Black, But Not White, Families Talked More About Race After The Murder of George Floyd
By Emily Reynolds
Conversations about race can be seriously beneficial to children. Research has highlighted multiple positive outcomes for young people of all backgrounds — enhanced ability to accept different viewpoints and perspectives, increased levels of empathy, a better understanding of their own identity, and less racial bias to name but a few. Yet some parents are still unwilling to take the time to have such conversations.
A new study, published in PNAS, finds that readiness to have such conversations has a lot to do with the racial identity of parents themselves. Looking at family conversations in t...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - November 1, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Social Source Type: blogs
Black, But Not White, Families Talked More About Race After The Murder of George Floyd
By Emily Reynolds
Conversations about race can be seriously beneficial to children. Research has highlighted multiple positive outcomes for young people of all backgrounds — enhanced ability to accept different viewpoints and perspectives, increased levels of empathy, a better understanding of their own identity, and less racial bias to name but a few. Yet some parents are still unwilling to take the time to have such conversations.
A new study, published in PNAS, finds that readiness to have such conversations has a lot to do with the racial identity of parents themselves. Looking at family conversations in the w...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - November 1, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Social Source Type: blogs
Young People Around The World Report High Levels Of Climate Anxiety
By Emma L. Barratt
In the past few years, the effects of climate change have become undeniably apparent. In the last two years alone, headlines have been full of climate disasters — from forest fire smoke turning San Francisco’s sky luminous red, to torrential flooding in Germany and China.
In the face of events like this, anxiety and fear about climate change is undoubtedly increasing. Far from being indicative of mental illness, climate anxiety (also known as eco-anxiety or climate distress) more neatly fits under the banner of “practical anxiety”: fear that motivates change to help us respond to threa...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - October 29, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: environmental Mental health Source Type: blogs
Ruminating About Symptoms Can Maintain Distress In Those With OCD
By Emily Reynolds
Rumination is a key feature of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. According to the charity OCD UK, rumination is a “train of prolonged thinking about a question or theme that is undirected and unproductive” — worrying incessantly about a particular issue or question, in other words. Those with OCD may also ruminate on their symptoms themselves: rather than just dwelling on their fears of harming someone or on existential worries, for example, they will also worry about having these thoughts in the first place.
It’s this rumination about symptoms that a team of researchers explore in a new study...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - October 26, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Mental health Thought Source Type: blogs
Study Explores Personalities Of People With Adult Separation Anxiety, A “Neglected Clinical Syndrome”
By Emma Young
Most parents will be very familiar with the concept of separation anxiety. It’s hardly rare for babies and toddlers to become anxious when separated from a parent. But I have to confess, I hadn’t heard of Adult Separation Anxiety (ASA) until I came across this new paper in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. For adults, it can manifest as extreme distress at being separated from a partner, or another loved one — even a pet. And it’s thought that 7% of people suffer from it at some point in their lifetimes.
Partly because ASA has been so neglected by researchers, Megan Finsaas at Columbia Univer...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - October 25, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Mental health Relationships Social Source Type: blogs
Face Stimuli In Psychology Are Often All White. That Needs To Change
By Emma L. Barratt
Research into first impressions is a well-established area. Hundreds of studies have been published with the goal of understanding how the subtleties of facial features cue assumptions about those we meet. Often, the stimuli used are tightly controlled, with some sets using faces whose features are digitally manipulated to be larger or smaller by tiny degrees; the effect of miniscule alterations to the wideness of eyes, for example, can be isolated and analysed without changing any other aspect of the face. By eliminating as many extraneous variables as possible, research teams hope to get a reading ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - October 22, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Faces Methods Source Type: blogs
Supportive Male Allies Can Make Male-Dominated Workplaces Less Hostile For Women
By Emily Reynolds
Despite much work to counter unequal workforces in science, technology, engineering and maths, stereotypes about who will succeed in science still abound — and some research suggests that these biases can actively put people off certain careers or fields. Other papers find that the competitive nature of STEM courses and roles can be particularly damaging, leading to low feelings of belonging and subsequent low retention rates for minority groups.
A new paper looks at the role of men in countering hostile environments — in particular, how men can signal their support and respect for women collea...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - October 21, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Gender Occupational Source Type: blogs
“Drinking To Cope” Doesn’t Work, Even When We Believe That It Does
By Emma Young
Have you ever felt a little anxious or low, and decided that a beer or a glass of wine would help? If so, you’re hardly alone. This exact thought process must play across the country every night of the week. There’s been surprisingly little solid research, though, into whether alcohol does actually relieve these negative feelings. Now new work led by Andrea M Wycoff at the University of Missouri-Columbia, US, concludes that in fact, it does not — and that people who “drink to cope” can even make their symptoms worse.
The study involved 110 participants; 58 were from the general co...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - October 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Alcohol Mental health Source Type: blogs
If You Want To Enjoy Leisure Time, Don ’t Think Of It As Wasteful
By Emily Reynolds
However you like to take time for yourself, from reading to hiking to playing video games, leisure time can be a vital way of relaxing, promoting good mental and physical health, boosting social relationships, and inducing happiness. But whether we fully experience those benefits, a new study suggests, may depend on the way we view leisure time itself.
The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, explores how the enjoyment of leisure time changes when or if we think of that time as ‘wasteful’. It not only finds that people who believe leisure time is unproductive find ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - October 19, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Cognition Mental health Source Type: blogs
The “Maybe Favour”: We More Readily Commit To Helping A Stranger If We Might Not Have To Follow Through
By Emma Young
Imagine that a neighbour asks for a favour — to help move some garden furniture at the weekend, say. Now imagine that, instead, they explain that they’d lined up a friend to help, but that friend has become ill, and you’ll only be required if they’re not better in time.
Rather than a firm favour, this second scenario involves what the authors of a new paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied dub a “maybe favour”. And, Michael K. Zurn at the University of Cologne and colleagues report, we are more likely to agree to grant these favours than ones that we know for sure...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - October 18, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Money Social Source Type: blogs
Episode 28: Why Songs Get Stuck In Our Heads
This is Episode 28 of PsychCrunch, the podcast from the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, sponsored by Routledge Psychology. Download here.
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/psychcrunch/20210929_PsychCrunchEp28_v2.mp3
Why do some songs get stuck in our heads? In this episode, our presenter Ginny Smith explores the psychology of earworms. Ginny hears about the possible evolutionary reasons for why we experience the phenomenon, learns what earworms can teach us about memory — and finds out how to get rid of them.
Our guests, in order of appearance, are Kelly Jak...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - October 15, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Music Podcast Source Type: blogs
Episode twenty-eight: Why Songs Get Stuck In Our Heads
This is Episode 28 of PsychCrunch, the podcast from the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, sponsored by Routledge Psychology. Download here.
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/psychcrunch/20210929_PsychCrunchEp28_v2.mp3
Why do some songs get stuck in our heads? In this episode, our presenter Ginny Smith explores the psychology of earworms. Ginny hears about the possible evolutionary reasons for why we experience the phenomenon, learns what earworms can teach us about memory — and finds out how to get rid of them.
Our guests, in order of appearance, are Kelly Jakubowski, assista...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - October 15, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Music Podcast Source Type: blogs
