Psychology

Working with a nomadic group in Tanzania, one of the last remaining nomadic hunter-gatherer populations, Penn psychologists show that cooperation is flexible, not fixed.

Michele W. Berger ・September 20, 2018

Studying the brain activity of people who have donated a kidney to a stranger, psychologist Kristin Brethel-Haurwitz found a clear link between real-world altruism and empathy, particularly in regard to the pain and fear of strangers.

Michele W. Berger ・September 11, 2018

Psychologist Paul Rozin discusses how it’s possible to get past the ick factor of eating bugs (the key is exposure), and how the insects actually taste. It’s all part of his research focusing on the emotion of disgust as it relates to food.

Michele W. Berger ・August 30, 2018

A team co-led by Gideon Nave of the Wharton School replicated 21 high-profile social science studies and found discrepancies with the original research. Researchers betting in prediction markets, however, were quite accurate at predicting which findings would replicate and which would not.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・August 27, 2018

A new study found that the majority of teenagers avoid the kind of impulsive behavior commonly associated with “typical teenagers,” citing that imbalance models in brain development is evident in only a subset of teens.

Penn Today Staff ・August 23, 2018

It turns out, reminding people of their financial goals before they start online shopping can reduce unnecessary spending of this kind by almost 25 percent.

Michele W. Berger ・July 25, 2018

People living within a quarter mile of greened lots had a 41.5 percent decrease in feelings of depression and a nearly 63 percent decrease in self-reported “poor mental health,” compared to those who lived near the lots that received no intervention.

Katie Delach, Michele W. Berger ・July 23, 2018

Wharton's Robert Meyer discusses the lack of disaster preparedness individuals take in response to hurricane season, and the psychology of decision-making in relation to disasters.

Penn Today Staff ・July 19, 2018

Research from Penn Medicine and the Criminology department shows that using minimally invasive electrical currents on the prefrontal cortex can reduce the desire to carry out such violence and increase the perception that it’s morally wrong.

Michele W. Berger ・July 2, 2018

It has long been thought that characterizing people as less than human was an expression of extreme dislike. Annenberg neuroscientists now find that neurologically, these two viewpoints actually differ.

Julie Sloane , Michele W. Berger ・June 25, 2018