Feature Channels: Psychology and Psychiatry

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Labels and messages could encourage responsible use of digital devices and raise awareness of potential side effects.

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Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine found that people with anorexia nervosa have very different microbial communities inside their guts compared to healthy individuals and that this bacterial imbalance is associated with some of the psychological symptoms related to the eating disorder.

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Throughout history, scholars and researchers have tried to identify the one key reason that people are attracted to religion. But in a new book, a psychologist suggests that religion attracts followers because it satisfies all of the 16 basic desires that humans share.

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Teenage girls who compulsively text are more likely than their male counterparts to do worse academically, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

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How happy you are may have something to do with who you know—and where you come from. Lijun Song, assistant professor of sociology, set out to discover whether knowing high-status people helped or harmed mental health, using depressive symptoms as a proxy. Her findings appear in the July 2015 issue of Social Science and Medicine.

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Media advisory on Oregon school shooting.

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Student and faculty researchers at Florida State University have found that mindfully washing dishes calms the mind and decreases stress.

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Elementary schoolchildren often dawdle between activities during the school day, losing valuable instructional time in the process. New University of Georgia research has found a way to reclaim these lost minutes and make the transition to a new subject fun while increasing student focus.

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Developmental psychologists long have debated whether individuals volunteer and help others because they are sympathetic or whether they are sympathetic because they are prosocial. Now, new research from the University of Missouri helps clarify some of the confusion, which could lead to better interventions to promote positive behaviors in adolescents and clues as to what makes some individuals altruistic.

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Chimpanzees’ personality traits are linked to the anatomy of specific brain structures, according to researchers at Georgia State University, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and University of Copenhagen.

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Monkeys perceive visual illusions in the same way great apes and humans see them, according to researchers at Georgia State University.

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Suicide rates gradually have been increasing for years despite improved treatments for depression. Doctors want those at risk of harming themselves to know there is hope — including a new treatment that may relieve suicidal wishes in people with depression.

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Why do babies smile when they interact with their parents? Could their smiles have a purpose? In the Sept. 23 issue of PLOS ONE, a team of computer scientists, roboticists and developmental psychologists confirm what most parents already suspect: when babies smile, they do so with a purpose—to make the person they interact with smile in return. To verify their findings, researchers programmed a toddler-like robot to behave like the babies they studied and had the robot interact with undergraduate students.

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Individuals who blame karma for their poor health have more pain and worse physical and mental health, according to a new study from University of Missouri researchers. Targeted interventions to counteract negative spiritual beliefs could help some individuals decrease pain and improve their overall health, the researchers said.

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Think that you are special because you are creative? Well, you are not alone, and there may be some serious consequences especially if you believe that creativity is rare. A new study by Lynne Vincent, an assistant professor of management at Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management, and Maryam Kouchaki, an assistant professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, demonstrates that believing that you are a creative person can create feelings of entitlement when you think that creativity is rare and valuable. That feeling of entitlement can be costly for you and your organization as it can cause you to be dishonest.

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Think that you are special because you are creative? Well, you are not alone, and there may be some serious consequences especially if you believe that creativity is rare. A new study by Lynne Vincent, an assistant professor of management at Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management, and Maryam Kouchaki, an assistant professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, demonstrates that believing that you are a creative person can create feelings of entitlement when you think that creativity is rare and valuable. That feeling of entitlement can be costly for you and your organization as it can cause you to be dishonest.

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Using feedback that incorporates goals or incentives and leverages new media and technology appears to be the best way to get people to cut back on their energy use, according to researchers who analyzed dozens of studies on feedback’s effectiveness in energy conservation. The research appears in the journal Psychological Bulletin, which is published by the American Psychological Association.

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For adults, memories tend to fade with time. But a new study has shown that there are circumstances under which the opposite is true for small children: they can remember a piece of information better days later than they can on the day they first learned it.

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An elevated infant death rate may be linked to mourning experienced by women in the months before they become pregnant, reports a study in Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, the official journal of the American Psychosomatic Society. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

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The study found that healthy sisters of women suffering from eating disorders suffered from higher levels of depressive symptoms stemming from the strained relationship between the two. “During treatment maximum attention should be given to the relationship between the two sisters, strengthening it and transforming it from a negative, competitive interaction to one of support,” said Prof. Yael Letzer from the University of Haifa who led the research together with Prof. Ruth Katz and Keren Berger

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A study of Internet pornography users suggests a person’s own feeling of being addicted to online pornography drives mental health distress, not the pornography itself. Researcher Joshua Grubbs, a doctoral candidate at Case Western Reserve University’s Department of Psychological Sciences, said the finding adds a fresh perspective to commonly held concerns that Internet pornography can be a threat to mental health. The research, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, suggests that feeling addicted to Internet pornography is associated with depression, anger, and anxiety, but that actual use of pornography is not.

