Embracing discomfort, rather than avoiding it, can help us work towards our personal goals
By Matthew Warren
In order to develop new skills or grow as a person, you often have to get out of your comfort zone. Say you want to become a better public speaker: you will have to get up and practice speaking in front of others, and that will likely feel awkward and uncomfortable at first.
This can create barriers to personal growth, because those feelings of discomfort that you experience will come well before you will notice any improvement in your skills. As a result, you might feel that the negative emotional experience is not worth it, and give up on your goal.
But what if we reframe our attitude towards ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 30, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Emotion The self Source Type: blogs
When the school day starts later, teens get better sleep and feel more motivated
This study was conducted at the most academic type of German secondary school, equivalent to a grammar school, which limits the generalisability of the findings. It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that students from other backgrounds or countries will experience different costs and benefits when taking advantage of late starts.
As appealing as later school starts may sound, their practicality and effects on students within the UK system requires further investigation. Apologies to younger readers!
– Sleep improvements on days with later school starts persist after 1 year in a flexible start system
Post wr...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 28, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Educational Sleep and dreaming Source Type: blogs
Here ’s how our ability to empathise changes as we get older
By Emma Young
How does age affect our ability to empathise? Some researchers think that our ability to understand and respond to others’ feelings follows an inverted U-shaped pattern, with empathic skills peaking in middle age before declining again in older age. But as Michelle Kelly at the University of Newcastle and colleagues point out in their paper in Neuropsychology, findings in this field have been mixed. Their new work, on 231 adults aged 17-94, suggests that while people aged over 65 aren’t quite as good at “cognitive empathy” (working out what someone is likely to be feeling), they are just a...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 24, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Developmental Emotion Source Type: blogs
Decisions made by human experts can be as inscrutable as those made by algorithms — but we don’t realise it
By Emma Young
Let’s say you’ve been found guilty of stealing a car. Would you prefer that a judge decided your punishment — or an algorithm?
Algorithms are increasingly taking over from people in making decisions in everything from the hiring of new employees to healthcare, as well as criminal punishment. But, as the authors of a new paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General note, there is mounting public concern about just how algorithms reach their decisions. In some US states, for example, companies that use algorithms in hiring are now obliged to explain the steps of the process.
However,...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 23, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Decision making Source Type: blogs
Repetition can make even the most bizarre claims seem more true
By guest blogger Emma L. Barratt
The spread of misinformation over recent years poses huge dangers, and has so far proven extremely difficult to bring under control. Psychological research has revealed much of what brings people to believe false information, but the full picture is still far from complete, and new findings are bringing to light yet more factors that may maintain this problem.
One example is the Truth-by-Repetition (TBR) effect — that repeating a statement increases how true it’s perceived to be. A prominent theory for why this happens emphasises the role of “processing fluency”; in es...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 22, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Cognition Source Type: blogs
Reality TV fuels people ’s belief in the American Dream
By Matthew Warren
The “American Dream” is deeply rooted in the national identity of the United States. It promises that in the Land of Opportunity, any individual can climb the economic ladder and prosper through hard work and ambition alone. And yet, young Americans today are struggling to earn more than their parents did at the same age, and upward mobility in the US actually compares unfavourably to that of other industrialised nations.
So why does the idea of the American Dream persist? A new study in the American Journal of Political Science identifies one factor that has been overlooked: the influence of r...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 18, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Media Money Source Type: blogs
A mother ’s early life experiences of adversity can influence her baby’s sensitivity to stress
By Emma Young
Over the past few decades, it’s become clear that experiences even before birth influence later psychological wellbeing. A mother’s stress levels during pregnancy have emerged as a key influence. Greater stress seems to programme her child to “expect” a difficult environment, and so to be more sensitive to potential threats — and more vulnerable to developing an anxiety disorder. It’s uncertain, though, whether adversity earlier in life affects stress levels during pregnancy, and so might impact the child’s sensitivity to stress. So Cassandra L. Hendrix at New York University and col...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 15, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Babies Emotion Source Type: blogs
How well do you know what you look like? Research on self-perception, digested
In this study, levels of self-esteem were linked with these misperceptions — the lower a person’s self-esteem, the more likely they were to exaggerate their own hip size, and the slimmer they considered a “typical” woman to be.
