Featured series 
Tag: Psychology
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Campus & Community
For Best Results, Take the Sting Out of Criticism
This may come as a surprise, but I don’t like criticism. I prefer constant praise and approval from my friends, family and bosses.
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Health
‘Super-recognizers’ are the ones who really will never forget a face
Some people say they never forget a face, a claim now bolstered by psychologists at Harvard University who’ve discovered a group they call “super-recognizers”: those who can easily recognize someone they met in passing, even many years later.
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Science & Tech
Vocal mimicking, sense of rhythm tied
Researchers at Harvard University have found that humans aren’t the only ones who can groove to a beat — some other species can dance, too. The capability was previously believed to be specific to humans. The research team found that only species that can mimic sound seem to be able to keep a beat, implying…
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Campus & Community
Newsmakers
Liu wins Wendell scholarship; Nye, Walt, and Ruggie recognized by Trip; Witzel receives recognition; CID awards Quadir prize; Koven-Matasy ’10 named Beinecke Scholar; Cheng named to USA Today All-USA College Academic Team; Satcher to give Richmond Lecture; Allison to receive NAS award
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Campus & Community
Rudolf Arnheim
At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on March 10, 2009, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Rudolf Arnheim, Professor of Psychology of Art, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Arnheim was a pioneer in the psychology of art with path-breaking books on visual perception and artistic creativity
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Campus & Community
Brendan Maher, scholar, former GSAS dean, dies at 84
Brendan A. Maher, the Emeritus Edward C Henderson Professor of the Psychology of Personality in the Department of Psychology, died in his Durham, N.C., home on March 17, at the age of 84.
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Health
Raising happy — and moral — children
A teenager tells her parents she is considering quitting her soccer team. Worried that her daughter is unhappy, her mother wants to let her skip practice. Her father argues that soccer is important on her college résumé. While both parents are concerned about their child, they neglect another question entirely: How would her leaving affect…
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Health
Scholars discuss ‘medicalization’ of formerly normal characteristics
Not long ago, a majority of Americans described themselves as “shy,” a condition of reticence or caution that for ages just seemed natural.
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Science & Tech
The upside of rejection
Want a dose of veritas? Even at a place like Harvard, rejection and failure are regular visitors.
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Health
Scholars take a look at decision making
Decisions, decisions. We all make them, starting with which side of the bed to get up on in the morning. But on a personal and public scale, many decisions have grave consequences for health, financial well-being, and — true enough — the fate of the planet.
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Health
Study: Key to happiness is listen to others
Want to know what will make you happy? Then ask a total stranger — or so says a new study from Harvard University, which shows that another person’s experience is often more informative than your own best guess.
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Science & Tech
A mother’s criticism strikes nerve
Formerly depressed women show patterns of brain activity when they are criticized by their mothers that are distinctly different from the patterns shown by never-depressed controls, according to a new study from Harvard University. The participants reported being completely well and fully recovered, yet their neural activity resembled that which has been observed in depressed…
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Arts & Culture
Isolating creativity in the brain
How — exactly — does improvisation happen? What’s involved when a musician sits down at the piano and plays flurries of notes in a free fall, without a score, without knowing much about what will happen moment to moment? Is it possible to find the sources of a creative process?
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Health
Pain is more intense when inflicted on purpose
Researchers at Harvard University have discovered that our experience of pain depends in part on whether we think someone caused the pain intentionally. Participants in a study who believed they were getting an electrical shock from another person on purpose, rather than accidentally, rated the shock as more painful than those receiving the same shock…
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Arts & Culture
Du Bois fellow makes ‘Little Fugitive,’ take two
The wonder of Brooklyn’s iconic amusement park Coney Island as seen through the eyes of a young runaway is at the heart of the 1953 classic film “Little Fugitive” by the directing team of Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, and Ruth Orkin. What lies at the heart of Joanna Lipper’s ’94 recent remake is much darker.
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Campus & Community
Anne Alonso
At the time of her death in August of 2007, Anne Alonso was widely held to be a leading teacher and practitioner of psychodynamic therapy of her day.
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Campus & Community
In brief
Harvard-affiliated study runs in Journal of Community Psychology; Docents sought for Semitic Museum; Habitat for Humanity sale begins Aug. 23; HMS to host second ‘Freecycle’ event, donations sought; HMS to host quantitative genomics conference, poster component; Deadline for first print issue
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Campus & Community
Susan Carey awarded Rumelhart Prize
Susan Carey, a Harvard psychologist whose work has explored fundamental issues surrounding the nature of the human mind, has been awarded the 2009 David E. Rumelhart Prize, given annually since 2001 for significant contributions to the theoretical foundation of human cognition.
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Campus & Community
Susan Carey awarded Rumelhart Prize
Susan Carey, a Harvard psychologist whose work has explored fundamental issues surrounding the nature of the human mind, has been awarded the 2009 David E. Rumelhart Prize, given annually since 2001 for significant contributions to the theoretical foundation of human cognition.
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Science & Tech
Indigenous culture clarifies nature and limits of how humans measure
The ability to map numbers onto a line, a foundation of all mathematics, is universal, says a study published in the journal Science, but the form of this universal mapping is not linear but logarithmic.
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Nation & World
Money spent on others can buy happiness
New research by one Harvard scholar implies that happiness can be found by spending money on others. Michael Norton, assistant professor of business administration in the marketing unit at the Harvard Business School (HBS), conducted a series of studies with his colleagues Elizabeth Dunn and Lara Aknin at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
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Health
Nobel Prize winner discusses judgment and intuition
“Most of the time,” said noted psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman to a packed house of students, scholars, and faculty at the Yenching Auditorium (April 15), “we run at very low effort.” It was a sobering claim for the heady academic set, but according to Kahneman, no one is immune from the diagnosis. Even…
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Campus & Community
Association for Women in Psychology honors Caplan
Paula J. Caplan, lecturer on studies of women, gender, and sexuality at Harvard, has received a distinguished career award from the Association for Women in Psychology at its annual conference in San Diego last month. At the conference, Caplan delivered a lecture titled “Defying Authority: The Liberation and Poignancy of Challenging the Status Quo.”
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Health
Study: Know thyself and you’ll know others better
Using functional MRI (fMRI) scanning, researchers have found that the region of the brain associated with introspective thought “lights up” when people infer the thoughts of others like themselves. However, this is not the case when we’re considering people we think of as different politically, socially, or religiously. Published in the current issue of the…
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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.