This wasn’t just in my head. In a 2017 study led by the evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, researchers at the University of Oxford found that nights out with friends support mental and emotional ...

Matthias Mehl, a social psychologist at the University of Arizona, who helped conduct the study, recently set out to replicate his findings with a larger data set: audio from more than two thousand ...

It’s not gene equals disease,” Valerie Reyna, a professor and neuroscience researcher at Cornell University, explained to me. Although a specific gene may elevate the risk for a particular ailment, ...

You might think spending more time relaxing would make you happier.But recent research suggests that having more leisure time doesn’t necessarily make people more likely to rate their day as happy.

The award supplements the sabbatical allowance provided by each researcher’s institution for the 2026–2027 academic year, ...

On “The Interview,” Laurie Santos, a cognitive scientist and a professor at Yale, says that Americans think about happiness in unique ways, and they have for a long time.

There’s a reason why no one ever talks about “the bad old days.” A nostalgic longing for bygone times—and a sense that the present doesn’t stack up well against the past—is a common ...

In a special issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science (Vol. 35, Issue 3, June 2026), former Editor-in-Chief and APS Fellow Robert Goldstone (Indiana University) pulls together a collection ...

Image above: Grotzinger and lab members of the P-Badger Lab, University of Colorado Boulder. Your research aims to understand the genetic signal for psychiatric and neurodegenerative conditions. What ...

The Association for Psychological Science (previously American Psychological Society) is a nonprofit membership organization founded in 1988 to advance scientific psychology and its representation as ...

The APS Janet Taylor Spence Award recognizes APS members who have made transformative early career contributions to psychological science. Research contributions can be transformative in various ways, ...

Image above: Kathy Hirsch-Pasek gives her remarks at the 2026 APS Awards Ceremony in Barcelona, Spain. Lifetime Achievement Award recipients reflected on their careers and shared important lessons ...