We make all kinds of other body-related mistakes, too. For example, when people feel powerful, they’re more likely to think they are taller than they actually are. Also, typical healthy people have a distorted sense of their body volume and length, according to a paper in Cortex in 2019. The 40 young adults involved in this study tended to overestimate the length of various body...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 14, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Feature The self Source Type: blogs
We try to avoid people with these stereotypically boring traits
By Matthew Warren
Picture a boring person in your mind. What are they like? If you’re imagining someone who loves watching TV, has no sense of humour, and works in finance, your stereotype of a boring person is similar to those described in a recent study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. But whether or not these kinds of stereotypes are accurate, the researchers behind the paper find that they can have damaging social implications: people have a low opinion of those with “boring” traits, and will try to actively avoid them.
The researchers, led by Wijnand A. P. van Tilburg from the Univer...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 11, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Occupational Personality Social Source Type: blogs
When we learn more about a stranger, we feel like they know us better too
By Matthew Warren
After finding out details about a stranger, we mistakenly think that they also know about us. As a result, we act more honestly around them, according to a recent study in Nature. And this can have a real-world impact: the team finds that after residents are given biographical information about neighbourhood police officers, the crime rate in nearby areas reduces.
Past research has found that we tend to assume social relationships are reciprocal. Most of the time, this assumption is accurate: someone you think of as a friend will usually consider you a friend too, for instance. But sometimes ou...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 9, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Social Source Type: blogs
We ’re only able to mentally represent an exact number if we have a word for it
By Emma Young
Babies, monkeys and even bees have a basic “sense of number”. They can instantly perceive that there are one, two, three or four objects in a pile, without having to count them. They can also tell at a glance that a pile of 50 objects contains more than a pile of 20, say. But what explains the unique ability of older kids and adults to go far beyond this, and mentally represent quantities much bigger than four exactly? Some researchers argue that language must be key — that learning to count “one”, “two”, “three”, and on and on, enables this cognitive feat...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 8, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Cognition Language Source Type: blogs
Here are the personality traits shared by famous psychopaths
By Emma Young
What is psychopathy? For a concept that gets endless attention, there’s surprisingly little agreement. Various models have been put forward over the years. Robert Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist – Revised has been particularly influential. But it, too, has been questioned, with debate centring on the nature of the fundamental traits that together make someone a psychopath.
In a bid for clarity, Cristina Crego at Longwood University and Thomas A. Widiger at the University of Kentucky decided to look for shared traits in six people, real and fictional, who have been identified as psychopathic. The...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 7, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Personality Psychopathy Source Type: blogs
Having a sense of meaning is less important for your happiness if you ’re rich
By Emily Reynolds
Searching for meaning is something many of us experience throughout our lives: finding something to strive for that gives shape, direction, and purpose to the things we choose to do. For some, this meaning is religious; some political; some interpersonal. And having a sense of meaning can bring us happiness (or, if we lack meaning, unhappiness).
A new study to be published in Emotion looks at the relationship between meaning and happiness in the context of financial resources. Rhia Catapano from the University of Toronto and colleagues find that meaning is a far weaker predictor of happiness for ri...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 4, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Emotion Money The self Source Type: blogs
Magical thinking and insurance: Taking out cover makes us feel that misfortune is less likely to occur
By Matthew Warren
We’re all prone to a bit of magical thinking now and then. Maybe you try not to step on cracks in case it brings bad luck, or avoid talking about a good situation in case you “jinx” it — even though in reality there’s no way your actions would have any effect on the world.
When it comes to decisions about finances and risk, though, you’d probably claim to be a much more rational thinker. However, a new study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin finds that we’re even susceptible to magical thinking when taking out insurance. The team finds that insuring against the loss or dam...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 3, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Money Thought Source Type: blogs
Labelling something a “conspiracy theory” does little to stop people from believing it
By Emma Young
The label “conspiracy theory” is often slapped on unsubstantiated ideas. But does labelling something a conspiracy theory actually discredit it? A new paper in the British Journal of Psychology suggests not. Karen M. Douglas at the University of Kent and colleagues find that people call an idea that they already consider unbelievable a “conspiracy theory” — rather than being influenced by that term to disbelieve it.
In an initial online study on 170 US adults, the team explored whether labelling a statement an “idea” or a “conspiracy theory” made ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 2, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Cognition Language Source Type: blogs
