Why do we like watching movies that make us feel depressed? This is a question that has long interested psychologists and philosophers, and a recent study published by Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick at Ohio State University may have an answer. Her research is one of the first attempts to take a scientific approach to explaining why people [...]

The main idea behind Clay Johnson’s new book The Information Diet is that we need to monitor the way we consume information in the same way we need to monitor what we eat and drink. In today’s “information age,” we are constantly being bombarded with facts and opinions from television, radio, cellphones, and computers. In [...]

We don’t always have to like someone for us to have love for them. Sure – it may not be “friendship” love or “family” love or “romantic” love. However, we can have “compassionate” love for anyone, despite any differences or shortcomings that person may have. Compassion is our ability to understand and sympathize with the [...]

In an interesting “1st Annual Love Competition” associated with The Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging, contestants had 5 minutes in an fMRI machine to love someone as hard as they could. The brain regions involved in producing the neurochemical experience of love were measured, and the contestant who generated the greatest level of [...]

Don’t like the way you look in photographs? New research published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology may have some good news for you. In a recent study, psychologists showed participants faces in the form of photographs and videos. They then had participants rate how attractive each face was. What they found was that we [...]