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Same-Sex Marriage in the United States: 20 Years of Research
This article summarizes the effects of same-sex marriage policy in the United States. Legal same-sex marriage benefited the mental and physical health of LGBTQ+ people. Rates of marriage in the general population increased, divorce rates did not change, and attitudes about marriage have improved.
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Pervasiveness of Racial Discrimination
Racial discrimination can negatively impact one’s health, and research is still uncovering the ways by which it does so. This article focuses on the process by which discrimination can produce more stress for individuals and impact their social relationships.
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Ouch: Understanding the Pain of Social Rejection
Rejection hurts. While we’d all like to avoid this feeling, broken bonds can be as bad for us as broken bones, if not worse. So while the pain of rejection is undesirable, it may actually be helping us effectively modify our behaviors to navigate the world around us.
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Why Sharing Good News Matters For Your Relationships
Sharing positive news with others is associated with benefits such as feeling more positive and more satisfied with life, greater self-esteem, and decreases in feeling lonely.
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Reinforcement vs Punishment: from Animal Training to Theology
Ever felt “positively punished” when your dog-trainer or psychologist inundate you with these lingo?
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Know When to Put on Rose-Colored Lenses: When Bias is Useful
The idea of “positive illusions” is one that has been popular in social psychology since Taylor and Brown published their 1988 paper, “Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health.” Simply put, positive illusions are biased perceptions of reality that are thought to be good for mental health. For instance, studies have shown…
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Is the way to a woman’s heart through her funny bone?
Say what you will about the findings in evolutionary psychology—they certainly have good narratives. One of the latest, published in the July issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, uses sexual selection theory to argue that humor is important to men and women in heterosexual romantic contexts, albeit in different ways.