visuospatial memory resources, compared to when they are not meditating.

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The results, reported in Psychological Science, show that "historically-defined autobiographical periods" (H-DAPs; e.g., "during the war") do exist, although H-DAP formation depends on the intensity, duration, and novelty of the public event, as well as how close it is to a population.

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Adolescents and young adults typically consider peer relationships to be all important. However, it appears that strong family support, not peer support, is protective in reducing future suicidal behavior among young adults when they have experienced depression or have attempted suicide.

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If you want to perform at your peak, you should carefully consider how you discuss your past actions. A new study reveals that the way a statement is phrased (and specifically, how the verbs are used), affects our memory of an event being described and may also influence our behavior.

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Warm, cooperative co-parenting between mothers and fathers may help protect children who are at risk for some types of behavior problems, a new study suggests. Researchers found that supportive co-parenting helped children who have difficulty regulating their behavior and attention levels "“ what researchers call effortful control.

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Social scientists tracked first- and second-graders for seven years and found that anti-social behavior among girls and anxiety among both sexes predicted depression in early adolescence. Surprisingly, early signs of depression were not predictive of adolescent depression.

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Peer victimization during middle and high school may be an important indicator of an individual's sexual behavior later in life, reports Binghamton University researchers. According to Gallup, peer aggression and victimization during adolescence is a form of competition for reproductive opportunities. Female college students who were frequently victimized during middle and high school reported having sex at earlier ages and more sexual partners than their peers, while males reported just the opposite.