Our Ten Most Popular Posts Of 2020

This study has been all over the papers this month — but we first covered it way back in June. I suspect that many people’s coffee consumption has shot through the roof during the pandemic (I know mine has), so it’s perhaps not surprising that this was one of our most read pieces of the year.  9) Here’s How Our Personality Changes As We Age Personality was once believed to be stable, changing very little after the age of 30 or so. But recent work shows that our personalities actually shift throughout our lives. This study examined how the “Big Five” personality traits of tens of thousands of people changed through middle age and into older age. 8) Cold Days Can Make Us Long For Social Contact — But Warming Up Our Bodies Eliminates This Desire The idea that temperature can affect our social perceptions — that being physically warm leads us to feel “warm” towards others — is contentious. In fact, this kind of social priming research is often at the centre of controversies about psychology’s replication crisis. But this year, a study suggested one possible explanation for the inconsistencies in past work: the researchers rarely take into account the ambient temperature while they’re conducting their experiments. 7) Why Some People Find It Harder To Drag Themselves To Bed At Night Why do so many of us suffer from “bedtime procrastination”? Intriguingly, it might be related to the beliefs we have about our willpower. Th...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Announcements Source Type: blogs