BPS Research Digest

"She works by intuition and feeling;" wrote the US psychologist G. Stanley Hall of the typical woman, "fear, anger, pity, love, and most of the emotions have a wider range and greater intensity [than in men]." That was in 1904. Fast forward a hundred years, what beliefs do modern-day Europeans still hold about the intuition of men and women? Gerd Gigerenzer and his colleagues surveyed 1016 men and women in Germany and 1002 in Spain to find out. Overall, the participants didn't see either […]

In case you missed them, 10 of the best psychology links from the past week: 1. The fascinating story of how fall out from Cold War atomic bomb tests has helped, decades later, to settle the debate over whether or not adult brains can grow new neurons. The new findings suggest that more than 1400 new neurons are added to the adult hippocampus every day! 2. How do people survive solitary confinement? Also the focus of this afternoon's (3.30BST) episode of The Truth About Mental Health […]

Keeping it real often means hanging out From Ancient Greek philosophy to humanistic psychology to modern day rap songs, there's a long tradition of espousing the benefits of being true to yourself or "keeping it real". Despite this interest, a new study by Alison Lenton and colleagues is one of the first to investigate what being true to oneself actually feels like, how often it happens and in what circumstances. Lenton and her colleagues began by surveying 104 participants (average […]

We trawl the world's journals so you don't have to: Anxiety disorders (Clinical Psychologist). Open-access journal publishing in psychology (Psychological Inquiry). open access Resilience in child development (The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry). Exploring Cognitive Readiness in Complex Operational Environments (Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making). Disgust (Psychological Bulletin). Neuroscience of sleep (Nature). Cognitive science approach to developmental […]

Nevermind increasingly violent video games or the ever-present danger of an uncensored internet, a far more insidious and unexpected change is afoot that could be affecting our children's emotional development. Researchers have discovered that the faces on LEGO Minifigures are becoming increasingly angry and less happy. Combined with a trend towards more combat-related LEGO themes, a team led by Christoph Bartneck at the University of Canterbury said "we cannot help but wonder how ... this […]