psychology

Helping Young Adult Children Cope With Depression

Getty Images As the mother of a high school senior who has struggled with depression for nearly 10 years, I’m anxious about how I can help her adjust to life on her own without smothering her or somehow enabling failure. Knowing exactly how supportive to be, while still being somewhat hands-off, can be [...]

The Fascinating Cultural Reason Why Westerners And East Asians Have Polar Opposite Understandings Of The Truth

Kevin Frayer / Getty Starting the spring of my 23rd year, I spent 13 months straight in East Asia, teaching English and travelling through South Korea, Japan, and China. As a 6’3” blonde guy, it was pretty obvious that I looked different than just about everybody else. What was less obvious is that as [...]

“My Daughter Is Fat, Isn’t It My Job To Tell Her?”

"It's not surprising parents think the worst thing that could happen to their child is to grow up fat. It's not. It's far more damaging for a child to grow up feeling ashamed and unloved." Photo: Stocksy "My daughter is fat, isn't it my job to tell her?" a well-meaning father wrote to [...]

The Psychology Of A Hug 

Credit: i.huffpost.com Common sense tells us that a hug is good for us. Now a new study confirms just how and why hugs are so beneficial. A study of 404 healthy adults by experimenters at Carnegie Mellon University examined the effects of hugs on the health of participants, particularly their susceptibility to developing the common [...]

Tracking Prejudices In The Brain

Preparation of an EEG recording. It is used for a Microstate analysis in order to depict processes in the brain temporally and spatially. Credit: University of Bern / Adrian Moser A soccer fan needs more time to associate a positive word with an opposing club than with his own team. And supporters of [...]

New Study Finds Our Desire For ‘Like-minded Others’ Is Hard-wired

Credit: Amanda Summerlin A path-breaking new study on how we seek similarity in relationships, co-authored by researchers at Wellesley College and the University of Kansas, upends the idea that "opposites attract," instead suggesting we're drawn to people who are like-minded. The study could lead to a fundamental change in understanding relationship formation—and it [...]

It’s Easy To Get People To Do Bad Things—This Might Be Why

(Photo : University College London) In the 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram famously conducted experiments in a Yale University basement showing that people will apparently inflict pain on another person simply because someone in a position of authority told them to. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biologyon Feb. 18, 2016 have [...]

The Myth Of Happiness That Will Prevent You From Being Truly Happy

istockphoto If you've ever been to New York City, you've witnessed the manifestation of the happiness myth at its best. People in the city are literally running from one thing to the next thing to the next. Always striving to be somewhere other than where they are. So what exactly is the happiness myth? The [...]

By |2016-02-14T22:04:58+11:00February 14th, 2016|Categories: Mental Health & Wellbeing|Tags: , , , , , |1 Comment

13 Untranslatable Words For Happiness

Dr Tim Lomas believes analysis of happiness is very Western-centric Rex Features Psychologists have been analysing happiness for years. Subjects for studies include what makes us happy, and why? And, what happens to our bodies when we feel happiness? Dr Tim Lomas believes analysis of happiness is very Western-centric – it focuses only on Western cultures [...]

Makeup Is Compulsory

Is makeup akin to wearing a burqa? Photo: galleryhip A reader by the name of Lady Diazepam made an interesting comment in response to a blog I wrote last month about the stigma of obesity at work. She wrote about a time when she was languishing at the bottom of the office hierarchy. But as [...]

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