Psychology

The Average Kid Is Up To 8 Hours Of Digital Per Day, But Is That Bad?

Recent survey results of 118 eight-to-twelve year-old children examined total hours of media consumed, hours of video game play, and number of media used concurrently. Then the authors correlated those to things like behavior, sleep, and psychological issu ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Nov 22 2021 - 12:44pm

Science Tips For Managing Stress At Thanksgiving

Sometimes people ask me if there is an evidence-based way to manage the stress of dealing with difficult relatives at Thanksgiving, and my short answer is "chloroform." In modern hippie dippie wellness culture, that may not be the response people ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Nov 24 2021 - 10:47am

New Test Predicts If Lack Of Impulse Control Is Pathological

Do you know people who just can't help themselves when it comes to buying things or engaging in behavior you and they know they will regret later? Deemed “negative urgency,” a clinical form of impulsivity, it is linked to depression, obsessive compuls ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 6 2021 - 3:45pm

Stress Makes Your Epigenetic Clock Tick Faster

People age differently but it is unclear why. Some argue it is mitochondria while others contend it is equally nebulous epigenetics- a broad umbrella term for changes in genes that don't impact DNA but have been correlated to everything from probiotic ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 9 2021 - 11:28am

The COVID-19 Pandemic Reduced Stigma About Depression

There has long been something of a stigma about mental health issues. If a celebrity goes into an alcohol or drug clinic, 30 days later their career is back on track, but a reputation for depression makes filmmakers worry they won't be able to take th ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 29 2021 - 11:39am

How I Learned To Stop Thinking For Myself And Get To The Right Answer

On Applied Epistemic Helplessness The often (always?) brilliant Scott Alexander has an essay that parallels the thesis of an essay I've been meaning to write for that last six years. It's the perfect topic to kick off this column which I've ...

Article - Marc Brazeau - Jan 18 2022 - 12:22pm

Political Parties Don't Follow Polls, Polls Follow Party Changes

In 2008, Senator Barack Obama was opposed to gay marriage and worried vaccines might cause autism. A few years later he said neither of those things. Did Democrats flip to being pro-science and the party followed and then the President reflected those poll ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 20 2022 - 9:30am

The Dumbest Epidemiology Paper You'll Read This Week

Epidemiology pushes out a lot of dumb papers. Not as many as social psychology per capita but in volume a whole lot more. It's easy to see why the public believes horse de-wormer cures COVID-19, it was in an epidemiology paper, and that methodology wa ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Jan 30 2022 - 9:55pm

An Argument For Getting Rid Of Biological Sex Designations

Check out your birth certificate and surely you’ll see a designation for sex. When you were born, a doctor or clinician assigned you the “male” or “female” label based on a look at your genitalia. In the U.S., this has been standard practice for more than ...

Article - The Conversation - Feb 7 2022 - 3:27pm

Does A Full Moon Mean More Psychological Problems?

The moon is both easy and tough to figure out. Of the many things Galileo got wrong, the moon was the biggest, despite it being studied for millenia by then, unless you think we only have one tide per day.  And last year some people wanted to believe an ea ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Feb 17 2022 - 6:37pm