How having five friends boosts the adolescent brain – and educational performance

Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock As most parents of teenagers are acutely aware, there comes a time when children start prioritising their friends over their parents. While young children rely on their parents for social interactions and influences, there’s a notable switch during adolescence, where the influence from peers and friends becomesContinue Reading

How classic psychology warped our view of human nature as cruel and selfish - but new research is more hopeful

DorSteffen/Shutterstock There are a number of classic experiments and theories that every psychology student learns about, but more recent research has questioned their findings so that psychologists today are reevaluating human nature. One example is Philip Zimbardo’s 1971 Stanford prison experiment, in which 24 participants were randomly separated into groupsContinue Reading

Understanding time may be the key to the race against climate change

Es sarawuth/Shutterstock Something has to change. Politicians and environmental organisations have invested millions trying to influence people’s behaviour and tackle the climate crisis. But it’s not working. No G20 country is on track to meet their climate goals. So instead, researchers are turning their attention to the link between people’sContinue Reading

Curious Kids: can our brains sense electromagnetic waves?

calzone.photography/Shutterstock Can our brains sense electromagnetic waves? – Taye, aged 10, London Electromagnetic waves are packets of energy travelling all around us. Some of these waves have lots of energy, and some have less. We call the lowest energy electromagnetic waves radio waves. There’s a good chance radio waves areContinue Reading