Midlife is a time of self-reflection—a time in your life when you’re likely to find yourself thinking about who you’ve been, who you are, and who you are becoming. It’s a time for connecting the dots between past, present, and future: allowing yourself to reflect on all that learning and growth while also daring to imagine new possibilities into being.

A study conducted in China indicates that the physical attractiveness of a woman significantly increases her bargaining power within her household. Income, self-esteem, and interpersonal relationships were identified as possible channels through which physical attractiveness affects a woman’s power within her household. The study was published in Frontiers in Psychology.

A trio of climate scientists from Occidental College, Claremont Graduate University and the University of California, respectively, has found that after a 50-minute talk outlining the negative environmental impacts of raising and consuming meat, students ate on average 9% less meat over the following three years. In their paper published in the journal Nature Food, Andrew Jalil, Joshua Tasoff and Arturo Vargas Bustamante describe analyzing the eating habits of student volunteers.

A study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine reviewed more than 1,000 research trials examining the effects of physical activity on depression, anxiety, and psychological distress. It showed exercise is an effective way to treat mental health issues – and can be even more effective than medication or counselling.

A study of low-income mothers showed that those with more attachment anxiety (i.e., mothers feeling unworthy of being loved) tended to show more unsupportive reactions to their children’s distress and to attribute child’s distress (e.g., crying) to the negative qualities of the child. The study was published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies. ...

A series of three studies in Germany found that people living in poverty frequently experience exclusion from different aspects of society and devaluation leading to the feeling of shame. Such shame, in turn, increases their support for authoritarianism due to the promise that that they will be included in the society again authoritarian leaders typically make. The study was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

New research examines whether physical attractiveness predicts selfishness.

We interviewed 11- to 17-year-olds and they told us gambling advertising is so pervasive in their lives, it’s become normalised.

New research provides evidence that people who grew up in an unstable environment are more susceptible to food addiction. The findings, published in the journal Appetite, indicate that unpredictability in one’s earlier stages of life is associated with maladaptive patterns of food intake. Food addiction is a term used to describe a problematic pattern of food intake characterized by a lack of control, unsuccessful attempts to eat less, and continuing to overeat despite negative consequences.

The thrill of discovering new songs and new sounds can enrich people of all ages. Except, most of the time, it doesn't. Why does our willingness to explore new or unfamiliar music decline with age? Timothy McKenry explains.

A new Australian study shows if a person has high levels of sadism and high self-esteem, they are more likely to troll.

Psychologists like Ben Alderson-Day, who is interviewed in the podcast, are interested in ‘Felt Presence’ in terms of neural connectivity, in people with brain injury, for people in bereavement, and in the experience of sleep paralysis, but also in healthy people who are awake.

New research in Psychology of Women Quarterly explores the relationship between how one presents themselves on social media platforms and their tendency to self-objectify. Researcher Shilei Chen and colleagues conducted four studies across different social media platforms looking for confirmation of this relationship and its potential causes.

John Oliver discusses psychedelic assisted therapy: its history, its potential, and what it has to do with A$AP Rocky’s relationship to rainbows.

The GPT-3 large language model performs at the level of a nine year old human in standard Theory of Mind tests, says psychologist.

From private beaches and crackling bonfires to stars that hold the recordings of fleeting thoughts, virtual reality is being used in combination with psychedelic therapy.

People with and without anxiety disorders learn to fear a threat equally quickly, according to new research However, people with anxiety disorders tend to have a harder time learning to stop being afraid (when the threat is gone) compared to healthy individuals. These trends can be detected by monitoring fear-potentiated startle responses.

More frequent smartphone checking behavior is associated with greater incidences of daily cognitive failures, according to new research published in the British Journal of Psychology. However, the new findings also indicate that some forms of screen time are actually associated with reduced cognitive failures. ...

What do people who want to be millionaires and people who want to be just a little bit happier have in common? They can both call a friend. A new study published in Communication Research sought to find out what types of conversations people need to have, and how often they should have them, in order to improve their well-being. The researchers found that having at least one conversation with a friend can increase happiness and lower stress levels by the end of each day.

New research finds that individuals diagnosed with social anxiety disorder (SAD) are more likely to use safety behaviors when engaging with others socially. As a result, they are not seen as likable or genuine by those they interact with.