A new study suggests certain developmental changes might make teens ultra-sensitive to the gaze of other people. Teens are famous for their self-consciousness and suspicion that everyone is watching them. In the new study, compared with children and adults, teens who thought one of their peers was looking at them experienced much stronger emotional, physiological and neural reactions, the researchers found. Leah Somerville, a psychological…
Why Self-Consciouness Peaks in Teenage Years
Stop Yelling So Your Kids Can Hear You
Yelling at your kids just makes you a “poster adult” for temper tantrums. Doing this unfortunately also gives your kids the message that you are not in control. It is also crucial to understand that kids feel unsafe when they perceive that their parents have no control. When you yell your children will likely either yell back or act out in some other negative way. As a…
The Best Relationship Advice – Dos and Don’ts
For the 1.2 million lovebirds who will be married this summer, here are a few secrets for a long, successful marriage: DO Do choose your battles. Do cut out words like should or ought, as in “You should be a better listener.” That’s parental, not relational. Instead, simply ask for what you need. Do recognize what your spouse brings to the relationship rather than focusing on what you…
How to Smile for Better Health – Part 2
Find out how to smile to look younger, live longer, look prettier, and stamp out stress. 7. Which would you prefer: a smile or chocolate? Smiles stimulate the brain’s rewards systems better than sweets. One British study found that one smile can generate the same level of brain stimulation as up to 2,000 (yes, you read that right: two thousand) bars of chocolate, according to…
How to Smile for Better Health – Part 1
Find out how to smile to look younger, live longer, look prettier, and stamp out stress. 1. Your smile can predict the length of your life. Here’s a good reason to get happy: A 2010 study of photographs of 150 Major League Baseball players from the 1952 season correlated the strength of their smile with the length of their life. Those who were deemed to…
Kid’s Reading Success Boosted by Long-Term Individualized Instruction
Students who consistently receive individualized reading instruction from first through third grade become better readers than those who don’t, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. These findings come after a three-year study that followed several hundred Floridian students, who received varying amounts of individualized instruction, from first to third grade. “Our results show that children need sustained,…
Why Parents are Pushy
Brad Bushman, professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University, told Time, “Our research provides the first empirical evidence that parents sometimes want their child to fulfill their unfulfilled ambitions — for example, that they want their child to become a physician when they themselves were rejected for medical school.” Pushy parents seem to share a common trait: They view their children as part of themselves. Those…
Your Friends Are More Important Than You Think
I am sure you’ve felt the sense of emptiness when a friend has moved or when someone has passed away or even after a breakup. Indeed, psychological science has known that we define ourselves – that is, we come to know who we are as a person-through our closest relationships. When the relationships go, so goes a very part of our existence. One of the reasons…
Why Self-Disciplined People Are Happier
It’s easy to think of the highly self-disciplined as being miserable misers or uptight Puritans, but it turns out that exerting self-control can make you happier not only in the long run, but also in the moment. The research, which was published in the Journal of Personality, showed that self-control isn’t just about deprivation, but more about managing conflicting goals. The researchers found a strong connection between higher…
Why Do We Remember Faces but not Names?
It’s happened to all of us: We’re at an event and recognize peoples’ faces all over the room, but names utterly escape us. Don’t feel bad. When it comes to linking faces and names, the deck is stacked against us from evolutionary, neuroanatomical, and practical perspectives. For starters, our brains are far better equipped at storing visual data, such as a face, than a briefly…