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Speaking of Psychology

Mar 31, 2021

What is it about puns that tickles our funny bone? Or dad jokes? How about a person slipping on a banana peel? What could possibly tie all these very different things together under the heading “humor”?  Just in time for April Fool’s Day, we explore that question with Peter McGraw, PhD, a marketing and...


Mar 24, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic is a grim reminder that infectious diseases have been a danger throughout human history–so much so that the threat of infection has actually helped shape human evolution. Disgust, wariness of strangers, cultural norms around food and cleanliness–all of these behaviors may have evolved at least...


Mar 17, 2021

Many people around the world have lost their sense of smell this past year due to COVID-19. Before the pandemic, scientists had already begun to gain a deeper understanding of how sophisticated our sense of smell is and how it is intertwined with our mental and physical health. Now, the pandemic is giving that research...


Mar 10, 2021

When the world shut down in March 2020, few people imagined how different things would still look one year later – or that more than 500,000 Americans and 2.5 million people around the world would die from complications of COVID-19. APA’s Stress in America survey has been tracking the mental health toll this past...


Mar 3, 2021

Meditation practices date back thousands of years and are a part of nearly every major religion. But it’s only in the past couple of decades that researchers have begun to use the tools of modern science to explore what is happening in the brain when people meditate and how meditation might benefit our mind and...