Sexual violence prevention programs effectively change ideas and beliefs that underscore assaults, but show no evidence of reducing their actual occurrence, a new analysis shows.
Many parents ponder why one of their children seems more emotionally troubled than the others. A new study in the United Kingdom reveals a possible basis for those differences.
Individuals underestimate the social connection they can make with a stranger who disagrees with them on contentious issues, a new research paper suggests.
A startling number of people conceal an infectious illness to avoid missing work, travel, or social events, new research at the University of Michigan suggests.
Youth who are caught stealing, using illegal drugs, or committing other moderate crimes are far less likely to reoffend when they receive therapy, life-skills training, and other rehabilitative help rather than legal punishment, a growing body of research shows.
Addiction is one of society’s most misunderstood and rebuked health conditions. That stigma discourages many people from seeking treatment for substance dependence, according to a new scientific report.
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are often depicted as sentient agents poised to overshadow the human mind. But AI lacks the crucial human ability of innovation, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have found.
Trigger warnings are designed to help people avoid or emotionally prepare for encountering disturbing content. But those warnings heighten distress rather than alleviate it, a new research analysis shows.
Personality traits and mental health problems are among the factors linked to erectile dysfunction, but researchers often overlook these psychological contributors and their treatments in favor of biological causes, according to a new research review.
The Association for Psychological Science calls on Congress to promptly fund the US government for the coming fiscal year to sustain important scientific programs and initiatives.
New research shows how we prefer art that speaks to our sense of self. The findings could lead to more effective forms of art therapy, but can also lead media companies to generate addictive content online.
Scientists will share their expertise and perspectives on the relationship between gun violence and anxiety in a webinar to be Sept. 20, 3 to 4 p.m. ET. Accredited media professionals can attend the webinar free of charge.
The Association for Psychological Science (APS) has awarded the 2024 APS Lifetime Achievement Awards to 15 psychological scientists whose contributions have advanced understanding of topics ranging from how to alleviate human suffering to cultural differences and similarities in mental processes.
A collection of research published in the APS journals in 2022 and 2023 related to peer relationships, pandemic-related learning losses, the positive impacts of growth mindsets, and much more.
Do researchers overestimate the risk that certain research findings will fuel public support for censorship, defunding, and other harmful actions? Findings from a pair of studies published in Psychological Science by authors Cory J. Clark (University of Pennsylvania), Maja Graso (University of Groningen), Ilana Redstone (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Philip E. Tetlock (University of Pennsylvania).
Data from 2000 to 2020 indicate that women researchers are now equally likely as their male peers to be awarded grant funding, to have their journal articles accepted for publication, and to receive strong letters of recommendation. They are more likely than men to be hired for tenure-track positions. But the findings have caveats.
Recently published research in Psychological Science suggests that cultures from water-scarce environments tend to be more likely than cultures from water-rich areas to value long-term thinking and to scorn short-term indulgence.
Avoiding experiences associated with pain can be an adaptive behavior. But when avoidance generalizes to safe movements and activities, it can come at the cost of other valued activities or even culminate in disability due to reduced activity levels.
Derogatory stereotypes constitute a clear form of discrimination, but an absence of information about a group in mainstream society can also communicate a lack of respect. That is the case for Native Americans, who are often underrepresented in media and policy discussions. In a recent Psychological Science study, researchers found that Native American adults who identified more strongly as Native were more likely to notice group omission and discrimination, prompting increased civic engagement.
Zero-sum situations in which one person’s loss is another’s gain are known to bring out people’s worst tendencies—and the reality television show Survivor is no exception
It’s easy to characterize conspiracy theorists as people who will believe just about anything. However, it’s not true that conspiracy theorists commonly believe contradictory conspiracies, such as the claim that Diana, Princess of Wales, both was murdered and is still alive after faking her own death.
Bilingual people from cultural backgrounds in which mental health is a particularly taboo topic may be more likely to support treatment when they hear information in their second language.
The majority of research on disordered eating has focused on the experiences of white women, contributing to the myth that eating disorders don’t affect Black women, according to researcher Jordan E. Parker (University of California, Los Angeles). Her new research debunks this myth.
Lonely individuals’ neural responses differ from those of other people, suggesting that seeing the world differently may be a risk factor for loneliness regardless of friendships.
Research is the first to demonstrate that awe-eliciting art can spark prosociality in children as young as 8 years old, motivating them to set aside their own concerns to focus on others. Awe also has physical benefits for children.
