Danilo Díaz Granados

Obsessional people often have recurring thoughts or fears. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

The words that liars use only seem to distract observers from the truth. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

Only one partner in a couple needs to have this quality. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

Psychopaths, narcissists, egoists, sadists and other nasty people all share one dark personality trait. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

By Christian Jarrett The effect of playing sport on men’s testosterone levels is well documented. Generally speaking, the winner enjoys a testosterone boost , while the loser experiences the opposite (though far less studied, competition unsurprisingly also affects women’s hormonal levels, though not in the same ways as men’s ). The evolutionary-based explanation for the hormonal effects seen in men is that the winner’s testosterone rise acts to increase their aggression and the likelihood that they will seek out more contests, while the loser skulks off to lick their wounds. When it comes to vicarious effects of competition on men’s testosterone, however, the findings are more mixed. There’s some evidence that male sports fans show testosterone gains after seeing their teams win, but other studies have failed to replicate this finding. A new, small study in Human Nature adds to this literature by examining the hormonal changes (testosterone and cortisol) in fathers watching their...

Those that adhered to this diet had a 33% reduced chance of developing depression. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

By Emma Young You’re in a packed food court, searching for somewhere to sit. Just as you spot a communal table with two free spaces, one much bigger and more comfortable-looking than the other, you realise there’s a person standing beside you with a tray and they are looking for somewhere to sit, too. What do you do? Rush to take the better seat – but appear selfish? Or let them have it, so seem generous – but eat your lunch in cramped discomfort?   A new paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that you should do neither. Instead, you should say something like, “Oh, go ahead – you choose a seat”, and the odds are that she or he will not only leave the better seat for you, but also think that you’re generous.   Psychologists have generally viewed this kind of scenario as either/or – you can either be worse off materially but see your reputation enhanced, or vice versa. But it doesn’t have to be this way, according the results of eight studies ...

People lost the weight without any dietary or physical activity advice whatsoever -- only psychological therapy. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

The key to experiencing fiction more powerfully is to literally 'lose' your sense of self in it. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

By   Alex Fradera Psychologists   have already established that minority groups are particularly likely to endorse conspiracy theories that involve them. For instance, the idea that AIDS was concocted in a lab to plague black people or that birth control is black genocide have been shown to have particular traction within African-American communities. It’s thought this is because members of disadvantaged groups find comfort in explanatory frameworks that appear to account for the various factors that beleaguer them. But new research from VU Amsterdam and published in Applied Cognitive Psychology suggests that belonging to a minority identity, in this case being Muslim in the Netherlands or a member of an ethnic minority in that country, doesn’t merely lead to a belief in conspiracy theories related to that specific minority identity, but stokes an appetite for conspiracies in general.   Jan-Willem van Prooijem and his colleagues explain that there seem to be two reas...

When a perfectionist slips up, they criticise themselves too much and can experience burnout and depression. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

Exercise sparked more activity in important parts of the hippocampus -- a brain region linked to memory. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

By Christian Jarrett Part of the strength of the widely endorsed Big Five model of personality is its efficient explanatory power – in the traits of Extraversion, Neuroticism, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, it removes the redundancy of more fine-grained approaches and manages to capture the most meaningful variance in our habits of thought and behaviour. So what to make then of the popular proposal that what marks out high achievers from the rest is that they rank highly on another trait labelled as “ Grit” ? Is the recognition of Grit, and the development of a scale to measure it, a breakthrough in our understanding of the psychology of success? Or is it a reinvention of the wheel, a redundant addition to the taxonomy of personality psychology? In 2016, the US-based authors of a meta-analysis on the topic concluded “that Grit as currently measured is simply a repackaging of Conscientiousness”. Now a different research team, based in Germany and Switzerland, has t...

The best strategy for getting rid of negative thoughts. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

This sleep pattern was also linked to lower blood pressure and less risk of heart disease. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

By Emma Young Talking to someone new can be daunting, but such conversations “have the power to turn strangers into friends, coffee dates into marriages, and interviews into jobs,” note the authors of a new paper , published in Psychological Science , which has found that perhaps we shouldn’t feel so anxious about them. Across five studies, the researchers explored what strangers thought about each other after chatting, and they found consistent evidence for what they call a “liking gap” – other people like us more than we think. Though in other areas of life many of us have a rosy-tinted view of our abilities , it seems that we tend to under -estimate how we come across socially.   For the first study, Erica Boothby at Cornell University, US, and her fellow researchers simply paired up 34 students for a guided conversation (with ice-breaker questions provided) for five minutes, and got them to complete some personality scales and ratings of the conversation, including what the...

