Featured series 
Tag: Psychology
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Health
Punishment doesn’t earn rewards
Individuals who engage in costly punishment do not benefit from their behavior, according to a new study published this week in the journal Nature by researchers at Harvard University and the Stockholm School of Economics.
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Health
Sobering look at ‘mind-body connection’
Mind-body medicine goes by many names today — including holistic, complementary, or alternative medicine. Regardless of what it’s called, many people embrace the ideas behind the mind-body connection and its effect on health, sometimes despite a lack of supporting scientific evidence. In her recently published book, “The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine” (W.W.…
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Health
Gene variants probably increase risk for anxiety disorders
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers — in collaboration with scientists at the University of California, San Diego, and Yale University — have discovered perhaps the strongest evidence yet linking variation in a particular gene with anxiety-related traits. In the March issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, the team describes finding that particular versions of a…
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Health
‘Attentional collapse’ causes an inability to imagine future satisfaction
Researchers have identified a key reason why people make mistakes when they try to predict what they will like. When predicting how much they will enjoy a future experience, people tend to compare it to its alternatives — that is, to the experiences they had before, might have later, or could be having in the…
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Health
Homing in on features of ‘humaniqueness’
Shedding new light on the cognitive rift between humans and animals, a Harvard University scientist has synthesized four key differences in human and animal cognition into a hypothesis on what exactly differentiates human and animal thought.
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Health
Infants are able to recognize quantity
By looking at infant brain activity, researchers have found that babies as young as 3 months old are sensitive to differences in numerical quantity. Additionally, the scientists were able to see that babies process information about objects and numbers in different, dissociated parts of the brain, which is also the case in older children and…
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Health
Making statistics not just palatable, but delicious
Money, love, health, innocence or guilt — even finding the right wine. Who doesn’t want to know more? “Real-Life Statistics: Your Chance for Happiness (or Misery),” offered this semester by Harvard’s Department of Statistics, will explore the critical tools to make good judgments in matters large and small.
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Health
Suicide risk factors consistent globally
Risk factors for suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts are consistent across countries, and include having a mental disorder and being female, younger, less educated, and unmarried. So says new research from Harvard University and World Health Organization (WHO) World Mental Health Survey Initiative. The study examined both the prevalence and the risk factors for suicide…
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Health
Brain systems less coordinated with age
Some brain systems become less coordinated with age even in the absence of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study from Harvard University. The results help to explain why advanced age is often accompanied by a loss of mental agility, even in an otherwise healthy individual.
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Campus & Community
David Clarence McClelland
At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences October 16, 2007, the following Minute was placed upon the records.
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Nation & World
Scholars ask, ‘How does gender affect negotiation?’
To most of us, negotiation is a way of getting happily to the end of a problem. As in: Who’s going to do the dishes tonight? Let’s talk.
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Health
Steven Pinker’s ‘Ideas on the Fringe’
Not long ago, Steven Pinker appeared on “The Colbert Report.” He managed to explain the functioning of the human brain to Stephen Colbert in only five words: “Brain cells fire in patterns.”
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Health
Mahzarin Banaji looks at biology of bias
Mahzarin R. Banaji, a Harvard social psychologist, studies how people think, and how they think they relate to one another. She’s an expert in the little secrets we all have: those implicit attitudes — sometimes prejudicial — regarding race, age, gender, and similar territories of otherness.
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Health
Research links panic and heart attack in older women
New research has linked panic attacks in older women with an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and death from all causes, adding panic attacks to the growing list of mental and emotional conditions with potentially deadly physical effects.
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Health
Primates expect others to act rationally
When trying to understand someone’s intentions, nonhuman primates expect others to act rationally by performing the most appropriate action allowed by the environment, according to a new study by researchers…
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Campus & Community
Daniel Gilbert’s ‘Stumbling on Happiness’ lands top book prize
Daniel Gilbert’s pursuit of the scientific basis of happiness has won him the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, it was announced on Tuesday (May 15). “Stumbling on Happiness,” which draws on psychology and neuroscience, as well as personal experience, explores the various ways people attempt to make themselves happy. Gilbert, who is a professor…
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Campus & Community
Test improves prediction of self-injurious behavior
Researchers have found a way to better predict self-injurious behavior by using a test that assesses subjects’ implicit attitudes toward self-injury rather than relying on self-revealing talk. The test addresses…
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Health
Root, root, root for the umpire
The roar of the crowd may subconsciously influence some referees to give an advantage to the home team, according to a study that examines the results of more than 5,000 soccer matches in the English Premier League. The matches were played between 1992 and 2006, and involved 50 different referees, each of whom had officiated…
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Health
Smile and the world smiles with you, but why?
“We are connected in ways we don’t consciously know, but which are absolutely essential for communication,” said psychologist and author Daniel Goleman at a March 14 talk on social intelligence sponsored by the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Center for Public Leadership. “There is a subterranean emotional economy that’s part of any interaction.”
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Health
I know just how you feel
When people talk with psychotherapists, the best results occur if both feel similar emotions, when both “like” each other. But do most therapists really connect with patients this way? No one has ever tried to directly measure the biology of empathy between the two.
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Health
Adjusting to death of a loved one
“Is my grief normal?” That is one of the most common questions posed by people who have lost a loved one. A new study by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers has helped answer that question by affirming the commonly accepted stages of grief – disbelief, yearning, anger, depression, and acceptance – and the sequence in which…
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Science & Tech
Symposium: ‘Will brain imaging be lie detector test of the future?’
For almost a century, one of the staples of crime stories has been the wires, cuffs, and jiggling recording needle of the polygraph machine. In its time, the “lie detector” was hailed as a way to measure the telltale physiological signs of deception, including hard breathing, high blood pressure, and excess perspiration. But in truth,…
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Campus & Community
Two from Harvard win science medals
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will honor 18 individuals, including two Harvard researchers, for their fundamental contributions to human knowledge. Harvard’s award recipients are Randy Lee Buckner, professor of psychology, and Richard M. Losick, Maria Moors Cabot Professor of Biology.
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Health
Mental casualties of Vietnam War persist
More than 30 years after the end of the war in Vietnam, the effect of lingering stress on Americans who fought there continues to cause stress among researchers.
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Health
Professor shines light on shadowy condition
Sandra Fallman avoided mirrors. Walking down sidewalks during dates, she would avoid bright storefront lights, walking near the curb to stay in the shadows. She put 25-watt bulbs in her apartment lights, not to set the mood, but to provide cover. Fallman suffers from a little-known mental condition called body dysmorphic disorder (BDD).
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Campus & Community
Sidanius named professor of African American Studies
James H. Sidanius, a psychologist best known for establishing and refining an influential theory of social dominance along lines of gender, age, race, and class, has been named professor of psychology and of African and African American Studies in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, effective Jan. 1.