Category: Psychology

cmu.edu

Researchers examined whether people prefer to ignore information at times, even if it makes it harder for us to make a good decision.
The team created 11 scenarios around three domains (health, finances, and other people’s perceptions) and asked 2,000 people to share their reactions.
For example, in a scenario involving a routine medical exam, ~33% of respondents preferred not to learn what exactly was wrong with their body.
Overall, the conclusion is that people don’t really want to know everything, and that we choose which information we don’t want, whether it’s health, finances, or sth else.
Some information is too painful for us to learn, but in the long-term, more information generally leads to better decisions.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on March 31, 2020

Study provides the first step towards understanding how loneliness can affect our health.
Researchers found a link between loneliness and increased inflammation, but the causality is unclear.
Long-term lonely people have increased levels of C-reactive protein and fibrinogen, which are inflammatory chemicals.
When these chemicals are increased for a long period of time, it can lead to increased risk of poorer health over time.
With only a link found and causes unknown, this study is just the first step - finding the answers will require multidisciplinary studies looking at all aspects of wellbeing.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on March 9, 2020

Attempting to define correct dosage of ‘nature therapy’, scientists find that positive effects of being in nature kick in after 10 minutes.
To find this, researchers reviewed studies that examined the effects of nature on people between the ages of 15 and 30.
10 to 50 minutes in nature was found to be most effective to improve mood, focus, blood pressure, and heart rate.
After 50 minutes the effects tended to plateau.
This ‘dose’ of nature time is essential to giving college students a tangible goal they can aim for, making them more likely to ‘consume’ their daily doses.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on March 2, 2020

We make conscious decisions when we breathe out, says new study involving 52 people pressing a button, monitored with brain, heart and lung sensors.
The study links breathing to the Readiness Potential (RP, a brain signal that precedes intention), and shows that we make the most decisions when we breathe out.
No correlation was found between decisions and heartbeat, showing that the lungs, and the signals they send, are more important to voluntary action.
RP has been debated for decades, many saying that it means we have no free will and our bodies control us.
This study doesn’t tell us if free will is real, but it explains -when- we do things – the findings will help neuroscience, as well as many other research fields.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on February 10, 2020

nature.com

Study provides proof that emotions are processed in one area of the brain—and not different areas for different emotions.
Similarly to retinotopy (process of mapping images from the eye along brain neurons), the authors propose a new mechanism called emotionotopy.
This is an important step towards understanding exactly how emotions activate different areas in the brain.
Additionally, the study shows that it’s possible to predict brain activity using moment-by-moment scores of six basic emotions.
The study was based on a high-quality dataset from a project called studyforrest.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on January 27, 2020

Psychology (category filter × )