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Embrace the Awkward Silence
At this point, Julie Boland is resigned to awkward silences. She’s a psychology and linguistics professor at the University of Michigan, and like many of us, she’s been spending a lot of time on Zoom calls over the past few years—and seemingly always dealing with internet lags and people fumbling to mute and unmute their mic. When there’s a pause, no one seems to know whose turn it is to speak. It helps, at least somewhat, that Boland knows the reason these breaks tend to feel cringey: They disrupt the conversational volley of call-and-response that usually comes to people naturally. We are alert to the moment rhythm ruptures, like when someone loses the beat in a karaoke performance.
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Loneliness Poses Profound Public Health Threat, Surgeon General Says
Loneliness presents a profound public health threat akin to smoking and obesity, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy warned in an advisory issued Tuesday that aims to rally Americans to spend more time with each other in an increasingly divided and digital society. Murthy said half of U.S. adults experience loneliness, which has consequences for mental and physical health, including a greater risk of depression, anxiety — and, perhaps more surprisingly, heart disease, stroke and dementia.
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The Truth About Teens, Social Media and the Mental Health Crisis
Back in 2017, psychologist Jean Twenge set off a firestorm in the field of psychology. Twenge studies generational trends at San Diego State University. When she looked at mental health metrics for teenagers around 2012, what she saw shocked her. "In all my analyses of generational data — some reaching back to the 1930s — I had never seen anything like it," Twenge wrote in the Atlantic in 2017. Twenge warned of a mental health crisis on the horizon. Rates of depression, anxiety and loneliness were rising. And she had a hypothesis for the cause: smartphones and all the social media that comes along with them.
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A Science-Backed Way to up Your Popularity and Friendship
A new study published in Psychological Science gives important clues to people who aspire to be liked by others. The study suggests that one’s behavior and actions might lead to general popularity in certain cases, while others might lead to unique connections with specific people. “People form judgments about each other very quickly in the getting acquainted process and the extent to which one is liked by another newly met person is highly consequential for the development of the relationship,” explain researchers Michael Dufner and Sascha Krause of the University of Leipzig in Germany.
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Passion, Dedication, Brilliance: Diverse Voices and Perspectives at the 2023 APS Annual Convention
The event attracted more than 2,250 psychological scientists from at least 40 countries and featured dozens of symposia, flash talks, and workshops, along with more than 1,200 poster presentations.
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Founders, Funders, Teams: Exploring the Psychology of Entrepreneurship
To discuss the value of research at the intersection of psychological science and entrepreneurship, three speakers presented their different career paths and experiences within entrepreneurship in a symposium at the 2023 APS Annual Convention in Washington, D.C.
