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Do You Want to Be Happier? Here Are 5 Habits to Adopt
If you look around at your friends and family — and even at yourself — it is apparent that some people perceive the glass to be half full, while others view it as half empty. “Some people are just happier than others. They don’t have to work at it, right? They just are,” social psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky recently told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his podcast Chasing Life. “(They’re) kind of like people who are thin naturally, and they don’t have to work hard at it.” Lyubomirsky, distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, has been studying happiness for more than 35 years.
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Is it Weird to Talk to Your Dog Like a Toddler?
Our pets do experience sadness when we leave them, but there are things you can do to help them adjust. ... “Dogs do experience fundamental emotions like happiness and sadness,” said Clive Wynne, professor of psychology at Arizona State University and director of the Canine Science Collaboratory. Wynne is the author of “Dog is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You.” “They are highly social beings who love being with families. They can make friends with any species,” Wynne says. “They don’t like being left alone. I think leaving our dogs home alone for long periods is the most common unintentional cruelty that people in our society are doing to dogs.” ...
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Join APS in Celebrating the 2024 APSSC Poster Award Winners
Researchers reflect on their award-winning posters featured at the APS 2024 Annual Convention.
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Why You Get Your Best Ideas in the Shower
Social media is rife with groups dedicated to sharing so-called “shower thoughts.” ... The proper balance between engagement and disengagement is turbocharged in the shower. John Kounios, professor of psychology at Drexel University and co-author of the book The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain, thinks he knows why. In the shower we are on-task—washing, shampooing, shaving, in a familiar and purposeful sequence—but we’re also cut off from the world. “There’s sensory restriction,” Kounios says. “There’s white noise and you really can’t see too much.” There’s a tactile component to a shower too.
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Moving in Childhood Contributes to Depression
In recent decades, mental health providers began screening for “adverse childhood experiences” — generally defined as abuse, neglect, violence, family dissolution and poverty — as risk factors for later disorders. ... Shigehiro Oishi, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and the author of a 2010 study on the long-term effects of frequent moves in childhood, said that the negative effect of moves within the United States might be greater than within Denmark, since the differences in curriculum and quality of instruction would most likely be greater.
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Teens Feel Less Emotional Support Than Their Parents Think They Do, New Report Shows
As a youth mental health crisis persists in the US, a new report highlights a significant gap between the level of support that teenagers feel and the amount that parents think their children have. Only about a quarter of teens said they always get the social and emotional support they need, but parents were nearly three times more likely to think they did, according to a report published Tuesday by the National Center for Health Statistics. ... Teens are often thinking about their feelings, along with their identity and place in the world, but they might not want to share that with their parents, said Dr.