How much do you appreciate your partner? → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

In each year, almost 7% of Americans have an episode of major depressive disorder. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

How long can you wait for your reward? → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

Irritability, depressed mood and tiredness peaked two to three days after giving up. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

This toxic pattern can change as relationships mature. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

By   Alex Fradera Every year three quarters of a million people take their own lives, and suicide is the leading cause of death in adolescents. Non-lethal self-harm is also prolific, leading annually to around 300,000 UK hospital visits, with even more going unreported. Knowing who is at most risk can inform support and prevention efforts. The higher rates of self-harm in LGBT and minority groups are well-established, and now a new review article in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology identifies other groups, including goths, emos and metalheads, who who may also be at increased risk. The British team, led by Mairead Anne Hughes at the University of Liverpool, searched both quantitative and qualitative papers on suicide and self-harm to find those that measured affiliation to a subculture – defined as marking oneself out through particular clothes, makeup, body art and musical preferences. They identified ten relevant papers, all but one involving people under 24. In t...

Infidelity often has a highly corrosive effect on relationships. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

Many people tell half-truths to help smooth awkward social situations -- but is it necessary? → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

By Emma Young Immediately after consensual and satisfactory sex, most people report feeling positive, content and psychologically close to their partner. But for some, it has the opposite effect, leaving them tearful and irritable for anything from a few minutes to a few hours. Commonly known as the “post-sex blues”, psychologists call it “post-coital dysphoria” (PCD) and until recently they had only studied it in women. For example, in 2015, Robert D Schweitzer at the Queensland University of Technology led a study of 230 Australian female students, in which 46 per cent reported experiencing PCD at some point in their lives, and about 2 per cent said they experienced it regularly.   Now masters student Joel Maczkowiack and Schweitzer have published – in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy – the first ever study to show that some men suffer from PCD, too.   The researchers conducted an anonymous online survey of 1,208 men aged 18 to 81, from 78 different count...

The results from over 1.5 million people showed that many clustered around these four types. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

The study helps explain why it can be so hard for people to get moving. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

By   Alex Fradera A new paper in Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice argues that the relationship a person has with their eating disorder is shaped by that person’s understanding of what meaningful relationships should look like – and, in turn, this can have important consequences for the severity of their disorder. In particular, Emma Forsén Mantilla and her team from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden wanted to better understand eating disorders through “attachment theory”. This is the idea that relationships with primary caregivers become scripts that we lean on to tell us how relationships “work”.   A parent perceived as being protecting will lead a child to feel trust, according to this theory, and to expect a protection-trust dynamic in future relationships. A more troubled caregiver-child relationship, in contrast, leads to a different form of attachment, and downstream consequences – including believing that it’s normal that people wh...

One of the challenges of a breakup is separating psychologically from an ex-partner. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source

By Christian Jarrett Given how important maths skills are in everyday life, it is vital that we develop ways to reliably identify those children with particular learning difficulties related to maths (known as “specific learning disorder in mathematics”/SLDM or dyscalculia) so that they can be provided with appropriate support. Unfortunately, maths-related learning problems are far less understood and recognised compared with similar problems related to reading and language. A recent study in the British Journal of Psychology  highlights this issue, being the first to estimate the prevalence of SLDM/dyscalculia in primary school age children using contemporary criteria (as outlined by the American Psychiatric Association in the latest version of its diagnostic manual). The results provide much needed data on this topic, reveal some worrying facts and also useful insights for policy. The research is based on nearly 2,500 children, aged 7 to 13, from 19 rural and urban schools ...

1,523 pairs of friends and lovers were asked about their personalities, prejudices, values and attitudes. → Enjoying these psych studies?  Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month  (includes ad-free experience and more articles). → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: NEW: Accept Yourself: How to feel a profound sense of warmth and self-compassion The Anxiety Plan: 42 Strategies For Worry, Phobias, OCD and Panic Spark: 17 Steps That Will Boost Your Motivation For Anything Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do View Source