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There’s a new smartphone app that could help change personality traits you don’t like within 90 days. A study on pnas.org reviewed how the use of smartphone application PEACH influenced major personality traits of openness, conscientiousness, sociability , considerateness and emotional vulnerability. [More]

Inmates who participated in a Bible-based trauma healing ministry program showed enhanced emotional well-being and a significant decrease in the negative consequences of trauma, a recent study by the American Bible Society and Baylor University revealed. [More]

A recent article on APA PsycNet examined how we regulate stress responses. The authors found that “ altering second-level valuation systems—shifting the valuation of stress from “is bad for me” to “can be good for me”—fundamentally changes the overarching goal of stress regulation from reducing stress to optimizing stress responses to achieve valued goals.” However, we live in a culture that tends to view all stress as negative. Can we change the narrative about stress? [More]

Adults are more generous and compassionate in the presence of children. Researchers from the University of Bath and Cardiff University undertook eight experiments with more than 2000 participants and found that the presence of children can cause adults to be more generous. [More]

It’s a conundrum… hang in there or make a fresh start? Whether the decision is about a relationship, job, move, organization, or other… it’s often hard to determine the best course of action. [More]

Medical providers are referring primary care patients to non-medical sources of support, often for mental health. “One of the popular activities in pilot studies is suggesting patients engage in activities that support the uptake of new hobbies. These activities relate to other leisure activities such as volunteering in that they provide distraction, novelty, cognitive stimulation, belongingness as well as enhancing coping skills and agency and (when engaged in as part of a group) provide social support.” [More]

Lab based studies of emotional and wellbeing may be missing real world anxiety. A study from Duke published in PLOS One found that the background level of anxiety a person may normally experience could change how they behave in a lab setting. This could have important implications for research into wellbeing and emotional health. [More]

Psychologists in the UK have developed the first ever mind reading questionnaire designed to assess how well people understand what others are truly thinking. The researchers from the University of Bath, Cardiff and London developed the new questionnaire and in doing so determined that women are much better at understanding what others may be thinking. [More]

What it means to be happy varies depending on where you live. Researchers from the University of California Riverside found that different questions need to be asked to gauge happiness in Asian and Western countries. [More]

Even if someone that we do not know insults us, it is likely that our feelings get hurt. Why? That individual doesn’t even know you. Why grant creditability to strangers? [More]