Public opinion on environmental issues such as climate change, deforestation, and toxic waste seems to fall along predictable partisan lines but they have little to do with science.

People who deny global warming, for example, conserve just as much energy as people who accept it.  And even the unscientific term 'global warming' gains more acceptance across the board when it is replaced with the more accurate 'climate change'.

A new psychology paper even suggests that environmental messages framed in terms of conservative morals, describing environmental stewardship in terms of fending off threats to the "purity" and "sanctity" of Earth and our bodies, may help to narrow the partisan gap. How many conservative sociologists do you know? 

Experimental evidence by psychologists concludes that the negative effects of playing violent video games can accumulate over time.

The psychologists found that people who played a violent video game for three consecutive days showed increases in aggressive behavior and hostile expectations each day they played. Those who played nonviolent games showed no meaningful changes in aggression or hostile expectations over that period.

Other experimental efforts have shown that a single session of playing a violent video game increased short-term aggression but this is the first to show longer-term effects, according to Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University.

If your pockets are empty and you have no money for roast beast this Christmas, there may still be hope. You could try remembering a better dinner and trick your brain into feeling full. That's episodic memory.

The memory of having eaten a large meal can make people feel less hungry hours after the meal, according to a paper by experimental psychologists at University of Bristol.

Lying, like anything else, can be done pretty well with some practice.  Just like not everyone can be a world class pianist but everyone can sound decent with some time and effort, with a little work, one could learn to tell a lie that may be indistinguishable from the truth, say psychologists.

They say that lying is more malleable than previously thought, and with a certain amount of training and instruction, the art of deception can even be perfected.

Antidepressants are the most widely used treatment for people with moderate to severe depression but up to two thirds of people with depression don't respond fully to antidepressants.

A new paper in The Lancet says cognitive behavioral therapy reduces symptoms of depression and helps improve patient quality of life when provided in addition to the usual care.

They say this is the first large-scale trial to test the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy, a type of talking psychotherapy, given in addition to usual care that includes antidepressants. The CoBalT study aimed to determine the best 'next step' treatment for people whose depression had not responded to medication alone. 

It sounds as suspect as every other lie detector test, but psychologists have used thermography, a technique based on determining body temperature, to determine if someone is telling the truth.

They say a person telling a lie has been shown to undergo a "Pinocchio effect" - their nose changes. But it does not grow, instead they can detect an increase in the temperature around the nose and in the orbital muscle in the inner corner of the eye. Plus, they say when people exert a considerable mental effort the face temperature drops - and the opposite happens during an anxiety attack. 

If you can't afford heat during the ongoing economic malaise, there is some good news; psychology surveys show that students who think about happier times are warmer.

The results, published in Emotion, used college students in China and the Netherlands  to investigate the effects of nostalgic feelings on reaction to cold and the perception of warmth. 

When people witness a hurtful action they make a moral determination based on whether it is intentional or accidental instantly, according to a new paper.

The paper says the brain is hard-wired to recognize when another person is being intentionally harmed. It also provides new insights into how such recognition is connected with emotion and morality, according to lead author Jean Decety, Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at UChicago.

Most people learn when to be afraid and when things are not as bad as they might have once seemed but some new research on autism shows that children with the diagnosis don't easily let go of old, outdated fears and that this rigid fearfulness is linked to the severity of classic symptoms of autism, such as repeated movements and resistance to change.

The new research highlights the need to help children make emotional transitions – particularly when dealing with their fears.

Can advertising make kids fat? 

Childhood obesity rates have tripled in the past 30 years and food marketing has been implicated as one factor contributing to this trend.  A week after the Hostess company, makers of Twinkies, went bankrupt, a member of Congress tried to raise unemployment even more and kill the entire industry by proposing elimination of marketing as a legitimate expense.

Every year, companies spend more than $10 billion in the US marketing their food and beverages to children and 98% of the food products advertised to children on television are high in fat, sugar, or sodium. In a new study, researchers used neuroimaging to look at the effects of food logos on obese and healthy weight children.