Relationships - AllPsych

Well-Being and the Five ‘Happy’ Lives

Christopher L. Heffner, PsyD, PhD — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 09:39:36 +0000

Well-Being and The PERMA Model Seligman (2011) argues that well-being is enhanced through thriving in one or more pillars of well-being. His model, often referred to as the PERMA Model, consists of Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment (or Achievement). The more we thrive in each of these, the higher our well-being, according to…

The post Well-Being and the Five ‘Happy’ Lives first appeared on AllPsych.

The post Well-Being and the Five ‘Happy’ Lives appeared first on AllPsych.

Good Sex and Good Friendships Make People Happier With Being Single

Neil Petersen — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 23:41:31 +0000

If you’re single, you’re certainly not alone. The US is in the middle of an ongoing shift toward one-person households. As I’ve written about before, single people commonly cite a variety of both positive and negative reasons for their singleness. Some of them enjoy the freedom, some have priorities other than relationships, and some just…

The post Good Sex and Good Friendships Make People Happier With Being Single first appeared on AllPsych.

The post Good Sex and Good Friendships Make People Happier With Being Single appeared first on AllPsych.

Study Looks at Why Single People Are Single

Neil Petersen — Thu, 21 May 2020 22:44:39 +0000

But why are you single?? It’s an annoying question, but recently psychology researchers took it to a new level: they asked that question to 648 people and asked those people to rate 92 possible reasons for being single. In a paper just published in Frontiers in Psychology, the researchers describe the results from their study,…

The post Study Looks at Why Single People Are Single first appeared on AllPsych.

The post Study Looks at Why Single People Are Single appeared first on AllPsych.

The Advantages of Having Similar Friends

Neil Petersen — Wed, 20 May 2020 23:44:28 +0000

Part of what defines a friendship is what that friendship is founded on. For people to be friends, something has to connect them, but the nature of that connection is different from one friendship to the next. In many cases, part of the foundation of a friendship is similarities – in terms of personality traits,…

The post The Advantages of Having Similar Friends first appeared on AllPsych.

The post The Advantages of Having Similar Friends appeared first on AllPsych.

Economic Hardship Might Increase Tendency to Help Others

Neil Petersen — Tue, 05 May 2020 22:33:33 +0000

If there’s an upside to adversity, it might be greater empathy for others. That idea makes a certain intuitive sense to us, and there’s some evidence to support it. Take, for example, a 2016 study published in the journal Emotion. In the study, psychology researchers collected information about how much adversity people had encountered in…

The post Economic Hardship Might Increase Tendency to Help Others first appeared on AllPsych.

The post Economic Hardship Might Increase Tendency to Help Others appeared first on AllPsych.

Envy Might Drive Some of Social Media’s Mental Health Effects

Neil Petersen — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 22:38:43 +0000

Social media has facilitated both new ways of connecting with others and new ways of tallying how our lives stack up against theirs. In the twenty-first century, keeping up with the Joneses has become keeping up with the hundreds of people on your Facebook feed. Several previous studies have suggested that comparing yourself with others…

The post Envy Might Drive Some of Social Media’s Mental Health Effects first appeared on AllPsych.

The post Envy Might Drive Some of Social Media’s Mental Health Effects appeared first on AllPsych.

A Game to Measure Couples’ Trust

Neil Petersen — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:02:03 +0000

Can you measure trust in romantic relationships? A team of researchers in Germany thinks so, and they’ve put forward an activity called the Trust Game for Couples that’s intended to do exactly that. Actually, with a name like that, you could argue that even being willing to play the game in the first place is…

The post A Game to Measure Couples’ Trust first appeared on AllPsych.

The post A Game to Measure Couples’ Trust appeared first on AllPsych.

The Dangers of Tying Your Self-Worth to Money

Neil Petersen — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 23:58:03 +0000

We’ve all heard that money can’t buy happiness, but that doesn’t mean that people’s ideas of “self-worth” and “net worth” don’t start to overlap sometimes. A newly published study gives a warning about the possible consequences of seeing money as something that gives you “value” as a person, so to speak. The authors of the…

The post The Dangers of Tying Your Self-Worth to Money first appeared on AllPsych.

The post The Dangers of Tying Your Self-Worth to Money appeared first on AllPsych.

When People Lie Because the Truth is Unbelievable

Neil Petersen — Sat, 01 Feb 2020 02:17:18 +0000

From white lies to more malicious fibs, people bend or hide the truth for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons, it turns out, is that sometimes the truth is so fantastical that other people wouldn’t even believe it. If you’ve ever had something so strange happen to you that it doesn’t even seem…

The post When People Lie Because the Truth is Unbelievable first appeared on AllPsych.

The post When People Lie Because the Truth is Unbelievable appeared first on AllPsych.

Romantic Partners May Influence Young Adults’ Binge Drinking

Neil Petersen — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 17:00:40 +0000

If you ever dated someone your parents thought was a “bad influence,” it turns out they might have been onto something. Romantic partners may influence young adults’ binge drinking behaviors more than friends or family, at least according to new findings from researchers in Canada. In a study published recently in the journal Substance Abuse,…

The post Romantic Partners May Influence Young Adults’ Binge Drinking first appeared on AllPsych.

The post Romantic Partners May Influence Young Adults’ Binge Drinking appeared first on AllPsych.