Would babies benefit if their families received extra cash every month? Photo: Cavan Images/Alamy Stock Photo When psychologists and sociologists take a big-picture view of early childhood development, they almost always notice a correlation between income and child behavior. Specifically, children being raised in poverty tend to perform worse than higher-income children on language development, …
Continue reading Does extra cash help low-income babies’ development?
Many public health officials raise ethical concerns about requiring placebocontrolled tests of slight revisions to existing vaccines. Photo: PeopleImages.com - Yuri A/Shutterstock Placebo effects have been in the news lately because the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced a new policy requiring placebo controlled studies for vaccines before …
Continue reading Placebo controls: When are they necessary? When are they ethical?
A body-scan meditation might prevent mindless trips to the fridge.Photo: F8 studio/Shutterstock Do you consider yourself an emotional eater? If you'd like to reduce your susceptibility to emotional eating, here's something to try. It's also a good chance to practice one of the simple experiments. The research was summarized by a journalist for PsyPost. …
Is this non-bed-sharing baby more or less likely to show emotional or behavioral symptoms? Photo: morrowlight/Shutterstock Bed sharing, in which parents sleep in the same bed with their infants, is a fairly common practice in North America and the United Kingdom. Parents who bed-share sometimes do so to facilitate breastfeeding, or because they believe it …
Continue reading Emotional and behavioral outcomes of bed-sharing with infants
How did the researchers manipulate the IV in this study? Photo credit: mansong suttakarn/Shutterstock Cannabis is considered a performance-enhancing drug in the Olympic Games and other competitions, but it's also (stereotypically) associated with being too chill to work out. In the past, psychologists could not easily test the relationship of marijuana and exercise because the …
The study found that children's brains were differently active when they read on screens vs. on paper. Dasha Trofimova/Shutterstock As a reader, you've certainly had experience reading text on both screens and on paper. You probably have a preference for one over the other. Have you ever wondered whether your brain reacts differently to these …
Continue reading Kids’ brains while reading: Screens vs. paper
Should we trust a study that tested only 8 people? Photo: sirtravelalot/Shutterstock Yahoo news picked up a story from the Washington Post , which, in turn, had covered an empirical journal article about high heels and walking (did you follow that?). The Yahoo headline read, "Can wearing high heels actually improve your walking?" In this …
Continue reading Really? Wearing high heels can improve your walking
What are the internal validity problems with this research design? Photo credit: Alba Hurtado/Shutterstock It's our final blog post of 2023! I'm sharing a twofer here; a description of a study you can work with, which also comes with an invitation to participate and try the interventions yourself. The project is called Big Joy, and …
Photo credit: luchschenF/Shutterstock As you learn in Chapter 11, a placebo is an inert treatment. In a drug study, a placebo would be a saline or sugar pill. In a psychotherapy study, a placebo might be a supportive conversation with no therapeutic structure. A placebo effect is when people benefit from the inert treatment (compared …
Seeing different size models on TikTok videos affected people's body esteem. Photo: AlessandroBiascioli/Shutterstock Have you ever watched dance challenge videos on TikTok? If so, you probably noticed the skill and appearance of the dance model. Some psychologists have started to study how TikTok dance models affect viewers. A set of three studies asked, can the …
Continue reading Do TikTok dance videos influence body perceptions?