The teens are on Instagram. That much is obvious. A majority of teens say they use the app, including 8 percent who say they use it “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center. And yet ..read more

In this episode, APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum discusses culturally sensitive and inclusive treatments with experts William Stoops from the University of Kentucky Medical Center, along with his colleagues Jardin Dogan-Dixon and Danelle Stevens-Watkins from the University of Kentucky, Paris Wheeler from the University of Cincinnati, and Krystal Cunningham from Boston College.   Together, they examine evidence-based drug treatment studies, highlighting racial disparities in treatment effectiveness, especially how Black participants often experience worse outcomes than White participants ..read more

Fluctuations in Sustained Attention Explain Moment-to-Moment Shifts in Children’s Memory FormationAlexandra Decker, Katherine Duncan, and Amy Finn Why do children form exceptional memories only in select moments? Most prior work has pointed to children’s immature memory abilities as an answer, but here we explore the role of children’s frequent attentional lapses. We report the discovery that moment-to-moment fluctuations in attention between good and poor states causally influence whether children form memories in each moment and predict memory formation more in children than adults. Moreove ..read more

Colleen M. Seifert APS Fellow Colleen Seifert, the new editor of Psychological Science in the Public Interest (PSPI), is accepting new proposals for topics to cover in the journal.   Seifert is succeeding APS William James Fellow Nora Newcombe, who has served as editor since 2019. Published three times per year, PSPI features comprehensive state-of-the-science reviews of issues that are of direct relevance to policy–makers and the public.    Seifert is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. Her research includes projects on divergent thi ..read more

Researchers are only beginning to understand why some people embrace retirement while others won’t even consider it. … Yet “the reality is that retirement can be a very challenging time,” said Teresa Amabile, a psychologist at Harvard Business School and a co-author of the forthcoming book “Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You.” After a decade of research into the retirement trajectories of professionals and executives, her team found that detaching from work can prove difficult, a phase often lasting two to three years before retirees settle into new routines. The end of a career ..read more

Setting realistic expectations • Best practices • Lax scrutiny APS Fellow Isabel Gauthier has been conducting research with online participants for 15 years, and for much of that time found the quality of data to be as good as what was collected in lab settings.  But when the Vanderbilt University cognitive neuroscientist and her colleagues recently tried to recruit and test twins online for a study, their screening uncovered that most of the pairs were not actually twins.   “Either they lied when they joined the platform, or they lied to us,” said Gauthier ..read more

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If you look around at your friends and family — and even at yourself — it is apparent that some people perceive the glass to be half full, while others view it as half empty. “Some people are just happier than others. They don’t have to work at it, right? They just are,” social psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky recently told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his podcast Chasing Life. “(They’re) kind of like people who are thin naturally, and they don’t have to work hard at it.” Lyubomirsky, distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, has bee ..read more

Our pets do experience sadness when we leave them, but there are things you can do to help them adjust. … “Dogs do experience fundamental emotions like happiness and sadness,” said Clive Wynne, professor of psychology at Arizona State University and director of the Canine Science Collaboratory. Wynne is the author of “Dog is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You.” “They are highly social beings who love being with families. They can make friends with any species,” Wynne says. “They don’t like being left alone. I think leaving our dogs home alone for long periods is the most common unintentional ..read more

2024 Student Research Award | 2024 RISE Research Award | 2024 Emerging Scholar Award With each APS Annual Convention since 1991, hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as psychological scientists across all levels and expertise, have the chance to present their research and make connections with their colleagues. Of the 2,000 posters submitted to this year’s Convention, APS has gathered personal stories and motivations behind many of the best student posters from APS 2024 in San Francisco, California, as selected by reviewers for the three award categories. Congratulations to ..read more