General Psychology - AllPsych

Stoicism, Virtue, and Mental Health

Christopher L. Heffner, PsyD, PhD — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 02:42:59 +0000

The point of philosophy is to become a better person, at least according to the Stoics. Perhaps this is why the Stoicism and the Stoics writings continue to play a vital role in religion, philosophy, psychology, and mental health. Their four virtues, among other aspects of Stoicism, were expanded from Socrates beginning around 300BCE and…

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What I Learned Writing About 1,000+ Psychology Studies

Neil Petersen — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 00:15:07 +0000

If you go to get a doctoral degree in psychology, you spend five years reading a bunch of psychology studies. Or so I'm told. I've never gotten a psychology doctorate. But I have done something more fun - I've written the AllPsych blog for five years. Fifty-five months is about 240 weeks, times three posts…

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Reading Peer Reviewers’ Unprofessional Comments

Neil Petersen — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 23:59:49 +0000

When you read about a psychology study covered on this blog, or basically any published scientific study for that matter, you can rest easy knowing that the study has been through a process of rigorous peer review. Peer review is part of what gives published research its aura of credibility: papers that appear in peer-reviewed…

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When Is It OK To Use Deception in Psychology Studies?

Neil Petersen — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 08:53:29 +0000

There are white lies, there are truly harmful lies, and then there are lies told for the sake of science. Scientists don’t always agree on whether the latter are acceptable, or how often. Many psychology experiments involve lying to participants. Of the studies I’ve written about on here, I’m sure there are plenty of examples,…

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Defining Greed

Neil Petersen — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 23:18:40 +0000

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a study on how childhood experiences potentially give rise to a later tendency to be greedy. The gist of the study was that only children from wealthier families were greedier on average as teenagers but that socioeconomic status didn’t have any obvious effect on greed for children with…

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Shyness Is Related to Thinking About Thinking

Neil Petersen — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 13:00:40 +0000

Feelings of shyness can come with all kinds of thoughts. Worries, doubts, rumination. But a new study by researchers in Italy suggests it goes deeper than that: shyness might also have to do with how we think about thinking. Psychologists refer to the we make sense of our own thoughts as metacognition. In the study…

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People Underestimate the Effects of Gratitude

Neil Petersen — Wed, 11 Jul 2018 13:00:11 +0000

People aren’t always good at predicting the impact their actions will have on themselves and others. I wrote about one example earlier this week, where introverts tended to be overly pessimistic about how much they’d enjoy social interactions. Another example comes from a study published this month in Psychological Science, this time on the topic…

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Introverts Might Enjoy Socializing More Than They Think

Neil Petersen — Mon, 09 Jul 2018 16:09:43 +0000

Why do people vary in their tendency to seek out opportunities to interact with others? A reasonable explanation would be that extraverts simply enjoy social interactions more than introverts do. To some extent, this appears to be the case. But a new study from researchers at Duke University and Johns Hopkins University suggests there’s more…

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Diagnosing Social Anxiety From GPS Data

Neil Petersen — Fri, 06 Jul 2018 16:02:43 +0000

In a time where we carry smartphones that provide a constant stream of information about our lives, it’s worth asking: what can you tell about someone’s mental health from their smartphone data? Obviously, their search history might tell you something. But psychology and engineering researchers at University of Virginia turned to a different source: people’s…

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Can We “Ban” Ourselves From Worrying About the Future?

Neil Petersen — Wed, 04 Jul 2018 17:17:25 +0000

What do we worry about when we worry? More often than not, the future. Ruminating about what tomorrow holds is a familiar activity for people with anxiety. A logical question, then, is whether teaching people techniques for taking a step back from worries about the future can help with anxiety disorders. And that’s exactly the…

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