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We know that some people tend to define themselves by their possessions, but did you know the level of uncertainty a person feels can influence whether they behave in materialistic ways?
That’s the conclusion of new research by Kimberly Rios Morrison and Camille S. Johnson. The researchers also found that uncertainty does not trigger materialism uniformly [...]

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Anger can make people want things more, according to a counterintuitive new study which found that when people associate a product with anger, they desire it more.
Henk Aarts of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and his colleagues showed people a number of objects such as pens and mugs. Before the picture of the object [...]

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Sorry John, Ringo, George and Paul. Apparently, love isn’t all you need. To make a relationship work longterm, self-discipline apparently outscores love.
Love and warm feelings prompt people to make promises of fidelity to one another. The stronger the emotion we feel, the bigger the promises we make. But new research by Johanna Peetz and Lara [...]

http://bit.ly/g4zBIF Tragedy tends to bring out the best in people, according to new research into cooperative behavior. The more people are affected by tragedy, the more they cooperate and engage in “prosocial” behavior.
In a study of 2,447 residents in five provinces at the epicenter of a 2008 earthquake in China, researchers found that residents who [...]

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Lots of people come home from work feeling upset. But it turns out there are systematic gender differences in the way heterosexual men and women bring work-related unpleasant feelings home.
Men, on average, tend to shield their families from unpleasant things that happened at work, and the more satisifed men are in their relationships, the more [...]

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Have you ever noticed when you are sad or angry that doing something mentally difficult — solving a puzzle or remembering a poem — tends to make you temporarily “forget” to be sad or angry? The moment you finish the difficult and engrossing task, the negative emotion often comes right back.
New research suggests that this [...]

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People who use Botox for cosmetic reasons report that they are able to use their faces in less mobile ways. That’s not surprising, given that botox impairs the muscles that produce wrinkles in the forehead and other areas. One byproduct of smoother skin is that users are not able to register emotional expressions in the [...]

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When people have too many romantic choices, either on the internet or during “speed dating,” they tend to choose partners based on superficial physical characteristics. You might think that having a large number of potential mates to choose from could help you make better choices. But new research suggests the opposite happens — as [...]

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Americans turn out to have the highest self-esteem at age 60, according to new research.
There are important variables and nuances, but the basic message might be surprising to many who believe that very young people have better self-esteem than older people.
Ulrich Orth and Richard Robins surveyed 3,617 adults in the United States between 1986 and [...]

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In the Dictator Game, a volunteer is given a certain goodie — raffle tickets, lottery tickets, money etc — and asked to divide it among a group of people that includes himself or herself. No one in the rest of the group has recourse to discussion or appeal, so the volunteer effectively plays “dictator.”
In this Hidden Brain [...]