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Why Singing Is Good For Your Brain
If there is a song in your soul, sing it out loud — whether in your car on your morning commute or at karaoke with friends. It’s okay if you are not the next Beyoncé. Making music — even if we aren’t especially good at it — can still be good for us. Music has the power to soothe the mind, promote brain health and bring people closer together, research has consistently shown. But even though music can get stuck in our heads or make us want to move and groove, we can find it difficult to muster up the courage to make it ourselves.
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‘A Big Win’: Dubious Statistical Results Are Becoming Less Common In Psychology
More than a decade after psychologists began to seriously wrestle with questions about the rigor and reliability of their work, there are signals that the field is improving. A recent analysis of 240,355 psychology papers reports that “fragile” statistical results—a potential marker of poor research practices or samples that are too small—decreased substantially between 2004 and 2024. It’s a “thorough and impressive piece of work,” says Mark Rubin, a psychologist at Durham University who was not involved in the study, published in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science in April.
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Morning Anxiety Is Real. Here’s What To Do About It
Sometimes it can feel like whatever is stressing you out — that deadline, a big meeting, the news cycle — is showing up first thing in the morning. You may wake up with a pit already forming in your stomach and your anxiety high before you even get out of bed. ... People who are anxious can also have an increased cortisol waking response but cortisol doesn’t cause morning anxiety, according to Doug Mennin, a professor of clinical psychology at Teachers College Columbia University. “It’s not causal — it’s an index,” he said. “It shows an indication of something being dysregulated.”
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Longevity Hacks for Busy People
The fundamentals of healthy aging are no big secret: Regular exercise, eating well, quality sleep and a robust social life can all help you live better for longer. But doing these things takes time — and when there’s only so much time in the day, it’s hard to know where to start. ... You can quickly boost your mental and physical well-being with an “active noticing” exercise each day, said Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard University who has written several books on mindfulness.
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To Get From Experience to Emotion, the Brain Hits ‘Sustain’
Get cut off in rush-hour traffic and you may feel angry for the whole trip, or even snap at a noisy child in the back seat. Get an unexpected smile from that same kid and you may feel like rush hour — and even those other drivers — aren't so bad. ... "Sure, [a sustained signal] happens in emotion," says Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University. "But it also happens in all kinds of other instances," like when a person is concentrating or remembering.
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10 Things to Say When Someone Won’t Get Off Their Phone
Trying to talk to someone stuck on their phone is such a universal experience, there’s a name for it: “phubbing,” short for “phone snubbing,” or ignoring someone in favor of a phone. “Everyone hates it, but everyone has also done it,” says Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of the upcoming book 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World. “When someone phubs you, you feel like you’re not important—that whatever is on their phone is more important than you.” Phubbing negatively affects mental health, relationship satisfaction, and overall well-being. That’s why it's worth speaking up about digital distraction.
