An open-access digital library of research-based information and reflections on psychology, wellness, and culture

Tag: Information

  • Attention Works by Turning Distraction Down Not Off
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    Attention Works by Turning Distraction Down Not Off

    Have you ever been deep in conversation at a loud party, only to snap your head around the moment someone across the room whispers your name? This isn’t a glitch in your focus; it’s a sophisticated “backend” antenna at work. That antenna is the attention working at the backend. In the 1960s, psychologist Anne Treisman…

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  • You May Feel Social Rejection as Physical Pain
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    You May Feel Social Rejection as Physical Pain

    We often use physical metaphors to describe emotional experiences, such as “broken hearts,” “gut punches,” or “crushing” rejection. What if “it hurts” might be more literal than we ever imagined? An established fMRI study invited participants who had recently experienced an unwanted breakup to undergo two different types of stimulation. First, they looked at a…

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  • Your Body and Mind Have Very Different Learning Styles
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    Your Body and Mind Have Very Different Learning Styles

    Have you ever noticed your body reacting to a situation before your brain has even had a chance to process what is happening? Imagine you are in a new, healthy relationship. Your mind knows this person is kind and reliable. However, the moment they are five minutes late for a text, your heart starts racing and your…

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  • Synchronized Brains Are Proven to Make People Feel Closer
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    Synchronized Brains Are Proven to Make People Feel Closer

    This may sound like “scientists have finally proven something we’ve already known from real-life experience”. But here are the nuances we tend to ignore. Social connection is more than an effort, skill, or personality; it is more likely a matter of neural alignment. A 2022 study at UCLA integrated neuroimaging with social network analysis to…

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  • We Regret More about What We Didn’t do Than Mistakes
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    We Regret More about What We Didn’t do Than Mistakes

    Would you regret the chances you missed or the mistakes you’ve made? Unsurprisingly, many people regret the things they didn’t do, not the things they did but failed at, as they near the end of life. In psychology, what we didn’t take the chance to do may haunt us much longer and more strongly than…

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