The Conflicting Science of Social Media and Mental Health | Psychology Today United Kingdom
Social media may be both harmful and helpful for mental health. Here's the latest research, and how to help make sure you come out on top.| Psychology Today
Social media may be both harmful and helpful for mental health. Here's the latest research, and how to help make sure you come out on top.| Psychology Today
More a popular idea than a scientifically valid concept, internet addiction is the belief that people can become so dependent on using their mobile phones or other electronic devices that they lose control of their own behavior and suffer negative consequences. The harm is alleged to stem both from direct involvement with the device—something that has never been proven—and from the abandonment of other activities, such as studying, face-to-face socializing, or sleep.| Psychology Today
What do you think you look like? Body image is the mental representation an individual creates of themselves, but it may or may not bear any relation to how one actually appears. Body image is subject to all kinds of distortions from the attitudes of one's parents, other early experiences, internal elements like emotions or moods, and other factors. The severe form of poor body image is body dysmorphic disorder, where dissatisfaction over a slight or undetectable defect in appearance becomes ...| Psychology Today
Falling in love is amazing — but we still need to keep our eyes open.| Psychology Today
Many singles are interested in marriage but fear divorce. You can do things before marriage to increase your odds of lasting love in marriage.| Psychology Today
People cheat not only for sex but also for passion—to feel alive and to be wanted. Now it's women's turn to unleash lust.| Psychology Today
A person with an addiction uses a substance, or engages in a behavior, for which the rewarding effects provide a compelling incentive to repeat the activity, despite detrimental consequences. Addiction may involve the use of substances such as alcohol, inhalants, opioids, cocaine, and nicotine, or behaviors such as gambling.| Psychology Today
Repression is a defense mechanism in which people push difficult or unacceptable thoughts out of conscious awareness. Repressed memories were a cornerstone of Freud’s psychoanalytic framework. He believed that people repressed memories that were too difficult to confront, particularly traumatic memories, and expelled them from conscious thought.| Psychology Today
A new study confirms the diametric model of mental illness where mirror neurons are concerned, contradicting expectations and reversing previous findings.| Psychology Today
Empathy enables us to relate to others and motivates us to help those in need. Unfortunately, empathy is on the decline. Here's how to promote empathy in our kids and ourselves.| Psychology Today
Mirror neurons are a type of brain cell that is activated both when performing an action and when observing another individual perform that same action, a process thought to help an individual recognize or understand the behavior of another. Mirror neurons were first discovered in the brains of macaque monkeys in the 1990s; since then, similar neurons have been identified in the brains of birds, mice, and, perhaps most notably, humans.| Psychology Today
Body language is a silent orchestra, as people constantly give clues to what they’re thinking and feeling. Non-verbal messages including body movements, facial expressions, vocal tone and volume, and other signals are collectively known as body language.| Psychology Today
Margee Kerr spends her evenings watching people melt down at one of the country’s most popular haunted houses. In her new book, she shares what really scares us, why we love it, and how pros like her stay a step ahead of us.| Psychology Today
In a world of wannabe Michael Jordans, be a Dennis Rodman.| Psychology Today
Knowledge of your personality can help you make the perfect Career choice.| Psychology Today
Careers that could prevent or cure mental or physical illness.| Psychology Today
The concept is mostly mythical. Parents miss their kids when they leave home but enjoy greater freedom and time for their own relationship and interests.| Psychology Today
Caregivers provide necessary support to someone who, due to age, illness, disability, or some other factor, cannot care for themselves. Caregiving may involve shopping, housekeeping, providing transportation, feeding, bathing, toilet assistance, dressing, walking, coordinating appointments and medical treatments, or managing a person’s finances.| Psychology Today
Boredom is at once both easy to identify and difficult to define. A small but growing collection of scientists have devoted their research to boredom, and some conceive of the state as a signal for change. Boredom indicates that a current activity or situation isn’t providing engagement or meaning—so that the person can hopefully shift their attention to something more fulfilling.| Psychology Today
Work smarter by taking a break. Discover 5 reasons why work breaks can lift your productivity, creativity, and motivation.| Psychology Today
It is difficult to access the joy that is right in front of us with the emotional clutter of negativity getting in the way.| Psychology Today
Nostalgia is a longing and affection for the past. This can encompass positive emotions such as happiness as well as other emotions and recollections, such as tenderness and longing. We have the feeling of nostalgia when we yearn for simpler times, for example, when we were children.| Psychology Today
Gratitude is the expression of appreciation for what one has. It is a recognition of value independent of monetary worth. Spontaneously generated from within, it is an affirmation of goodness and warmth. This social emotion strengthens relationships, and its roots run deep in evolutionary history—emanating from the survival value of helping others and being helped in return. Studies show that specific areas of the brain are involved in experiencing and expressing gratitude.| Psychology Today
The glass is half-empty, and storm clouds loom overhead, never with a silver lining. Pessimists get a lot of flak for their inclination toward negativity and their tendency to expect the worst in most situations. Besides taking a toll on their mental health, their physical health may take a beating, too. Pessimism, while it may be useful in isolation or in moderation, is associated with anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, hostility, high blood pressure, and heart disease.| Psychology Today
Anxiety is both a mental and physical state of negative expectation. Mentally it is characterized by increased arousal and apprehension tortured into distressing worry, and physically by unpleasant activation of multiple body systems—all to facilitate response to an unknown danger, whether real or imagined.| Psychology Today
Human development is influenced by, but not entirely determined by, our parents and our genes. Children may have very different personalities, and different strengths and weaknesses, than the generation that preceded them. Caregivers should pay attention to their children's distinct traits and the pace of their development, and not assume that the approach to parenting that worked for their mothers and fathers will be equally successful in their own families.| Psychology Today
Self-control—or the ability to manage one's impulses, emotions, and behaviors to achieve long-term goals—is what separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. Self-control is primarily rooted in the prefrontal cortex—the planning, problem-solving, and decision making center of the brain—which is significantly larger in humans than in other mammals.| Psychology Today
Mindfulness is a state of active, open attention to the present. This state is described as observing one’s thoughts and feelings without judging them as good or bad.| Psychology Today
Reading a road map upside-down, excelling at chess, and generating synonyms for "brilliant" may seem like three different skills. But each is thought to be a measurable indicator of general intelligence or "g," a construct that includes problem-solving ability, spatial manipulation, and language acquisition that is relatively stable across a person's lifetime.| Psychology Today
Stress generally refers to two things: the psychological perception of pressure, on the one hand, and the body's response to it, on the other, which involves multiple systems, from metabolism to muscles to memory. Some stress is necessary for all living systems; it is the means by which they encounter and respond to the challenges and uncertainties of existence. The perception of danger sets off an automatic response system, known as the fight-or-flight response, that, activated through hormo...| Psychology Today
