New research finds that romantic attraction may change as a relationship shifts from long distance to up close and personal.“We found that men preferred women who are smarter than them in psychologically distant situations. Men rely on their ideal preferences when a woman is hypothetical or imagined,” said Lora Park, Ph.D., the study’s principal investigator and associate professor of psychology at the University of Buffalo.“But in live interaction, men distanced themselves and were less attracted to a woman who outperformed them in intelligence.”In the study, researchers found the >>>

College students often struggle trying to afford costly textbooks. Although many different online sites offer textbooks at more competitive prices than the on-campus bookstores, two University of West Georgia (UWG) professors decided that free would be an even better deal. Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG) awarded Dr. Mark Kunkel, psychology professor, and Dr. Kathie Barrett, political science professor the Textbook Transformation Grant, which allows students to replace textbooks with free electronic texts in certain psychology and political science courses. Kunkel and Barrett decided to apply >>>

Police often resort to lie detector or polygraph test to find out the truth in certain high-profile cases. But is the test really useful? No, says a British psychology researcher. Dr Chris Street, an investigative psychology lecturer at the University of Huddersfield and lead author of the study, said it has traditionally been said we should trust our hunches and unconscious knowledge of body language to detect whether someone is lying or not. However, Street’s research suggests people are better off consciously relying on a single “cue” >>>

Police often resort to lie detector or polygraph test to find out the truth in certain high-profile cases. But is the test really useful? No, says a British psychology researcher. ALSO READ: Diet Rich In Soluble Fibre Can Combat Obesity “Polygraph testing purports to work by detecting anxiety. But are liars more anxious than truth tellers?” said professor Chris Street from University of Huddersfield. “The reality is no, because often the reason we lie is that telling the truth would be very difficult and more anxiety-provoking than a lie,” he explained. Street >>>

A parade of pajama-wearing sleep advocates made their way through downtown Morgantown yesterday morning in the pursuit of research. >>>

Press Release – University of Waikato A strong sense of who one is and that ones life matters is vital to health and wellbeing, says Professor Linda Waimarie Nikora, who will deliver her inaugural professorial lecture this month.Māori flourishing in a fast changing world “A strong sense of who one is and that one’s life matters is vital to health and wellbeing,” says Professor Linda Waimarie Nikora, who will deliver her inaugural professorial lecture this month. “Without meaning and belonging, many people, families and communities lie open to the risk of mental illness, addiction, >>>

Linguists and psychologists have been using the content of messages on Twitter to learn more about our society — in areas such as gender, age trends and politics. Now, a new study by computer scientists at the University of Pennsylvania has found that the behaviors of Twitter users also correlate with their income levels.The team of researchers, led by Daniel Preotiuc-Pietro of Penn's Positive Psychology Center, analyzed more than 10 million posts of 5,191 >>>

It’s Halloween, and everyone’s entitled to a good scare. For some, it’s harmless fun — kids in scary masks enjoying spooky decorations as they move house to house trick-or-treating. Others are thrilled sitting home and watching some of the scariest movies ever made. >>>

Study says your cat may want to kill you.(Photo: KUSA)People think of cats as cuddly.But research published in a psychology journal calls them neurotic and unstable.Researchers from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and the Bronx Zoo in New York compared the personalities of domestic house cats to those of four different types of wildcats.To better understand feline personalities, the researchers rated a number of animals' behaviors on what psychologists call the Big Five human personality traits:Domestic house cats and have similar personality structures to African lions with high inclinations >>>

New research has found that unconditional acceptance by friends and authenticity in relationships play crucial roles in contributing to the well-being of mothers.In what is described as the first known study to delve into the phenomenological experience of motherhood, Dr. Suniya Luthar, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University, and postdoctoral research associate Lucia Ciciolla, Ph.D., asked more than 2,000 well-educated, upper middle-class mothers what factors helped them cope with motherhood.This group, the researchers said, is described as being at “high risk” for parenting >>>