Psychology

Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder: Why Do People Get SAD in Summer?

By now you’ve probably heard of SAD, or seasonal affective disorder. Each winter, some people become a little bit melancholy, perhaps owing to the decrease in daylight hours. But there’s a second group of people who become sad in the summer. How does that work? When I tell my friends that I prefer dark, cold,…

Depressed in Summer? It May Be Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, is usually something that wrecks your mood during the dark, cold months of winter. But for some people, summer is the time they feel the worst. It’s called reverse SAD, and neuroscientists are just beginning to understand how it works.

How Do You Get Narcissists To Care About Other People?

Narcissists are notoriously bad at empathizing, often to the detriment of their personal and professional relationships. So how do you get an egoist to imagine himself in someone else’s shoes? Believe it or not, it could be as simple as asking him to do just that. Over at TheAtlantic, Olga Khazan reports that psychologists have…

No, Female Hurricanes Are Not Deadlier Than Male Hurricanes

A group of marketing researchers at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign decided to tackle the problem of gender bias by analyzing a peculiar statistical anomaly: hurricanes with female names tend to be more deadly than ones with male names. And that was only the first thing they did wrong. Kiju Jung and colleagues published the…

The U.S. military is funding research into developing brain implants that will regulate human emotions. The idea is to locate and “stop” feelings experienced by soldiers and veterans, including depression and fear. What could go wrong?

The Original Example Of A Freudian Slip

Freudian slips are slips of the tongue that seem to reveal the speaker’s secret thoughts. The most famous of these slips, in psychological circles, was analyzed by Sigmund Freud himself. Learn about how Freud connected incorrect Latin to a dark personal secret. Freud wrote about a case of a young man who misquoted a Latin…

Do You Feel Like You’re Not Sleeping, Even When You Are?

Pseudoinsomnia is a sleep disorder, even though people who suffer from it appear to have perfectly normal sleep patterns. When pseudoinsomnicacs fall asleep every night, they feel as if they are lying awake, anxiously trying to get some rest. But they’re not imagining things. They really do have an unusual form of insomnia. In last…

The Syndrome That Makes People Lie About How Many Legs Are On A Dog

For a long time, this controversial syndrome was thought to manifest itself only in prisoners. When it spread to the general public, doctors began questioning whether it really exists or not. You decide whether there is such a thing as Ganser Syndrome. Sigbert Ganser’s Inmates In 1897, Sigbert Ganser noticed four different prison inmates exhibiting…

Reddit Study Reveals How to Ask For Favors Online — and Get Them

If you manage to look beyond irate commenters and festering trolls, the internet can be a friendly place full of people keen to help a brother out. Now, a study of Reddit reveals how people ask for favors online—and the best way to make them succesful, too. It’s an interesting phenomenon for sure, perhaps best…

Wild Animals Sneak Onto Laboratory Running Wheels to Exercise

The wheel-running rodent is frequently associated with animals inside psychology laboratories. But what would happen if you gave wild animals access to a wheel? A pair of researchers found out. While exercise has always been thought of as important to help prevent maladies like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, sleep disorders, and to promote mental health,…

Does the Name-Letter Effect Prove That You’re Soooo Into Yourself?

Remember when you had to pick your favorite letter in elementary school, and you always picked your first initial? It turns out that little ego trip never wears off — or does it? Let’s look at the name-letter effect and decide if it’s narcissism or coincidence. What’s your favorite letter? And what’s your name? Chances…

Thom Yorke Demonstrates Why Facial Symmetry Isn’t Everything

While some studies have suggested that symmetrical faces are perceived as more attractive than others, the way we process facial features suggests that it is actually asymmetry that makes our mugs interesting, appealing and memorable. In a visually tantalizing piece for the latest issue of science magazine Nautilus, Simone M. Scully spoke with neurobiologists, psychologists…

More Evidence That Longevity Depends on Your State of Mind

We all know that having goals is important, but a joint US-Canadian study reveals that having a sense of purpose can affect our longevity. Remarkably, it doesn’t matter how old we are or what we aspire to — as long as we have goals, we live longer. Psychologists have known for some time that a…

The Science Of Misheard Song Lyrics

There is an actual official term for when you hear “excuse me while I kiss the sky” in Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” as “excuse me while I kiss this guy.” Your meaningful misheard lyrics are called “mondegreens,” and their study can have real psychological significance. The Mondegreens We’ve all had those awkward moments. A group…

A Drug That Could Destroy Political Movements

As neuroengineering becomes a reality, scientists are grappling with the ethics of changing people’s perceptions and feelings — especially when it comes to love. We’re on the cusp of “anti-love” drugs, that could help people recover from bad love affairs. What could go wrong? A lot. https://gizmodo.com/scientists-need-philosophers-to-solve-this-problem-1578428283 Over at New York Magazine, Maia Szalavitz has…

I Can’t Figure Out Whether This College Study is Sexist or Not

It was the 1930s, and America was changing. Women were going to college and communists were marching in the streets. But people really didn’t want those two things to combine. And thus was born a study that had its heart in the right place and its head in the wrong one. Here is the tale…

The Othello Error Makes You Sure Everyone is Lying

Ever heard of Othello error? It’s the unfortunate mindset that leads questioners to believe people are lying, even when they’re telling the truth. It can cause them to use understandable coincidences as damning evidence, and getting rid of it can make us better at judging honesty. The innocent, but incriminating, coincidence is a staple of…

One of the Most Nightmarish Behavioral Tests Ever Devised for Rats

The behavior of lab rats is often used as a model for the behavior of humans. One test, the Open Field Test, is so simple and yet so like a horror movie, that it makes me wonder what real humans would do in the same situation. Lab rats are put through a lot of behavioral…

How Does “Valence” Help Your Brain Distinguish Between Good And Bad?

Have you ever had anyone tell you that they feel the “good kind of tired” while you are feeling the much-more-common bad kind of tired? How do you experience having a good appetite versus just being hungry? To put in scientific terms, how do we judge valence? What Valence Isn’t Valence isn’t the term used…

Are Religious Beliefs Going To Screw Up First Contact?

Are humans really prepared to meet an extraterrestrial civilization in this century? A new study suggests we’re psychologically ill-prepared for this monumental event — and that the prominence of religious beliefs has a lot to do with it. Despite the eerie Great Silence, there’s good reason to suspect we’ll eventually make contact with aliens. Our…