New research explores the reasons for, and antidotes to, persistent racial disparities in policing, despite police departments’ repeated investments in bias-training programs.
Thousands of languages spoken throughout the world draw on many of the same fundamental linguistic abilities and reflect universal aspects of how humans categorize events. Some aspects of language may also be universal to people who create their own sign languages.
ICPS is designed to surmount artificial disciplinary boundaries that can impede scientific progress and to highlight areas of investigation in which those boundaries have already been overcome.
Analysis of biometric data of 2020 Olympic archers provides empirical support for something sports fans have long suspected: When athletes feel the pressure, their performance suffers.
The six early-career psychological scientists are honored for groundbreaking psychological research in areas including bias and discrimination, motivation, learning, and change.
Lost your keys again? One way to retrace your steps involves scanning your memory to find them, such as reaching back to the last moment you clearly remember having them—say, as you walked in the door—before skipping ahead to a “phone call” event and then a “watching TV” event, at which point you might recall placing the keys next to the remote.
New research shows that mental health organizations may systematically transmit bias and racism through common bureaucratic processes and, in some cases, through staff merely doing their job.
Research suggests that findings about human risk preferences also apply to risk-taking in chimpanzees, our closest evolutionary ancestor in the animal kingdom, and that individual chimps’ risk preference is stable and trait-like across situations.
From a cranky-faced fetus scowling at her mother’s healthy lunch choice to an octogenarian still benefiting from long-ago musical lessons, the most impactful psychological science research published in 2022 reveals that new understandings of human behavior—studied across the lifespan and from within a remarkable diversity of topics and scientific subdisciplines—continue to resonate with wide audiences.
Research in Psychological Science finds that audio cues can not only help us to recognize objects more quickly but can even alter our visual perception. Pair birdsong with a bird and we see a bird—but replace that birdsong with a squirrel’s chatter, and we’re not quite so sure what we’re looking at.
Women are less likely to ask questions during question-and-answer sessions at academic conferences. Research in Psychological Science suggests that this may be due to anxiety about how colleagues will receive their comments.
The authors note opportunities to extend concepts from the study of leadership in adults to adolescents, while leveraging existing adolescent-focused research on peer influence and cognitive and behavioral development.
Many of us spend our lives chasing “happiness,” a state of contentment that is more difficult for some to achieve than others. Research in Psychological Science suggests that one reason happiness can seem so elusive is that our current feelings can interfere with memories of our past well-being.
Findings also help explain why happy people are more optimistic, how false visual memories can be perpetuated, and why feeling good often just means feeling better.
Recent research in Psychological Science expands on past work by indicating that experiences of deprivation and threat may influence children’s psychological development differently. That is, early deprivation experiences, such as parental neglect and financial difficulties, appear to be more closely associated with cognitive and emotional functioning in adolescence than early threat experiences, such as exposure to abuse.
APS’s four lifetime achievement awards—the APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award, the APS Mentor Award, the APS William James Fellow Award, and the APS James S. Jackson Lifetime Achievement Award for Transformative Scholarship—are the association’s highest honors, and their recipients represent the field’s most accomplished and respected scientists.
Embracing a broader definition of learning that includes any behavioral adaption developed in response to regular features of an environment could help researchers collaborate across the fields of psychology, computer science, sociology, and genetics, according to a new Perspectives on Psychological Science article.
Therapy is a collaborative process informed not just by a practitioner’s expertise but also by the patient’s expectations about that expertise and how likely they are to benefit from it. Research in Clinical Psychological Science suggests that therapists who demonstrate both warmth and competence can shape those expectations by inspiring more positive beliefs about the effectiveness of therapy.
An interdisciplinary team of researchers reports on how social norms—“patterns of behaviors or values that depend on expectations about what others do and/or think should be done”—can be harnessed to bring about collective climate action and policy change.
Trying to understand people we disagree with can feel like a lost cause, particularly in contentious political environments. But research in Psychological Science suggests that cross-partisan empathy may actually make our political arguments more persuasive, rather than softening our convictions.
This kind of play-based intervention could help close the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields by boosting girls’ early engagement with science, according to research just published in Psychological Science.
Findings include hope for reducing partisan animosity, why some jokes seem funnier than others, how nature's beauty can invigorate conservation, and the case for accepting "eco-anxiety."
“Super-recognizers,” who account for about 2% of the population, rely not on photographic memories but “their ability to pick up highly distinctive visual information and put all the pieces of a face together like a puzzle, quickly and accurately.”