-
Attending the “Best” High School May Yield Benefits and Risks for Students
Data collected over a 50-year span suggests that selective schools aren’t uniformly beneficial to students’ educational and professional outcomes in the following decades.
-
Why Humans Are Bad At Spotting Lies
“Exactly how you’d expect a guilty person to act.” “Moving and credible.” “So coached and so rehearsed.” “Simply tremendous.” These are all reactions to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony on Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a set of responses that put on full display just how differently people can interpret the same set of behaviors, statements and emotions. And that reality lines up well with what experts who study lying and lie detection would expect: Humans aren’t very good at being able to tell — just from watching someone and listening to them talk — whether they are being told truth or fiction.
-
A Good Marriage May Help You Live Longer. Here’s Why
If you have a happy marriage, “’til death do us part” may be a long ways off. Married people who rated their unions as “very happy” or “pretty happy” had roughly 20% lower odds of dying early than people who said their marriages were “not too happy,” according to a recent study published in the journal Health Psychology. The work expands on existing studies that have linked marriage to a number of positive health outcomes, from a healthy heart to a trimmer waistline. The study was based on interview responses from more than 19,000 married people up to age 90 who participated in the General Social Survey between 1978 and 2010.
-
The psychology of closure – and why some need it more than others
Imagine your partner unexpectedly changes their Facebook status from “in a relationship” to “single” and then refuses to communicate with you. This sounds awfully cruel, completely robbing you of your right to find out why you have been dumped so that you can get some closure and move on. But it is actually becoming so common that Facebook has created new tools to help people manage their Facebook profiles after a breakup and interact with former partners. The need for closure doesn’t just apply to relationships. The death of a loved one, the loss of a job, status or a way of life are other examples of painful endings.
-
For Couples, Gratitude Is a Boomerang
It’s easy to take our better halves for granted. We may neglect to thank our partners for, say, picking up milk on the way home, preparing dinner or devoting Saturdays to coaching a child’s soccer team. Over time, we may stop noticing what they do to make our lives better and perhaps focus too much on what we feel they don’t do. This familiar dynamic can be bad news for relationships. A growing body of research finds that couples who regularly express appreciation to each other, even for minor things, enjoy a stronger, more satisfying and committed bond. --- We often underestimate the impact that our gratitude has on others, which may make us less likely to express it.
-
Lonely people prefer to stand farther away from those they love
A recent NIA-funded study reports lonely people are more likely to prefer greater interpersonal distances from close friends and family. Over two experiments, close to 600 men and women were surveyed to determine how close they prefer to physically be in relation to others in their intimate, relational, and collective space (and in relation to strangers). Intimate space consisted of those they are closest to (closest family/friends and significant others), relational space included trusted friends and family, and collective space included social groups individuals identified with.
