Featured series 
Tag: social psychology
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Health
Faking happiness for fun and profit
Laura Morgan Roberts of Harvard Business School and Stéphane Côté of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, Canada, studied 103 working college students. “We found that presenting yourself to be happier than you really are has positive benefits not just for those around you but for yourself,” says Roberts. “Suppressing negative…
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Science & Tech
Dying to drink
Henry Wechsler, lecturer on social psychology in the Department of Health and Social Behavior and director of the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Studies Program, defines binge drinking as having five or more drinks in a row for men and four or more drinks in a row for women at least once in…
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Science & Tech
Psychology professor Mahzarin Banaji probes prejudices we won’t admit
From the classroom to the cocktail party, opinions like “men are better at math,” “Asians make the best violinists,” or “women cannot be strong corporate leaders” are unpopular. Yet, says psychologist Mahzarin Banaji, we all carry prejudices like these. We just don’t admit to them, because in many cases, we don’t know they’re there. Banaji…
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Science & Tech
Binge drinking holds steady
About 44 percent of college undergraduates reported binge drinking at least once in the two weeks prior to being surveyed, according to findings in the 2001 College Alcohol Study, whose results were released March 25, 2002. The study, which was also conducted in 1993, 1997, and 1999, also indicated that, of students who drink, 70…
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Science & Tech
Which side are you on?
Andrew Kydd is an assistant professor of government at Harvard University who has developed an interesting theory about mediation. As Kydd writes in the introduction to a working paper, “Mediators are often thought to be more effective if they are unbiased, or have no preferences over the issue in dispute. … For a mediator to…
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Science & Tech
How media violence touches children
Children and adolescents are consuming more television than ever before. The average 8- to 18-year-old spends nearly seven hours each day involved with some form of media. Kids are also more violent than ever before. At the turn of the last century, children and adolescents were most likely to die of environmental causes, especially infectious…
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Health
High levels of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder remain in Bosnian refugees
In 1996, Harvard Medical School researchers began following the mental health impact of the Bosnian war on individuals in a refugee camp in Croatia. Most of the refugees have now returned to Bosnia, though some have resettled elsewhere. A recently released report presents the findings of the first longitudinal study to focus on refugees who…
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Science & Tech
Researcher creates controversy with view of loving families
One of the foremost authorities on the history of the family in the early modern period, Steven Ozment has from his first forays into this field attracted controversy. His latest book, “Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old Europe” is a summing up of that work. It is also a window through which the layperson can…
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Science & Tech
Better-quality child care has real effects
In a study, higher quality child care showed a positive relation to higher levels of social functioning in children both at school and at home. Those children who attended higher-level child care also had fewer reports of problem behaviors and developed stronger bonds with their mothers. Children in classes that met fewer or none of…
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Science & Tech
What constitutes “community” online?
How do we create online communities? Six panelists at the 2000 Harvard Internet and Society Conference struggled with the question. “Real world communities are ever so simple to create,” said Clement Mok, chief communications officer at Sapient. He attributes this to the “infinite bandwidth” of face-to-face contact, something online communities continually try to recreate. “We…
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Science & Tech
High demands, lack of control on the job damage health
A new study has advanced previous research by linking job stress to broad, quality-of-life health issues such as carrying out daily household chores and general mental health. Previous studies have linked job strain to hypertension, cardiovascular disease, depression, and adverse birth outcomes. This study showed that job stress has broader health effects that worsen as…
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