Danilo Díaz Granados

A common childhood complaint that hints at depression and anxiety later on. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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

A 12-minute exercise that boosts happiness and empathy while reducing anxiety. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 highly effective weight loss technique is done in under 15 minutes per day. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 to move home, change job or start a new relationship with no regrets. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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

Over half the people in the study had a vitamin B12 deficiency. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 Matthew Warren The age of social media has opened up exciting opportunities for researchers to investigate people’s emotional states on a massive scale. For example, one study found that tweets contain more positive emotional words in the morning , which was interpreted as showing that most people are in a better mood at that time of day.   The premise of this line of research is that our word choices reflect our psychological states – that if someone uses more positive or negative emotional words, this is a good indication that they are actually experiencing those emotions. But now a new study has thrown a spanner in the works, finding that – for spoken language at least – this assumption might not hold up. In their preprint posted recently on PsyArxiv , Jessie Sun and colleagues found that emotion-related words do not in fact provide a good indication of a person’s mood, although there may be other sets of words that do. Sun’s team asked 185 American university stude...

Learning an instrument enhances critical areas of the brain. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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

People with high intelligence tend to have this quality. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 Think about the concepts of “red” and “justice” and you’ll notice a key difference. If you’re sighted, you’ll associate “red” most strongly with the sensory experience, which relates to signals from cone cells in your eyes. “Justice”, in contrast, doesn’t have any associated sensory qualities – as an abstract concept, you’ll think about its meaning, which you learnt via language, understanding it to be related to other abstract concepts like “fairness” or “accountability”, perhaps. But what about blind people – how do they think about “red”?     A brain-imaging study of 12 people who had been blind from birth, and 14 sighted people, published recently in Nature Communications , shows that while for sighted people, sensory and abstract concepts like “red” and “justice” are represented in different brain regions, for blind people, they’re represented in the same “abstract concept” region.   “You could be talking to a blind person, and if you didn’t ...

The right parenting style reduces the child's risk of experiencing depression and anxiety. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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

A relatively small change to your routine could double weight loss. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 Matthew Warren Psychology’s replication crisis receives a lot of airtime, with plenty of examples of failed replications and methodological issues that cast doubt on past research findings.   But there is also good news: several key results in cognitive psychology and personality research , for example, have been successfully replicated. Now researchers have reproduced the results of another highly-cited study. Back in 2002, Emily Pronin and colleagues first described the “ bias blind spot ”, the finding that people believe they are less biased in their judgments and behaviour than the general population – that is, they are “blind” to their own cognitive biases. And while that study kick-started a whole line of related research, no one had attempted to directly replicate the original experiments. But in a preregistered preprint published recently to ResearchGate , Prasad Chandrashekar, Siu Kit Yeung and colleagues report reproducing the original study, first in a sma...

Relationships were labelled 'difficult' when the other person demanded support, but did not reciprocate. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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

People with these personality traits as teenagers are likely to live longer. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 Having more testosterone makes men more aggressive – right? It’s a popular lay belief that’s supported by animal studies, but there’s been very little relevant research in humans. Now a study , published in Psychological Science , reveals a more nuanced picture: some men are more affected by raised levels of testosterone than others. Shawn Geniole at Nipissing University in Canada and colleagues studied 308 men aged 18 to 40. After completing a personality questionnaire, the participants gave a saliva sample, so their baseline testosterone level could be measured, and also a mouthwash sample, for DNA extraction.   The participants were told they would soon be paired with a partner for an online “decision making game”. But first they received a nasal gel, which was either a placebo or contained 11 mg of testosterone, and then they were videoed answering general personal questions, which they were told would be shown to their “partner” who was currently located in ...

