Psychology

Tell your boss his tie looks great, or your dad that his dancing makes him look like a young John Travolta. Little white lies are all around us, but how can we detect them when we’re on the receiving end? Researchers using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) found it could identify both a white lie and the real motivation behind it. IAT differentiated truth from white lies and also identified the real reason from the faked one for 20 participants. The question is, even if you could detect them, would you really want to?

Incorporating personal experience, real-life case studies, the latest research and well-established theories concerning how individuals adapt to retirement, The Psychology of Retirement is the first book of its kind to draw on proven psychological coping strategies to aid the process of addressing the stress of retiring

New research into the association between alcohol marketing and binge drinking by youth has explored the impact of drinker identity and brand allegiance on underage drinkers. The research, published in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, are the results of a national U.S survey which explored the perceptions of over 1,700 15-to-20-year-olds and examined how many thought of themselves as a drinker or had a favorite brand of alcohol, perceptions which are actively cultivated by alcohol marketers.

Feeling depressed may increase chest pain in older women who’ve had heart problems, reveals research published in the British Journal of Health Psychology. Over 10,000 women aged 70-75 were surveyed, with analysis showing that a diagnosis of depression within the previous three years was a significant risk factor for chest pain in women with heart disease and a past history of heart interventions.

They may not always appreciate your taste in music, but singing at, or better still with, young children has been found to improve their auditory skills. While formal musical training has been linked to brain plasticity, the first study into informal training, through parental singing or musical play, is published in the European Journal of Neuroscience. The results highlight the significance of informal musical experiences in enhancing the development of highly important auditory abilities in early childhood.

Children who are spanked before they are one-year-old are more likely to be aggressive when they are three and depressed or anxious by the time they are five, according to research published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. A sample of 3,870 families from 20 cities across the United States showed that approximately 30% of the children were spanked at the age of one, 56% at the age of three and 51% at the age of five.

WITH OVER 50 YEARS OF COMBINED EXPERIENCE IN CRISIS PREVENTION AND MANAGEMENT FOR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES AUTHORS PEN THIS IS NOT A FIREDRILL: CRISIS AND INTERVENTION ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES

Children suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of traumatic events, including child abuse, may benefit from psychological therapies, according to a review published in The Cochrane Library. In the first systematic review of PTSD in young people, researchers found that children and teenagers diagnosed with PTSD showed signs of improvement up to three months following treatment and called for more studies to assess long-term benefits.

Ever seen a human face on a piece of toast or in a cloud? This illusionary effect is known as pareidolia and scientists writing in Applied Cognitive Psychology claim you’re more prone to seeing faces if you’re a religious or paranormal believer. The team found believer groups were better at identifying previously defined face-like regions in images, but were also prone to false alarms. Signal detection analysis revealed that believers had more liberal answering criteria than skeptics, but the actual detection sensitivity did not differ. The paranormal believers also evaluated the artifact faces as more face-like and emotional than the skeptics.

Most people probably don’t associate salad with love. Yet, experiments with US college students reveal that subtle reminders of love and sexual memories can trigger different food choices. The results, published in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour, show that reminders of companionate love lead to a greater likelihood of making healthy eating choices than subtle reminders of sexual love.

In football the penalty kick is the ultimate duel as player and goalkeeper attempt to predict each other’s next move.

Shag bands, or sex bracelets, became one of the first viral urban myths of the internet age, with stories of promiscuous teenagers spreading internationally, despite no clear origin for the story.

Could the loud guy on the desk next to you be the next Steve Jobs? New research in the British Journal of Psychology reveals the personality and behavioral traits to look for when searching for the work place maverick.

Race: Are We So Different?

John and Rita Sommers-Flanagan demonstrate Counseling Theories in action

What would happen if you applied the data visualisation techniques of 2012 to data from the 1980s?

Each day our minds experience a deluge of conversation, lectures, newspapers, TV, the Internet, and more.  But what should we really be paying attention to?

New research reveals the tactics commuters use to avoid each other, a practice the paper published in Symbolic Interaction describes as ‘nonsocial transient behavior.’