Psychology in Action

Tag: health

  • Does stress make you sick? What we know about stress and the immune system

    How does stress impact your health? That question has been studied intensely by psychoneuroimmunology researchers for over 30 years.

  • So you’re not a therapist?! Definition of Health Psychology

    I am getting my PhD in Health Psychology but I don’t always tell people that when they ask.

  • What can we learn from the placebo effect?

    An article in The Economist this week – “Think yourself better” – examined the effectiveness of alternative medical treatments such as acupuncture, crystal healing, Reiki channelling, and herbal remedies.  Alternative medicine a booming business.  Survey results released by the US National Institutes of Health found that in 2002 62.1% of adults in the country had…

  • Cutting edge research: environmental influences on genetics

    Throw out what you learned in 9th grade biology class. The age old idea that your genetic profile is static and there is nothing you can do to change the DNA hand you’ve been dealt, is likely not true. A new article in the American Psychological Association’s magazine the Monitor on Psychology nicely reviews the…

  • Dr. Rodney Hammond: A successful career of blending research and community work

    One of the goals of the American Psychological Association is “to advance the communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society.” As the head of the Center for Disease Control’s Division of Violence Prevention, Dr. Rodney Hammond has worked to achieve this goal by bringing scientific rigor and leadership to curbing violence in our…

  • How Does Early Life Stress Affect Health Across the Lifespan? — Professor Shelley Taylor, UCLA

    How does early life stress affect health across the lifespan? This question has intrigued our research team for many years. People who experience early life stress, in the form of poverty, exposure to violence, noise, and other stressors, or who experience a harsh early family environment in the form of conflict-ridden, cold non-nurturant parenting, or…

  • Are you more of a conformist during flu season?

    Looking back on social psychology’s greatest hits, my mind always drifts first to studies on conformity, largely because they make such good stories. Take Asch, for instance. Who would’ve thought that so many people would willingly follow the crowd in giving a blatantly wrong answer about line length? And then, of course, there’s Milgram. It…

  • Emotional Control: Strategies we use for regulating our emotions

    Emotions are a central component of the human experience.  They facilitate social interactions, allow us to both appreciate and create powerful works in arts and literature, and guide us in achieving personal goals.  These are only a few of the myriad ways that demonstrate the important role emotions play in our lives.  In a letter…

  • Childhood adversity and disease

    Mounting evidence has demonstrated long-term negative physical and psychological health effects of stressors experienced in early childhood (Repetti, Taylor, & Seeman, 2002). But as health psychology researchers, what we’re interested in is why. How is it possible that something that happened in childhood could affect your health 50 or 60 years later? What are the…

  • The silver lining: research on personal growth after trauma

    Research on stressful life events like receiving a terminal diagnosis or the impact of losing a job has focused primarily on the negative psychological effects of such events.  However, clinicians and researchers began to realize that many of their patients were reporting positive changes after experiencing adversity. Interviews with cancer patients and other samples found,…