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Turbulent Teen Years Linked to Adult Unemployment
Negative emotional experiences during our teen years may take a toll on our ability to land a job as adults, according to a new study. Psychological scientists Mark Egan, Michael Daly, and Liam Delaney of the University of Stirling examined employment patterns for over 7,000 Americans born between 1980 and 1984. Their analysis revealed that early life emotional distress – feeling anxious or depressed as a teen – was a major risk factor for unemployment in adulthood. Highly distressed adolescents were 32% more likely to be unemployed as adults and experienced 11 weeks (28%) more unemployment compared to their non-distressed peers.
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Seeing the Benefits of Failure Shapes Kids’ Beliefs About Intelligence
Parents’ beliefs about whether failure is a good or a bad thing guide how their children think about their own intelligence, according to new research from Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research indicates that it’s parents’ responses to failure, and not their beliefs about intelligence, that are ultimately absorbed by their kids. “Mindsets—children’s belief about whether their intelligence is just fixed or can grow—can have a large impact on their achievement and motivation,” explains psychological scientist Kyla Haimovitz of Stanford University, first author on the study.
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How to Give Workers a (Better) Break
New research from Baylor University identifies two key factors that can help employees make the most of their workday breaks.
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Introducing the Kavli HUMAN Project
A massively ambitious new research collaboration may soon become psychological science’s answer to the Human Genome Project. The goal of the Kavli HUMAN Project, a new collaboration between New York University’s (NYU) Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Decision Making (IISDM) and the Kavli Foundation, is no less than to quantify every major biobehavioral factor that plays a role in shaping humanity. By comprehensively studying a cohort of 10,000 New Yorkers over the course of 20 years, the project hopes to expand the scope of social science research capabilities — just as the Human Genome Project revolutionized the field of genetics.
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Does Frequent Sex Lead to Better Relationships? Depends on How You Ask
Newlyweds who have frequent sex don’t report greater relationship satisfaction than those who have less sex, but their automatic behavioral responses tell a different story.
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What Scientists Know—And Don’t Know—About Sexual Orientation
A comprehensive review of sexual orientation research aims to correct important misconceptions about the link between scientific findings and political agendas.
