Psychology
24 Jul 2025
Students more likely to pass oral exams at noon — and that might apply to job interviews, too
Physiological rhythms could explain why Italian university students were more likely to fail exams early or late in the day.
158 news posts in Psychology
Psychology
07 May 2025
Humans prefer to put more effort into empathizing with groups than with individuals
Study participants asked to choose whether to empathize with or describe people preferred to empathize with groups, despite finding it difficult and distressing.
Psychology
28 Mar 2025
Those constantly distracted by their phone will just find other ways to procrastinate if it isn’t nearby
A researcher put physical distance between people and their phones and found that our devices may not be the cause of our distraction – it’s what we do with them.
Psychology
10 Feb 2025
Scientists find that a playful approach to life activates ‘lemonading’, which helps people cope with adversity
Highly playful people are realistic about their circumstances, scientists say, but they are more resilient in the present and more optimistic about the future.
Psychology
11 Oct 2024
Different types of teenage friendships critical to wellbeing as we age, scientists find
Scientists find that peer acceptance in young teenagers, and close friendships in older teenagers, predict low social anxiety and high life satisfaction in young adults.
Psychology
06 Jun 2024
How many days has it been since your last fit of laughter? Here are five Frontiers articles you won’t want to miss
At Frontiers, we bring some of the world’s best research to a global audience. But with tens of thousands of articles published each year, it’s impossible to cover all of them. Here are just five amazing papers you may have missed.
Psychology
19 Mar 2024
Is your partner’s disturbed sleep keeping you up at night? Letting go of unattainable dreams may keep you both happy in bed
Research has now shown that the habit of letting go of unattainable goals helps people to stay satisfied with their romantic relationship if their partner experiences sleep problems. Such ‘letting go’ could also be learned, for example through training by clinical psychologists. But the results also showed that being too ready to replace unattainable goals with alternatives can worsen mutual satisfaction with a relationship, perhaps because this prevents spouses from putting more time and effort into it.
Psychology
26 Jan 2024
Writing by hand may increase brain connectivity more than typing on a keyboard
New research has shown that writing by hand leads to higher brain connectivity than typing on a keyboard, highlighting the need to expose students to more handwriting activities
Psychology
11 Jan 2024
Watching others visibly dislike vegetables might make onlookers dislike them, too
New research shows that observing facial expressions of others eating raw broccoli can influence our own liking of the vegetable
Psychology
06 Oct 2023
Our sense of smell changes the colors we see, show scientists
By Mischa Dijkstra, Frontiers science writer Crossmodal associations occur when people make unconscious but stereotypical connections between two or more senses. Here, scientists showed that associations between odors and colors can be particularly strong: powerful enough to distort our perception of colors. Our five senses bombard us with environmental input 24/7. One way our brain makes sense of this abundance of information is by combining information from two or more senses, such as between smells and the smoothness of textures, pitch, color, and musical dimensions. This sensory integration also causes us to associate higher temperatures with warmer colors, lower sound pitches with less elevated positions, and colors with the flavor of particular foods – for example, the taste of oranges with the color of the same name. Now, a study in Frontiers in Psychology has shown experimentally that such unconscious ‘crossmodal’ associations with our sense of smell can affect our perception of colors. “Here we show that the presence of different odors influences how humans perceive color,” said lead author Dr Ryan Ward, a senior lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University in Liverpool, UK. Sensory-deprived room Ward and colleagues tested for the existence and strength of odor-color associations in 24 […]
Psychology
07 Jun 2023
Science shows why our taste in music can’t be siloed into catch-all genres
By Deborah Pirchner, Frontiers science writer Image: Shutterstock.com Music genres have long been used to describe people’s musical taste. Now, a team of scientists has examined music tastes of a broad German sample and found that it is not sufficient to know what genres people like to describe their musical taste. The researchers also found certain musical tastes may be connected to specific socio-demographic and personality variables of people who like the same genres. Liking certain things or styles is an important aspect of people’s identities and social lives. Tastes can influence the ways humans act and judge. How to best describe musical taste reliably is – due to the ever-changing diversification and transformation of music – difficult and open to debate. Using an approach which also considered sub-genres, researchers in Germany surveyed more than 2,000 people on their musical taste and took a closer look at the fans of five genres: European classical music, electronic dance music (EDM), metal, pop, and rock. “Our analyses revealed that people who like the same genre can have very different tastes if asked which sub-genres they like,” said Anne Siebrasse, a doctoral student at Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics and lead author […]
Psychology
04 May 2023
