studies/
studies & papers i've found interesting.
Aron's set of escalating questions designed to generate closeness between two strangers.
Bandura's foundational paper introducing self-efficacy — the belief in your own ability — and arguing it governs whether you attempt something, how hard you try, and how long you persist.
Suppression of Unwanted Thoughts
Evidence that actively suppressing fearful thoughts can improve mental health rather than backfiring.
Effect of Exercise on Depression
A network meta-analysis finding exercise is an effective treatment for depression, with walking, running, and strength training among the most effective.
Deactivating Facebook & Instagram
A randomised experiment showing that deactivating Facebook and Instagram before an election increased happiness and reduced anxiety.
Taylor & Brown argue that positive illusions about oneself are linked to better mental health.
Higher optimism is associated with longer lifespan and greater odds of living past 85.
A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind
Killingsworth & Gilbert find people are less happy when their minds wander, regardless of what they are doing.
Repetitive Negative Thinking & Subjective Cognitive Decline
Rumination and chronic worry are associated with subjective cognitive decline in older adults.
Blocking opioid receptors with naltrexone dampened both the pleasure and the displeasure people felt from music — evidence that endogenous opioids underlie musical emotion, and that music draws on the same reward pathways as food, drugs, and sex.
Placebo Sleep Affects Cognitive Functioning
Simply believing you slept well improves cognitive performance, independent of actual sleep quality.
Sleep & Biological Ageing Clocks in Middle and Late Life
Links sleep patterns in middle and late life to biological measures of ageing.
The Effects of Gratitude Expression on Neural Activity
Kini et al. find a brief gratitude-letter writing intervention increases neural sensitivity to gratitude in the medial prefrontal cortex, an effect still present three months later.
Counting Blessings Versus Burdens
Emmons & McCullough find that keeping a weekly record of things to be grateful for raises well-being and positive mood relative to recording hassles or neutral events.
Resistance Training for Depression & Anxiety
A meta-analysis of RCTs finding that resistance training significantly reduces depression and anxiety symptoms in young people.
Djernis et al. find that practising mindfulness outdoors in a natural setting yields larger improvements in well-being than the same training done indoors.
Buss, Durkee et al. map the criteria that raise or lower social status across 14 nations, documenting both universal and sex-differentiated patterns.