17. Air pollution hurts not only our lungs, but our brains too

A few of us can see the shape of emotions, smell colours, or hear shapes.

This interesting neuropsychological phenomenon is called synaesthesia and happens when our mind involuntarily blends sensations that normally are experience...

Our culture tends to see mind-wandering as bad, but actually, according to psychologist it can be just a symptom of being intelligent and more creative. 

At a study of an older community, researchers have found that following depression, people had their brains in worse shape.

The brain had literally shrunk in its volume! Depressed elderly have exhibited greater me...

Do you want to remember something? Give yourself a good night’s sleep: according to a study, fresh memories stick better if we have a well-deserved rest after studying them. 

A research published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Research and Therapy has found that when patients with mild cognitive impairment started practicing physical exercise at least three times a week, their risk of getting ...

People find face and body symmetry attractive, but do not worry if your face is not completely symmetrical.

It has been proven that by adding symmetrical jewellery or face paint to asymmetrical faces, peo...

Fathers behave differently with daughters and sons: they are more attentive and responsive to their daughters’ needs, sing more often to them, and speak more openly about their emotions towards them.

The study published in 'Behavioural Neuroscience' explored the neural background for this ...

The Alien Hand syndrome most usually occurs after somebody suffers from stroke or other brain injury.

The report feeling as if their hand is controlled by someone else. It can behave completely out of their own ...

An analysis of a dating website has found that people prefer to date others with similar levels of attractiveness.

This effect is more prevalent in women. Compared to them, men seem to co...

Funny people, and especially those who enjoy dark humour, were found to be more intelligent than their less funny peers.

Both their verbal and non-verbal intelligence was higher, mor...

The personality of owners of stereotypically aggressive breeds, like Rottweiler or German Shepherd, was compared to the owners of stereotypically peaceful bree...

According to Tara Macdonald and Michael Ross, if you are in love and you would like to know whether it will last, you should just ask your mom.

They reported that dating couples tend to predict the longevity of their r...

First impressions are more important than you think.

Scientists observed the this at many parts of our life, especially when convincing others, so you should not be afraid to speak up first.

People t...

No matter where you are in the world, people will recognise if you make a sad, happy, disgusted, fearful, surprised or angry face.

Due to this, these emotions are called universal emotions, and they are known across cultures and a...

Do you want to perform better at learning something? It might be time to open your classical music folder, as listening to classical music was found to enhance even older people’s memory performance. The finding is so robust that it has its own name: the “

Students finish on average, 3 weeks later , that their “most realistic” estimate, and one week later than their “worst case-scenario”.

This overly optimistic mode of planning is called as planning fallacy by psychologists. 

We value things more if we were involved in their creation and people also see their creations- even if they are very amateurish- as similar in value to experts’ creations. Researchers calls this phenomenon

There is a reliably observed effect, named after its original observer as the Dunning–Kruger effect, which describes the cognitive bias that individuals with low ability ...

Although life is getting more digital, psychologists argue for keeping handwriting part of our curriculum.

It seems that kids writing by hand learn more and remember better than the ones using a keyboard. It might...

Researching who takes part in elections and other political activities, scientists have come to a surprising result: more narcissistic people can be more involved in such activities, may it be signing petitions, donating...

Call your grandma! Being socially isolated and feeling lonely have seriously dire consequences on us: they make us more prone to poor mental health and can lead to serious, undesirable cardiovascular outcomes.

We all want to be happy, but if you want to be healthy, you should rather search for meaning, says a study led by Barbara Fredrickson.

They have studied the genes of people who are engaging in a lot of activities ...

There is a reason why psychologists ask you about your mother.

One of the most robust

You would not think so, but you might make different decisions when you are speaking in your second language.

According to a study conducted at the University of Chicago, students using a foreign language made less...

In a paper published in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, researchers claim that atheists and agnostics are significantly more likely to be better sleepers than Catholics and Baptists. 

Have you ever felt punched in the stomach after somebody rejected you? It is no wonder that rejection hurts so much.