Ill-fitting gear puts female firefighters at risk: Five Frontiers articles you won’t want to miss
By Deborah Pirchner, Frontiers science writer Image: CAL FIRE_Official/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) At Frontiers, we bring some of the world’s best research to a global audience. But with tens of thousands of articles published each year, it’s impossible to cover all of them. Here are just five amazing papers you may have missed. Ill-fitting gear increases female firefighters’ risk on the job Over the past years, the number of female firefighters has been rising steadily. As of 2020, women make up 9% of firefighters in the US. Despite this, the gear they are wearing is still made for male bodies. Using 3D body scans of 189 female firefighters, US-based researchers have studied this gear to improve comfort, mobility, and safety for female firefighters. They published their results in Frontiers in Materials. The scientists found that female firefighters are wearing personal protective clothing (PPC) with significant fit issues. This reduces comfort, restricts mobility and increases safety risks on the job, they wrote. Between 15% and 21% of female firefighters were found to intentionally leave off a part of their PPC, mostly pants and coats, at least ‘sometimes,’ if not ‘nearly always’. The researchers also identified where the highest potential for design […]
Psychology
05 Apr 2023
How a city walk may improve your mood: Here are five Frontiers articles you won’t want to miss
By Deborah Pirchner, Frontiers science writer Image: Shutterstock.com At Frontiers, we bring some of the world’s best research to a global audience. But with tens of thousands of articles published each year, it’s impossible to cover all of them. Here are just five amazing papers you may have missed. Walking in the city might be just as good for our mood as walking in nature Time spent in urban environments is associated with depletion of cognitive resources and an increasing prevalence of mental illness. Few studies, however, have measured working memory capacity. Now, writing in Frontiers in Psychology, US researchers have compared memory performance and self-reported mood before and after a 30-minute walk in a natural or urban environment. The scientists assigned participants to either a nature or an urban condition and measured differences in self-reported affect and OPSAN, a complex measure of working memory capacity, before and after going on a walk in the respective environment. Their results showed that regardless of the setting, walkers exhibited an increase in positive affect and a decrease in negative affect, suggesting that going outside for a walk can boost mood regardless of environment type. They found, however, no significant changes in working memory […]
Psychology
15 Mar 2023
What does flattery do to our brains? Here are five Frontiers articles you won’t want to miss
By Deborah Pirchner, Frontiers science writer Image: Shutterstock.com At Frontiers, we bring some of the world’s best research to a global audience. But with tens of thousands of articles published each year, it’s impossible to cover all of them. Here are just five amazing papers you may have missed. What praise and flattery does to our brains Both sincere praise and flattery are rewarding in different ways, but the various effects of these types of praise are not obvious. Now, researchers from Japan have published an article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in which they examined the brain activity of participants who received sincere praise or flattery after performing a visual search task. Using neuroimaging, the researchers found different effects of praise. The activation of the part of the brain modulating reward and pleasure processing was higher when participants received sincere praise than when they received flattery. The scientists also observed a socio-emotional effect, based on the positive feedback conveyed by praise. Altogether, they found that the neural dynamics of the rewarding and socio-emotional effects of different types of praise differ. Article link:https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2023.985047/full Fish bone matrix may help heal bone defects Biocompatibility and osteogenic activity are properties of decalcified bone […]
Psychology
03 Mar 2023
Scientists find that people use emojis to hide, as well as show, their feelings
by Angharad Brewer Gillham, Frontiers science writer Image: Shutterstock.com Scientists asked 1,289 people who use emojis to respond to internet chat messages and report their feelings and emoji use. They found that more emojis were used between closer friends, that using positive emojis to express positive feelings correlated with personal wellbeing, and that positive emojis could be used to mask the expression of negative feelings. Have you ever received an unwanted gift and still said ‘thank you’? This choice to hide a negative emotion is a display rule — one of many which define socially appropriate responses to emotions. Although display rules can promote interpersonal harmony, they can also have negative consequences for the person choosing to change how they express emotions. As more social interaction goes online, scientists are investigating how emojis are used to reflect our emotions in different contexts. Are there display rules that apply to emojis, and how do those affect people’s wellbeing? “As online socializing becomes more prevalent, people have become accustomed to embellishing their expressions and scrutinizing the appropriateness of their communication,” said Moyu Liu of the University of Tokyo, who investigated this question in a study published in Frontiers in Psychology. “However, I […]