Current Directions in Psychological Science Podcast

Chronic pain and substance use disorders (SUDs) are common and debilitating, and they often persist over the longer term. Each represents a significant health problem: It’s estimated that a substantial proportion of the adult population has chronic pain or an SUD, and their co-occurrence is increasing. Research is unraveling the mechanisms of chronic pain and substance use, as we

Shannon Wiltsey Stirman, professor at Stanford University, recentely wrote about key considerations regarding the implementation of mental-health treatments. These include recent findings regarding treatment fidelity, adaptation of treatments, clinical outcomes, and training therapists to provide evidence-based therapies as they were designed to be delivered, ensuring they have the

Scientists can now comprehensively scan the genome, testing variation across millions of genetic markers. Large consortia of scientists are analyzing data from millions of individuals. Multivariate methods enable scientists to identify genes involved in “normal” processes rather than specific disorders or traits. These advances can have a widespread effect on medicine and socie

By definition, personality traits are relatively stable, but recent research has begun to investigate whether individuals can intentionally change their personalities. One intervention that might lead to personality change relies on the use of digital applications to coach people on achieving their desired personality change. Allemand and Flückiger provided a rationale for nonclin

Studying online behavior can further understanding of misinformation and political psychology. Mosleh and colleagues discuseds the strengths, weaknesses, and ethical constraints of two approaches to studying online behavior: hybrid lab-field experiments and field experiments. In hybrid lab-field studies, researchers can control and randomize participants’ exposure to social-media

Warlaumont and colleagues reviewed recent research about how infants’ vocal productions and auditory experiences are organized over a day, with implications for development. Everyday vocalizations appear to be clustered hierarchically in time (e.g., there is more difference in vocalization quantity from one hour to the next hour than from one 5-min interval to the next). Vocaliza

Despite increased requirements and encouragements to track what we do and how we do it in different areas of our lives, from job performance to sleep and diet, evidence suggests that constant tracking might not help that much with health and well-being and instead might have dire social consequences. Johnson uses human intelligence, which has been the object of efforts to track for

According to the active-passive model, social networking sites (SNSs) can increase well-being when used actively to interact with others but can decrease well-being when their content is passively consumed. However, this distinction might not fully capture the sites’ nuanced effects on well-being. Verduyn and colleagues propose the extended active-passive model

Developing the understanding of ADHD heterogeneity appears promising when researchers consider dimensions of trait affectivity. These dimensions can include surgency (i.e., high levels of sociability, activity, and positive emotion) and negative affectivity; their constituent lower-order traits, such as irritability; and the integrative function of self-regulation. Several lines of

Dr. Teresa Treat, Professor of Psychology at University of Iowa, interviews David Barlow, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Psychiatry at Boston University, and Founder of the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. Interviewed on February 10, 2022.