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Fall 2024

Psychology

Young girl in goggles swimming in pool
Fall 2022

Dive deeper into happiness

Happiness is a many-splendored thing.

There are a lot of facets to well-being, happiness, and joy. Washington State University faculty in history, psychology, philosophy, nursing, and medicine examined several aspects of happiness in the Fall 2022 feature, “…and the pursuit of happiness.” The science of happiness has been a growing field, with real world implications for our mental and physical health, society, and future.

Dive even deeper into the topic through the articles and courses below.

 

The Science of Well-being

This popular free course from Yale University offers a series of challenges designed to increase your own happiness and … » More …

Spring 2020

Cannabis in WA state

The legalization of recreational cannabis in Washington state and Colorado in 2012 opened a box full of questions and debates about the drug and its related crop, hemp.

What is the effect on youth? Will crime go up? How does cannabis interact with other drugs and medicines? What health claims are accurate? How does the potency of cannabis affect mental health? These gaps, and many others, in our knowledge—combined with unverified claims by both proponents and opponents of legalized cannabis—make it difficult to find the best ways to regulate and manage the substance.

To answer the call, almost 100 Washington State University researchers have begun … » More …

Grand Theft Auto 5 screenshot of man looking at two women in short skirts
Fall 2019

The evidence that video game violence leads to real-world aggression

A 2018 meta-analysis found that there is a small increase in real-world physical aggression among adolescents and pre-teens who play violent video games. Led by Jay Hull, a social psychologist at Dartmouth College, the study team pooled data from 24 previous studies in an attempt to avoid some of the problems that have made the question of a connection between gaming and aggression controversial.

Many previous studies, according to a story in Scientific American, have been criticized by “a small but vocal cadre of researchers [who] have argued much of the work implicating video games has serious flaws in that, among other things, it measures … » More …

Fall 2013

If You Don’t Snooze, You Lose

About an hour before sunrise on August 27, 2006, Comair Flight 5191 was approaching 120 miles per hour on its takeoff from the Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky, when co-pilot James Polehinke noticed something strange about the runway.

“That is weird,” he said in a conversation captured by the flight recorder. “No lights.”

“Yeah,” said Capt. Jeffrey Clay.

Sixteen seconds later, their 50-seat commuter jet ran out of runway. Polehinke just managed to get airborne but not enough. The plane hit an earthen berm, clipped a fence and a clump of trees, and went down in a ball of flames.

The pilots had gone … » More …

Clock with microbes
Spring 2018

Do microbes dream of circadian sleep?

Anticipation is sweet. In anticipation of the blooming light, plants unfurl their leaves. For many marine creatures, rising to the sea surface as the moon rises is the anticipatory signal that food is available. In our gut, too, microbes anticipate dinnertime because microorganisms have internal clocks that sound the dinner bell.

“And here’s where it gets interesting,” says Hans Van Dongen, a professor of psychology at Washington State University Spokane and internationally known sleep expert.

“The biological clock those organisms have and the brain-based clock that humans have are not necessarily in sync. You notice this when you travel to another time zone. … » More …

Author Tracy Cutchlow ’97 and her daughter.
Spring 2015

Bringing up babies

If only babies came with instruction manuals.

A simple set of operating guidelines might help new parents navigate the necessity of naps, manage mealtimes, and teach a toddler to share.

While there are thousands of books and guides and websites, the situation is far from simple. Well-meaning childhood experts, doctors, and parents have blanketed early childhood with good, bad, and often conflicting advice. “The problem is, no one has time to read all that’s out there,” says Tracy Cutchlow ’97, a journalist, book editor, and (fairly) new mother.

Raising a baby can be confusing, confounding, and complicated, Cutchlow admits one afternoon over coffee in Seattle. … » More …