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Rutgers psychologist discusses the dangers of orthorexia

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At 11 a.m. EDT Thursday, September 10 the Airline Quality Report will be presented live and reporters will be able to engage with one of the study's co-authors.

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A new trend taking shape in psychological science not only uses quantum physics to explain humans’ (sometimes) paradoxical thinking, but may also help researchers resolve certain contradictions among the results of previous psychological studies.

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Would a color by any other name be thought of in the same way, regardless of the language used to describe it? According to new research, the answer is yes.

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Switzerland is the best place in the world for older people to live, closely followed by Norway and Sweden, according to a new report from HelpAge International, working in partnership with the University of Southampton, UK.

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“Gaydar” — the purported ability to infer whether people are gay or straight based on their appearance — seemed to get a scientific boost from a 2008 study that concluded people could accurately guess someone’s sexual orientation based on photographs of their faces. In a new paper published in the Journal of Sex Research, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison challenge what they call “the gaydar myth.”

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A new study conducted by the University of Warwick links being born premature with low wages.

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Babies’ neural responses to morally charged scenarios are influenced by their parents’ attitudes toward justice, new research from the University of Chicago shows.

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Those with borderline personality disorder a mental illness marked by unstable moods, often experience trouble maintaining interpersonal relationships. New research from the University of Georgia indicates that this may have to do with lowered brain activity in regions important for empathy in individuals with borderline personality traits.

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Studies show that the way a person makes decisions is among the main factors that determines whether they are protected from or vulnerable to suicide. This particular trait is partially shared with family members. Therapies could be adapted to target decision-making.

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People with psychopathic characteristics are less likely to be affected by “contagious yawning” than those who are empathetic, according to a Baylor University psychology study.

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Having friends who suffer from depression doesn’t affect the mental health of others, according to research led by the University of Warwick.

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For the first time, scientists have seen evidence of where the brain records the time and place of real-life memories.

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Violent video game play is linked to increased aggression in players but insufficient evidence exists about whether the link extends to criminal violence or delinquency, according to a new American Psychological Association task force report.

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Alcoholism inflicts a heavy physical, emotional and financial toll on individuals and society. Now new discoveries and promising animal studies are offering a glimmer of hope that a new class of drugs could treat the disease without many of the unwanted side effects caused by current therapies. The scientists are presenting their work today at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

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Confusing reality with imagination and losing contact with reality are two key characteristics that could play a role in the development of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). This is what we learn from a study conducted by researchers at the CIUSSS de l'Est-de-l'Île-de-Montréal (Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal) and the University of Montreal, the results of which were published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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Research from the University of Warwick indicates that the IQ of adults born very premature or of very low birth weight can be predicted when they are just a toddler.

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Troubling behaviors exhibited by abused children can be predictors of later criminal activity, and that those indicators differ between boys and girls.

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When most people think of eating disorders, they think of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. But there’s another condition that has nothing to do with concerns over weight, shape or body image, and it has been recognized in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

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The study shows that there is growing awareness many subgroups of youth experience high levels of chronic stress, to the extent it impedes their abilities to succeed academically, compromises their mental health functioning, and fosters risk behavior. Furthermore, this chronic stress appears to persist into the college years, and researchers warns it may contribute to academic disengagement and mental health problems among emerging adults.

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Some depressed patients may be hoping for answers from their therapists, but a new study suggests questions may be the key.

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The brains of people with epilepsy appear to react to music differently from the brains of those who do not have the disorder, a finding that could lead to new therapies to prevent seizures, according to research presented at the American Psychological Association’s 123rd Annual Convention.

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Women experience more emotional pain following a breakup, but they also more fully recover, according to new research from Binghamton University.

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While recently published parenting books have preached the effectiveness of positive parenting and “no drama” discipline, psychologists presenting at the American Psychological Association’s 123rd Annual Convention said don’t put timeout in timeout yet.