Why solitude is good for you. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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

Diseases linked to vitamin D deficiency include cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 It is not too long ago that mirror neurons were touted as one of the most exciting discoveries in neuroscience (or most hyped , depending on your perspective). First discovered in monkeys, these brain cells fire when an individual performs a movement or when they see someone else perform that movement. This automatic neural mirroring of other’s actions was interpreted by some scientists as the seat of human empathy. The cells’ most high-profile champion, US neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran, described them as “the neurons that shaped civilisation” and, in 2000, he (in)famously said they would do for psychology what DNA did for biology. Nearly 20 years on, what evidence do we have that mirror neurons provide the basis for human empathy? According to a new meta-analysis and systematic review released as a preprint at PsyArXiv , the short answer is “not a lot”. The research team, led by Soukayna Bekkali and Peter Enticott at the University of Deakin, searche...

The finding was particularly strong for those who took part in structured school teams. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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

Higher IQ scores are linked to better jobs, higher income and more years of education. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 to take the ‘road less travelled’. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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

Two-thirds of a glass can double weight loss. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 more mental health problems people had early on, the greater their memory problems in later life. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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

Around one-in-three people in the US suffer from high blood pressure. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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

If you watch a baby's eyes, they move quickly, processing and integrating information. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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

People felt emotionally closer to strangers who did this. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 Smartphone addiction (SA) is a controversial concept that is not recognised by psychiatry as a formal diagnosis. Critics say that a problematic relationship with one’s phone is usually a symptom of deeper underlying issues and that it is inappropriate to apply the language of addiction to technology. Nonetheless, other mental health experts believe SA is real and they’ve accumulated evidence suggesting it is associated with reductions in academic and work performance, sleep disorders, symptoms of depression and loneliness , declines in wellbeing  – and an increased risk of road traffic accidents. According to a group of psychiatry and psychology researchers at one of the largest universities in Brazil, to that list can now be added: poorer decision-making.   Studies suggest that the numbers of people with notional SA (defined by difficulty in controlling use of the smartphone, constant preoccupation with the possibility of being without it , and poor mood when...

Oxytocin, sometimes called the 'love hormone', is linked to increased bonding and closeness. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 mineral is linked to losing six times more weight. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 Matthew Warren Millions of people around the world spend time and money on healthcare remedies that mainstream science considers ineffective (in the sense of being no more effective than a placebo), like homeopathy and acupuncture. A study published recently in Psychology and Health investigated how to address this issue in the context of multivitamins, which evidence suggests provide no benefit for healthy people – and may even cause harm in some contexts.   Despite this research evidence, huge numbers of healthy people take multivitamins because they appear to be helpful. Scientists refer to this as the “illusion of causality”: when someone takes a vitamin and then their cold goes away, for example, they may believe it was the vitamin that cured them, even though they would have recovered just as quickly anyway. Past research has shown that simply giving people the raw outcomes of clinical trials that show remedies to be ineffective does   not necessarily help co...

Parkinson's is a neurological condition caused by loss of brain cells in a critical area of the brain. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 children ate better, slept better and were in stronger control of their emotions. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 to be happier by changing how you think. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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

Belly fat is linked to developing heart disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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 In the first study of its kind, researchers have asked people to describe in their own words what it’s like to live with Avoidant Personality Disorder – a diagnosis defined by psychiatrists as “a pervasive pattern of social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, and hypersensitivity to negative evaluation”. Like all personality disorder diagnoses, AVPD is controversial, with some critics questioning whether it is anything other than an extreme form of social phobia. To shed new light on the issue, lead author Kristine D. Sørensena, a psychologist, twice interviewed 15 people receiving outpatient treatment for AVPD: 9 women, 6 men, with an average age of 33, and none of them in work. Writing in the Journal of Clinical Psychology , the researchers said the overarching theme to emerge from the in-depth interviews was the participants’ struggle to be a person . “They felt safe when alone yet lost in their aloneness,” the researchers said. They “longed to connect wi...

Some depressed patients even experienced dramatic improvements in just a couple of weeks. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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

People in the study lost 10% of their body weight — and kept it off. → Support PsyBlog for just $4 per month . Enables access to articles marked (M) and removes ads. → Explore PsyBlog's ebooks, all written by Dr Jeremy Dean: 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