Featured series 
Tag: Psychology
-
Science & Tech
Online learning: It’s different
By interspersing online lectures with short tests, student mind-wandering decreased by half, note-taking tripled, and overall retention of the material improved, said Daniel Schacter, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology, and Karl Szpunar, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology.
-
Health
Q&A with Matthew Nock
Professor of Psychology Matthew Nock is the author of a new paper, co-authored with other Harvard faculty, which examines suicidal thoughts and behaviors among adolescents. In a recent conversation with the Gazette, Nock discussed his research, and the resources available at Harvard for students and others in the community.
-
Science & Tech
Peering into our blind spots
Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji and longtime collaborator Anthony Greenwald condense three decades of work on the unconscious mind in “Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.”
-
Arts & Culture
He wrote the book of love
A neurologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School ponders love and its complexities in his latest book, “What to Read on Love, Not Sex: Freud, Fiction, and the Articulation of Truth in Modern Psychological Science.”
-
Campus & Community
William Kaye Estes
At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on November 6, 2012, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late William Kaye Estes, Daniel and Amy Starch Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Professor Estes made pioneering contributions to many cognitive domains over a period spanning more than…
-
Health
Rapid acts of kindness
In a series of experiments, Harvard researchers found that people who make quick decisions act less selfishly than those who deliberate.
-
Science & Tech
Figuring out fairness
A new Harvard study suggests that children as young as 3 consider merit — a key part of more-advanced ideas of fairness — when distributing resources.
-
Health
Bringing the psych lab online
A team of researchers from Harvard and Wellesley College shows that data gathered from online volunteers can be just as good as data collected in the lab.
-
Health
A story that doesn’t hold up
A study conducted by Professor of Psychology Richard J. McNally and colleagues from the University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam is casting doubt on the “amnesia barrier” that has long been a hallmark of multiple personality disorder, now called dissociative identity disorder, by demonstrating that patients have knowledge of their other identities.
-
Health
A fresh look at mental illness
In a paper published in Neuron, Joshua Buckholtz and co-author Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg identify a biological reason for why many mental disorders share similar symptoms, a situation that makes diagnosis challenging.
-
Science & Tech
Decision, decisions
Two of Harvard’s leading social scientists discussed the way that humans make decisions, and whether having more choices really makes us happier.
-
Science & Tech
Circumstances that color our perception
Dozens of Harvard faculty and students gathered at Emerson Hall on Feb. 23 to ponder the nature of perception with Ned Block, the Silver Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Neural Science at New York University (NYU) and one of the country’s leading thinkers on consciousness. Block’s lecture, “How Empirical Facts about Attention Transform Traditional Philosophical…
-
Science & Tech
Right choice, but not the intuitive one
When faced with a tough choice, we already have the cognitive tools we need to make the right decision, Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology, told a Harvard Law School audience on Feb. 16. The hard part is overcoming the tricks our minds play on us that render rational decision-making nearly impossible.
-
Arts & Culture
On the side of the angels
In his latest book, psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker cites data to show that the world is becoming far more peaceful than you might have thought.
-
Science & Tech
Reinforcement Theory
Mahzarin R. Banaji Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
-
Science & Tech
The Cognitive Revolution
Steven Pinker Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Harvard College Professor
-
Campus & Community
Three named MacArthur Fellows
Three Harvard faculty members — Roland Fryer Jr., Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics; Markus Greiner, associate professor of physics; and Matthew K. Nock, professor of psychology — are among the recipients of this year’s MacArthur Foundation fellowships, also know as “genius” grants.
-
Arts & Culture
The Aging Intellect
In this important book, Douglas H. Powell, a clinical instructor in psychology, discusses lifestyle habits and attitudes linked to cognitive aging, and provides evidence-based strategies to minimize mental decline.
-
Campus & Community
“The Young Ones” nominated for BAFTA
“The Young Ones,” a BBC series filmed with Harvard Professor of Psychology Ellen Langer, which replicates her Counterclockwise study using British celebrities, has been nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award.
-
Science & Tech
Learning to love the irrational mind
Just how much should we allow “human nature” to guide our politics — and our everyday decision making? Columnist David Brooks and a trio of Harvard analysts debated new findings on the unconscious mind during a panel discussion.
-
Campus & Community
Harvard Thinks Big 2: “Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality” – Joshua Greene
Joshua Greene, Assistant Professor of Psychology
-
Health
Child prodigies, maybe
Study suggests our assumptions about natural talent can influence our judgments, overlooking and undervaluing the impact of hard work.
-
Health
Harnessing your creative brain
Shelley Carson, a researcher in the Psychology Department and lecturer at the Extension School, has penned a how-to book on harnessing your untapped abilities.
-
Arts & Culture
What Is Mental Illness?
Richard McNally, a professor of psychology, explores the many contemporary attempts to define what mental disorder really is, and offers questions for patients and professionals alike to help understand and cope with the sorrows and psychopathologies of everyday life.
-
Science & Tech
Big thinkers
Psychologists at Harvard University have found that infants younger than a year old understand social dominance and use relative size to predict who will prevail when two individuals’ goals conflict.
-
Campus & Community
NARSAD awards $720,000 to Harvard researchers
Twelve from Harvard are among 214 researchers named NARSAD Young Investigators.
-
Health
The face looks familiar
People’s ability to recognize and remember faces peaks at ages 30 to 34, about a decade later than most other mental abilities, a new study says.
-
Science & Tech
Of two minds
We resolve to exercise more and eat healthy, and then reach for a cupcake at the office holiday party. We pledge to put money away for retirement, but end up maxing out credit cards that charge 14 percent interest. According to Professor David Laibson, the reason for these struggles is that human beings are of…
-
Health
Early marijuana use a bigger problem
Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital have shown that those who start using marijuana at a young age are more impaired on tests of cognitive function than those who start smoking at a later age.
-
Health
Wandering mind not a happy mind
People spend 46.9 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they’re doing, and this mind wandering typically makes them unhappy, according to research by Harvard psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert.