According to neuroimaging studies the same brain areas are activated during socially and physically painful experienc...

Have you ever wondered why we often behave so irrationally?

Psychologists do too, which results in countless researches about human nature. Although there is still a lot of unanswered questions, and there is a long way to go until we find the definitive answer for example to why we fall in ...

Although these facts are interesting, fun, and tell us a lot about human nature, never forget that most of them were described after conducting research with small numbers of specific populations.

But it is a fact that they provide a wonderful way to raise questions, and to start digging i...

Maslow’s hierarchy is probably wrong. His hierarchy of human needs says that at base levels we are driven by basic physiological instincts to survive and only after fulfilling these needs can we move over to other needs, like social connections and self-actualization.

But

Babies are born with the ability to understand all accents of the world, but from the age of 5 months they start to prefer and listen to their mothe...

Although, it is statistically impossible to be so, when asked, most people will answer that they are better-than-average drivers.

If they are told tha...

Infants’ brains may be shaped by their mother’s experiences during pregnancy.

A new study combining neuroimaging with hormonal samples, found babies of women who were experiencing stress to have different brain st...

When reviewing the effects of regular volunteering, psychologists have found that it might reduce early mortality rates by 22%, compared to those in people’s who don’t take part in such activities.

Regula...

Do you want to convince somebody to stop doing something annoying, like littering?

Psychologists advise you rather focus on the positive outcome with your message, say for example: “Almost everybody who lives here, plac...

Participants of a research who were led to think that they would be alone later in life, were less likely to function logically afte...

According to a study , collecting data from 147 261 adults aged 18 to 99 years, anxiety is more prevalent in high-income countries than in countries with poorer socioeconomic environment.

The study furth...

In a brain-imaging study, scientists have found that listening to sad but not happy music increased the strength of mind-wandering.

It has also caused people to focus inwards and think about themselves, while people listen...

Although alcohol abuse is always bad for your brain health, there seem to be 3 specially sensitive periods , when severe alcohol consumption results in cumulative long-lasting detrimental effects on your brain: gestation...

People usually think that high self-confidence is the key to achieve success, but according to business psychologists Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, it is not exactly true, as he says “...

A research group has studied couples and asked them to predict their emotional state after their possible future breakup.

What was the result after visiting them again if the breakup indeed happened? ...

Have you ever noticed how your mum likes to speak a lot about the things that happened to her during her early twenties? Or ever wondered why people love coming of age teenager stories?

Our preference for recollecting memories from adolescent and early adulthood is called “

If you want to give the perfect present, remember that psychological research suggests that purchasing experiences has a more lasting positive effect on people’s happiness than material objects and l...

Although many times dyslexia is seen only as a problem, it can be a sign of a uniquely functioning brain with many strengths.

For example, watching the same videos, children diagnosed with dyslexia were observed t...

A study has found those people, who sleep and wake up late, to be more intelligent.

It might be because of their tendency to diverge from normally practised activities, in this case, the usual social functioning of being a...

Neuropsychologists have discovered that the expression, “I know what you feel” is literally true for some of us.

These people, when they see others being touched, or hurt, experience the same touch or feel like they were hurt. Not the best company for your next horror movie, are they? 

According to a study conducted in India and in the United States, big bonuses only raised the performance of the workers in certain cases: if they did mechanical work.

But in case of work requir...

It has been shown in multiple studies, that when seen a scene, most Americans focus on the visually most prominent acting object but most east-Asians focus on the background and the context.

This sugg...

In a classic cognitive psychology study participants, who had to remember 3 letter strings, could recall 80% of them after 3 seconds but, after 18 seconds they could only remember 10%.

This effect has been reliabl...

And so is sadness. The basis of this phenomenon might be our natural tendency to mimic the behaviours and facial expressions of others.

Scientists say...

Contrary to popular belief, stress is not always a bad thing, actually it can be good for you.

Psychologists have long observed, that stress help you accomplish task more efficiently, and can motivate you to reach...