BPS Research Digest Latest Blog Posts

If only we could make more constructive use of all the time that we spend asleep. People have tried playing various tapes to themselves while they're dozing, from foreign vocab lists to stop-smoking mantras, but they're all the wrong side of useless. What we do know for sure is that sleep is ...

We trawl the world's journals so you don't have to : Modalities of Social Life: Roadmaps for an Embodied Social Psychology (European Journal of Social Psychology). Atypical Development of Numerical Cognition (Cognitive Development). Usable knowledge (Mind, Brain and Education). Resilience ...

It's not many generations ago that workers expected to have a job for life, most probably one that followed in the footsteps of their father, and his father before that. In many of today's richer societies, it's all different. Longer education and greater individual choice mixed with mergers, ...

My recent efforts at speaking French whilst in the French-speaking part of Switzerland mostly provoked derisory laughter from the natives, so I know all about difficulties with accent and pronunciation. According to a new study, I could benefit from watching French films with French, but not ...

Eye-catching studies that didn't make the final cut : Photo of boyfriend reduces physical pain felt by women . Training in mental "hardiness", designed to protect against the effects of stress, is associated with improved academic performance among undergrads . CBT in the British NHS: Vague ...

It can take some bottle to share an anecdote, so it's somewhat harsh when your friend shoots you down with an impatient accusation that you've told them this story before. You'd think they'd be more understanding - most of us seem to be far better at remembering who's told us what compared ...

We know that physical sullying, immorality and shame can all be associated with feelings of literal and mental dirtiness, but it's not entirely clear how all these things interact. For example, for a heterosexual woman, which is worse: having a kiss forced on you by an otherwise moral man, or ...

Last time around it was a tie. You voted joint first: the study on increasing altruism in toddlers and the study showing that CCTV cameras don't reassure, they frighten . Which was your favourite from our last seven reports: Click Here for Poll Online Survey | Website Polls | Email Marketing  ...

Imagine you've just paid an expert good money for their verdict and they say to you: "Can you hang on a couple of minutes whilst I don't think about this". You'd be forgiven for thinking they've gone silly. They may have. But another possibility is that you've chosen a shrewd expert who's ...

Young children benefit socially and intellectually the more their carers engage and respond to them. Recognising this, we can train nursery staff to be as responsive to the children in their care as possible. But a new study by Claire Vallotton raises an interesting and under-examined issue - ...

We trawl the world's journals so you don't have to : The biological basis of business (Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes). The neural basis of timing and anticipatory behaviours (European Journal of Neuroscience). Psychological functioning of international missionaries ...

Men and women with more testosterone like to be in charge. Indeed, they can find it stressful and uncomfortable when denied the status that they crave. Similarly, people low in testosterone find it uncomfortable to be placed in positions of authority. An intriguing new study has built on these ...

The amount of empathy and attentiveness shown by doctors to their patients really does matter. David Rakel and colleagues have found that patients who rate their doctor as highly empathic recover more quickly from a cold. Their illness is shortened by about a day - the same effect shown by the ...

The idea may be "unpalatable", but companies seeking an edge over their rivals should ensure that children are exposed to their brands as early in life as possible. That's according to Andrew Ellis and colleagues, whose new research shows that the classic "age-of-acquisition" effect in ...

Eye-catching studies that didn't make the final cut : The bright side of being blue : "The analytical rumination hypothesis proposes that depression is an evolved response to complex problems, whose function is to minimize disruption and sustain analysis of those problems by (a) giving the ...

As psychology students past and present will be only too aware, statistics are a key part of every psychology undergrad course and they also appear in nearly every published journal article. And yet have we ever stopped to recognise the statisticians who have brought us these wonderful ...

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