Psychology

Voters are on an emotional rollercoaster with their candidates -- from the euphoria of incremental delegate gains one week to the dysphoria of gaffes and momentum shifts the next. Millions of voters are headed for a mood crash -- and we're not even out of primary season!

After an important...

Growing up, my family had a much-beloved dog, Paddy-Wack ("Knick knack paddy wack, give your dog a bone..."), but we don't have a pet now. I'm very thankful that our building doesn't allow them, because the Big Girl would constantly be pestering me about it, if not. I definitely wouldn't...

I'm away with my family and my in-laws on vacation. We do this every spring, and each time we do it, despite the fact that this place is lovely, I seem to end up feeling a bit crabby.

One year I blamed it on...

I'm not talking about sticking your head in fMRI scanner, which, so far as anybody can tell, is perfectly safe. (Unless you happen to have a pacemaker or pieces of shrapnel in your head, in which case you might want to give the whole procedure a miss).

No,...

Everyone from Aristotle to Martin Seligman agrees that friendship is one of the keys to happiness.

No one would argue that they DON'T want strong friendships, but the trick is figuring out how, exactly, to keep your friendships...

As preparation for my Happiness Project, I did a lot of self-examination to figure out what goals to work toward. I knew that one quality I needed to cultivate was mindfulness - that is, my open, conscious awareness in the...

I love finding a precise term for things I've observed in the word. It's so satisfying to discover concepts like Schadenfreude, or "acting in reliance," or wabi-sabi. One of my...

A friend told me that she asked her 13-year-old son what is the most important thing about being a boy. He said: "Taking care of others."

She asked how I would interpret that answer. (As a psychologist, I get that a lot.) And like any psychologist, I answered with a...

We all have really lousy days from time to time. A bad work or school evaluation, a potential crush who turns out not to be interested, a fight with your mother-in-law, a worrisome call from a doctor...lousy days take many forms.

Here are some tips for getting through it:

1....